When we moved to Petoskey nearly 13 years ago, it wasn't long before I realized we needed a boat. I started dropping hints about buying a boat with very little reaction from my husband. It was as though he couldn't hear a word I was saying. One morning while we sat across from one another at the kitchen table, his head buried in the sports page, my eyes scrolled the classifieds for,... you guessed it, a boat. I found one of interest.
"Here's one," I said. "It's a runabout. What's a runabout honey?"
Slowly, he lowered his newspaper and peered at me from across the table. He said nothing at first, I smiled.
"Should I,...Google it?" I asked.
"A 'runabout,' runs you from here to there," he said. Then up his paper went and he returned to his reading. I sipped my coffee.
"We should go see it. They're only asking $600."
No response came from the man behind the paper.
"I'm going to call on it," I said.
No reaction, no movement, no objections from the man behind the paper. Okay. Done.
I should probably mention to you, that I know nothing about speed boats. I grew up on a sailboat, but that is another story for another time. Regardless, I wasn't as concerned about the boat itself as I was about the cost of the boat. If it cost too much, then my husband couldn't get too upset with me for buying one. I told my husband, we're meeting this guy and his boat at the Crooked Lake Launch in an hour. To which my husband looked at me in complete shock and said, "Seriously!?"
Off we went; my husband, our 2-year-old daughter and me. When we pulled into the parking lot at the launch I said, "Oh look honey, it's so cute." My husband looked at me with the same scrunched up face he gives me when he holds his nose indicating we have a diaper to change. His entire face looked pained. "What's wrong?" I said. "You don't like it?"
As our 2-year-old was strapped into her life preserver, we headed out of the launch and onto the lake. It was cloudy, windy, and a little cold for June but who cares, we were boating. This was our dream. Well, my dream anyway. My little girl and I fit perfectly in this boat, the two grown men, not so much. I wasn't worried, I knew after we bought it, this stranger would be gone and then we'd all fit.
Moments into the ride my husband, like a drill sergeant, starts firing off questions at this guy about his boat. "Holy smokes." I thought. "Wow!" I thought. Where's he been hiding all this knowledge? I was both shocked and pleasantly surprised. However, the answers coming back were slow and unclear and it turned out the boat belonged to the man's father-in-law who had passed away over a year ago and this poor guy had been saddled with the job of getting rid of it. He knew nothing about boats. Not this boat, not any boat. As my husband was becoming less and less interested, it started to rain. "Oh no." I thought. "This isn't good. My husband, already less than thrilled, is going to hate me if we end up soaked from head to toe," I thought.
Just as I'm thinking these very thoughts, the boat motor begins to spit, and sputter and sputter and then, just like that, it croaks. "No!" I think. I can't believe it. Here we are, out in the middle of the lake, no cell phone, no whistle, no traffic going past to pull us in. My husband and the guy move to the back of the boat to inspect the motor. "Anyone bring an umbrella?" I think. No. Of course not. Why would we? My little girl snuggles into me even closer now and my husband, with an irresistible chance for a little humor says, "How about $50 bucks and I take this rig off your hands?"
The guy looked at him confused. Then to make things worse, my husband puts out his hand and says sarcastically, "Yeah, you pay ME the $50 bucks." Now my husband is laughing hardily, obviously trying to make light of the crazy scenario at hand, or he's losing it, I'm not sure which. I don't even care. I'm giggling too. Thankfully, a boater did realize we were just sitting motor-less, bobbing up and down in the rain helpless. As he approached the boat, he said he would gladly tow us in, just throw him our rope. What rope? Nope, the guy doesn't even have a rope on board. Lucky for us, our rescuer did. As we're being towed into shore my husband, soaking wet and laughing, looks at my sympathetically and says, "Well honey, what do you think?" I shrugged my shoulders. "I think I just want to go home," I said.
Funny enough, we did actually buy a boat, just not that day and not that boat. No, it seems my husband knew what I wanted more than I did and he found me our boat. I'm a happy boater now and you know what, surrounded by this much water I was right, we needed a boat.
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