I don’t want to say I’m always right, so let’s just say I’m never wrong. I admit it can sometimes take a while, like decades, for my rightness to be recognized. Case in point: the resurgence of the best thing to come out of the eighties besides my daughter–the fanny pack, the most comfortable and convenient way to carry your valuables when sentenced to spending a day at an overpriced theme park. Sure, you 21st century types can call them belt bags, hip packs, or even wear them “cross body” style but you’re not fooling me.
So, it’s not surprising that my customary rightness was recently borne out again during my husband’s and my weekly trek through the woods with our dog Harper. Having trod this exact trail roughly seven billion times in the past twenty years, we are familiar with every twist and turn, including the very specific way to navigate the stream that interrupts the path without falling in the water on our behinds.
We have followed this trusted crossing routine with nary a misstep every single time. Every single time, that is, until last weekend when several days of heavy rain had raised the water level significantly. Granted, the creek had risen, but I believed the good Lord was still willing to have us forge it in pretty much the same way. Worst case scenario—mildly wet sneakers. But this wasn’t good enough for my husband, the civil engineer, who started rattling off complicated formulae and calculating stress loads like he was going to construct Hoover dam right there. I just shook my head. Then, instead of following me as I made my tentative first moves along the high side of the stream bank, Mr. Physics did an absurd about-turn where he suddenly fancied himself a circus performer. He abandoned the dam-building scheme in favor of a truly nutty one, IMO. He decided to traverse the stream by tiptoeing, tightrope style, on a slim, wobbly branch that hung about a foot above the water level.
“Okay, you’re insane and are likely going to fall, possibly break a bone, and end up with a lot more wet parts than your sneakers, but that’s your business,” I told him matter-of factly. “My question is, how is Harper supposed to cross now, as you are the one holding his leash and I can’t reach him from here?”
“He’ll walk along with me on the ground, on the low side,” he replied equally matter-of-factly. “It’s just a little muddy.”
“That’s not mud, you fool!” I exclaimed. “That’s muck, marsh muck! It’s as close to quicksand as you can get outside of a 1960s Saturday morning cartoon. It’s bottomless; he’ll sink and we’ll never see him again!”
My non-engineer observations were dismissed with a “tsk tsk,” and my acrobat husband started across the makeshift balance beam. To his credit, he was inching along beautifully until he tugged on Harper’s leash to coax him to trek alongside through the muck. As I predicted—did I mention I’m never wrong?—it did not go well. With Harper’s first step, all 74 pounds of him sank nearly all the way to his belly as simultaneously his panic escalated nearly all the way to the treetops.
“I told you!’ I bellowed. I’m helpful that way.
From atop his high wire, my husband tried pulling Harper’s leash to free him, but it was a lost cause. The suction of the muck combined with Harper’s weakened 13-year-old back legs made extricating him by yanking impossible. As Harper’s panicked yelps increased, my husband did the only thing he could; he jumped down in the muck himself . . . and quickly sank past his ankles. By now Harper’s arthritic back end had completely given out and was fully encased in the muck. My husband arranged his arms sling-like under Harper’s chest to hoist him up. It took three good heave-hos, but Harper was finally liberated. He clabbered across the rocks like a wobbly newborn fawn and immediately plopped himself in the water as if to erase every trace of the muddy trauma he’d suffered. Meanwhile, my husband was still stuck in the muck. Grabbing hold of his erstwhile tight rope, he successfully pulled each foot out of the muck and planted both on slightly firmer terra firma. Unfortunately, his shoes didn’t follow, so back into the muck he went to fish them out, after which he joined Harper who was still sloshing around in the water.
We had at least a half-mile walk back to the car, me in warm, mostly dry sneakers and my husband in his cold, completely wet ones. My husband uttered barely a word the whole time, but the squish-squish of his every step spoke volumes. When we reached the car, he finally conceded, “Well, I’ll say it so you don’t have to. Obviously, I should have listened to you because you were right. As you always are, my darling.”
“Oh, honey, that’s not so,” I replied, discounting this characterization with a wave of my hand. “I know full well I am not always right.”
And then, walking over to my side of the car, I added under my breath, “It’s just that I’m never wrong. And I have the dry feet to prove it.”