We had traveled in the car for five hours, only stopping to pick up Quintin, my brother, from college. To get us talking again, Dad asked, “Are you excited to go out on the lake?” He looked at us in the rear view mirror. “You’re aunt and uncle rented a couple of jet skis. That sound like fun?”

The truth is that I was excited to go to my aunt and uncle’s lake house. But Quintin wasn’t going to admit it. He had had an argument with at least every human in the country before he left, and had been gone for only two months.

“Sure,” he said in the most sarcastic tone conceivable.

“It sounds like fun,” I said in a tone more competitively sarcastic than his, all the while looking right at him.

He looked back at me with an expression of absolute resentment. Dad caught on to us. He glanced back and forth from the mirror to the road.

“Ok, what’s going on here? Why are you two acting so weird,” he asked accusingly.
“Nothing,” I answered, looking at him.

“Nothing,” Dad repeated disbelievingly. “Ok, if you two don’t want to talk about it….”

“Don’t want to talk about it,” Quintin answered. This is not what I wanted him to answer with, much less answer at all. That statement proved that there was, in fact, an “it” between us. The last ten minutes of the drive was in silence.

When we arrived we followed the “visiting procedure” that we always do. Ten minutes of saying “hi”, ten minutes of showing us around the house, then minutes of unpacking, then ten minutes of wondering what to do next. After, I went fishing with my cousin, only to be interrupted by Quintin on a jet ski. His wake greatly rocked us and surely scared all the fish away. We came back with three fish. This was not a satisfactory number of fish for the family and we went on several other expeditions before the weekend ended.

I asked Quintin why he went so close to us when we were fishing and asked him not to do it again.

“Shut up,” he snapped. “We don’t need you in the family,” Once again, it amazed me how parents can sometimes see or hear something and completely ignore it. Did no one hear this statement which, in my book, would have sent him to sit in a corner for a month? I was offended less at Quintin’s statement rather than the fact that Mom and Dad did nothing about it.

The next day was overcast and had a dreary start to it. But one detail lit the overcast for me: I get to ride in a jet ski today, but it was to my surprise that Dad said that today, we could go tubing. I had never been on a lake this big and had certainly never been on a vehicle on one.

I was ready in minutes with my life jacket and swimming gear. I got on the inner tube (I’ll admit it: I got on it a little timidly), which, to my great relief, had handles on it. Dad took off on the Jet Ski, with my tube tethered onto it. I couldn’t fit inside and it would have been greatly uncomfortable, so I laid over it—much more comfortable.
This, however, added a large portion of strain to my arms when he took off. The wake on the thing was enormous and thoroughly rocked my boat. It was really only when he made a sharp turn that it seemed as though I would fall. The sharp turns would keep me out of the wake of the Jet Ski but hitting the rough waters by myself.
At this particular moment, for whatever reason was going through Quintin’s head, he thought it would be a good idea to drive the other Jet Ski right along the side of ours, maybe twenty yards away, which put me between them. Quintin sped up after Dad made his first good decision of the vacation and shooed him away. But he should have peeled off and the consequence of this was our wakes colliding with me right in the middle. It was the strangest thing, in terms of physics. Both wakes hit me at the same time and the entire tube dove under water but only for milliseconds for the buoyancy of the tube made it shoot out of the water. It flew, easily, feet into the air and rotated clockwise just to land back on the water perfectly upside down. At this point, I let go. I was in the water. The buoyancy of my safety jacked sent me to the surface, but it was a shallow lake and the lake weed tickled the bottom of my feet. What would have normally sent me giggling, terrified me.
I, in the words of my father, “flipped out”. The lake weed continued to try to grab my legs and I hugged them to my body. I shook uncontrollably and yelled, “Hey! Help!” repeatedly. My Dad circled around and picked me up on the back of the Jet Ski.
The next few minutes were spent shivering although the water was warm. What surprised me the most after my rescue was that no one was concerned at all. Was I fine? Yes, I was, but the lack of questions concerning my health was a new change that I was not used to. My brother was nowhere to be seen. And most people inferred that it was Dad’s fault when it was probably him that saved me despite the fact that his rescue was not perfect.
The next day, I did not want to go out on the water to fish. What if the boat flipped when Quintin tries to kill me for the millionth time? What if he succeeded? My brain was tiny and squishy at the time and needed an excuse for everything. Quintin had no excuse and he did not talk about the incident at all. I didn’t mind though; I did not want to talk about it either.
This may have been the point in my life where I learned humility. For every person—at least once in your life—there will be something you have to do. Perhaps not something you want to do, but something that you need to do. I needed to overcome this fear and Quintin gave me the perfect chance to do so.
That night, he asked me if I wanted to go tubing with him.
“So will you do it?” he asked with an excitement that I had not seen in him for a long time. I hesitated at first and my small squishy brain jumped to the worst conclusion: he was going to kill me here. I think, something told me that if he did, there would be no doubt that someone would know that Quintin did it, and maybe he could get justice for what he will do.
“Ok, I’ll do it,” I responded. I remember walking to the deck that had the jet skis tied to it and feeling the oddest emotion of melancholy I had ever experienced. No fear or regret, but also no joy in what I was doing.
When I was getting on the inner-tube, he took off. He didn’t care that I wasn’t fully on it yet. Perhaps he had an urge to get this done as soon as possible; I did too. My hands slipped and found themselves hanging on to the tube itself and my feet were well out of the water because they would bounce on the surface of it. One hand found its way up the tube and onto one of the handles and with a great heave of effort, I pulled the other hand up to one as well. Now I was in a good position and he was beginning a sharp turn much like the one that had nearly ended me yesterday. With the force, the inner-tube was gliding (rather bumpily) out of the wake of the jet ski and out into the calmer part of the water. It was difficult to hold on, but somehow I managed to succeed for that turn. He made another sharp turn, but this time, in the other direction and I slammed back into the wake sending the tube into a barrel roll. But I held on through it, my head going in and out of the lake water and the tube found itself back on its belly again. I passed over the wake and onto the left side of the Jet Ski.
The ride was short though and he brought me back immediately after. We docked at the deck and he grabbed my shoulders.
“So how was it?” he asked—this time with much greater excitement—I did not know how to respond to this sudden display of emotion that Quintin had never before displayed. “Do you feel any different?”
“It was—I don’t know—I don’t feel any different.” I responded uneasily.
“Excellent,” he grinned proudly. “Then it worked,” This did confuse me. What did he mean?
“What? What do you mean?” I asked with great intrigue.
“You overcame your fear. And without much pain to me as I originally thought it would.”
I hadn’t realized at the time and I didn’t realize for some time that he was right. I had overcome my fear of it. That is why I felt nothing before the ride; part of the thrill of it comes from fear, and since I had none, I had my “melancholy moment”.
My fear had come and gone and I was ready to go again. I did, in fact, ride again the next day. I realized there was not one specific thing that I was scared of, but rather all of the tiny fears of tubing all joined together. I’m better now and enjoy going tubing when I visit my aunt and uncle every summer—even when I fall off.