“Are we there yet? ” “No. ” “Now are we there? ” “Do you want me to turn this car around?! ” Brothers are annoying. I’m fairly certain my mother agrees, based on the way she’s sighing with exasperation. I swear, we’ve been in this car for eternity. Supposedly, grandma’s house is only 45 minutes away, but it seems like we’ve been in the car for years! Grandma lives near a lake halfway between Lawrence and Kansas City, where I live. For one last celebration before school starts back up again, my family decided to go on a trip there.
Usually, I look forward to grandma’s, but my nuisance of a brother was ruining the trip already. He thinks he’s being funny continuously asking “are we there yet? “, but the rest of the family is already weary of it. Technically, Zachary is only my halfbrother on my dad’s side, but he’s just as horrible as any other older brother. He said with startling alacrity that he was going to help me learn how to go tubing, though, so I suppose he can’t be all bad, even if I do want to strangle him right now.
After several more centuries of driving, we finally pull into the gravel drive of grandma’s lake house. The light is gently streaming through the trees, giving it a magical look and I can hear the sounds of the ducks in grandma’s backyard. The house itself is a small thing, made of dark wood with blue shutters, so that it resembles the stereotypical cabin you’d find in the woods. It’s one of my favorite places in the world. I can’t see the water from where I am in the driveway, but the moment the car pulls to a stop Ileap out and run around the house to see the glistening urquoise water just as I left it.
“Emma,” my father calls from the front of the house. “Come help us bring in the bags! ” In my excitement I had forgotten all about the luggage we had brought. “Just a sec! ” I called back. Taking one last look at the beautiful lake, I turned to go help. —— After saying a quick hello to grandma and leaving our stuff in our rooms, we thought it would be best to hurry and go swimming, so we’d have a full five hours until it got dark. When I first stepped onto the sandy beach the sand tickled my toes and Igiggled happily.
I could hear the waves gently lapping the shore and I could smell the murky waters. I ran without hesitation into the water and was content. Some time later, my brother and I were going to go tubing with the help of our father and grandma’s boat, so I was very excited. I planned on filming the whole thing with my phone so I could show my friends back at home. My phone’s waterproof so I’m pretty confident it can handle a little spray of water, though I don’t plan on dropping it. While our parents had all the preparations made Zach and I went out to the dock to look out at the lake.
See, in my family we have this game we play at the lake where we’ll pretend to push one another into the lake. Only sometimes do we actually push them in, but it’s fun to pretend. While I was caught up in how wonderful it was to be here and relishing in the way the sunlight reflected off the water, out of nowhere my brother pushed me towards the water. And while I was trying to regain my balance so as to not fall in the lake, my phone slipped out of my hand. We stared in horror at the ripples in the lake where it had fallen. My brother looked so pale that I briefly thought that he might faint.
I can’t imagine that I looked any better. Our parents were going to murder us mercilessly. Through the surefire decision making process of eenie-meenie-miny-moe, my brother was elected to deliver the news to our parents that my phone was most likely lost forever. He was incredibly nervous, fidgeting with the pair of goggles he had with him constantly. When he told our father his voice was practically a whisper. Dad’s, however, was not. He yelled himself hoarse and then some, while my brother and I cowered meekly at his wrath.
After that severe reprimand, my mother, who was not quite so harsh, suggested that we go look for it. “It was supposed to be waterproof to some degree, so maybe it survived,” she reasoned. We all thought this was a wonderful idea, but it soon proved very difficult to even reach the bottom of the ten foot deep area in which the phone was dropped, much less stay underwater for the length of time necessary to look for it. We had just about given up for the day because the light was fading when my father arose triumphantly from the water with my pink and green phone in hand.
It was a cause for much celebration in my opinion, but my hopes were brought once again under control by my mother’s reason. “Don’t be too hasty,” she said. “We don’t know yet if it’ll even turn on. We certainly can’t turn it on right now or it’ll fry the circuits. ” So with that, the phone was placed for safekeeping in the front of the car and was not seen again for a week. — The moment we finally decided to plug it it was full of suspense. My parents had finally deemed it safe to try and charge it, and up until this point, we had no idea whether our efforts for the phone’s recovery were all for naught.
I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood. With bated breath I placed it on it’s charger and behold! The screen lit up! Up until that point I hadn’t realized how incredibly worried I was over the safety of my phone. In hindsight, it seems sort of silly, but it was very important at the time (as these matters are prone to be to a young girl). Since no harm had come to my precious device, my brother was forgiven and all was well. Next time, I definitely won’t be taking my phone anywhere near the lake.
