Tim Wildmon

AFA president

September 2010 – If you are looking for spiritual depth by reading this column, read no further. But if you want a funny story, please read on.

Our family went to the beach on our annual summer vacation. We love the beach. One afternoon we were all swimming and playing around in the water when we began to notice we were slowly drifting away from shore. My lovely and talented wife Alison first noticed this; I was having too much fun not paying attention. She said something about it to our youngest son, Walker, 16, who began to try to swim toward shore. He tried earnestly but was making no headway and it startled him and his mother. I made a joking comment about being swept out to sea never to be heard from again and was promptly scolded by Alison for not taking the situation more seriously. So I tried to be more worried as I bobbed around in the clear blue water. All I knew is that there were no phone calls or e-mails to answer, no meetings to attend and no one asking me to solve a problem.

Alison and Walker began to wave their arms at the lifeguard who saw them and promptly came to the rescue. Took him about five minutes to reach the family in peril. He was a shorter version of David Hasselhoff. He helped Alison and Walker while the rest of us followed close behind using our boogie boards to catch waves on in to shore. And we swam more parallel to the shoreline, which is what one is supposed to do when caught in a strong undertow or riptide. You should also get really worried and visibly demonstrate this to others around you, I have learned.

On a danger scale of 1 to 10 we were probably a 1. Had we floated out another 100 yards, they would have called in a boat to pick us up. Had we floated out another 100 miles, one of Fidel Castro’s boats would have likely picked us up. But for 15 minutes or so we were part of high drama on the high seas.

When we made it to shore, a news crew was filming us. They were probably doing a story about how some careless, senseless tourists don’t know what a red flag on the beach means.

Oh well, we made a memory, and that is what family vacation is all about, isn’t it?

Hope you had a great summer!