After Andrea and I pulled the trigger on the whole relationship accord and became an official couple, one of our first dates was to Chewacla State Park. After parking at the edge of the forest, we hiked a trail up to the lake. At the end of a meandering path, we found ourselves on a shoreline, taking in the tranquility and serenity of the scene.
Since we’d been friends for a while, this whole transition to “more” was relatively easy in some respects. But at this quiet, picturesque enclave, words failed us both, and we stood in awkward silence.
It was Andrea who jostled us from the quiet. “Can you skip rocks?”
Roused from my personal reverie, I tried to process her question. After more than four years of engineering classes, I could suss out the basic mechanics, but I don’t ever recall sending a stone skipping across a body of water. My internal dialogue was slightly panicked, “Oh, god, it’s second grade recess all over again!”
I picked up a small, flat rock, feeling its heft and weight. Tossing it from hand to hand, I looked to the surface of the lake and tried to do some fruitless mental calculations to get the “proper angle of incidence”. In the end, I just shrugged. Yoda’s terse wisdom won out, “Do or do not. There is no try.”
I drew my arm back, said a silent prayer to the gods of Newtonian physics, and hurled the rock with a slight flick of the wrist. To my relief and astonishment, there wasn’t a single splash and “kerplunk” indicating mission failure. There was a second splash, and then a third, and now a fourth.
Andrea squealed with glee. “Yay! Do another!”
Outwardly smiling, I was hoping I hadn’t used up my dexterity points for the day. Picking up another rock, I hurled it with greater force and managed a respectable 7 skipping splashes before it disappeared beneath the surface.
Andrea was insistent on testing my reserves of good fortune. “Show me how you did that!”
How in blazes do you teach a newly acquired pseudo skill?
I uttered some mumbo jumbo about planting your feet apart in a strong stance and sighting down the path you wanted your projectile to take. She listened intently to my ad-libbed TED Talk on the mechanics of skipping rocks and then started to scan the rocks at her feet. Being very deliberate in her choice, she held up her specimen. “Is this one OK?”
I’m thinking, pfft. I dunno. It’s a rock. “Nice! That one’s perfect, Andrea!”
Pleased with her rock-picking acumen, she smiled and took her stance. Planting her feet and squaring her shoulders, she stretched her left arm out towards the lake like Babe Ruth telegraphing the direction of his next hit.
“Remember to flick your wrist when you release.” Nodding to acknowledge the last-minute pointer, she flung her hand back.
I should have been more explicit in my instructions. On any firing range, traditionally, the safest place to be is behind the shooter. Andrea deftly flouted that bit of battle tested wisdom. She’d managed to flick her wrist and release on the backstroke of her throw, sending that rock directly behind her, where I was standing, and scored a direct hit on the family jewels.
Mortified at what she’d done so very early in our now official relationship, she dropped to her knees, covering her face with her hands. I, similarly, dropped to my knees, my hands covering something else.
She was quickly by my side and my head was in her lap. After the stars faded from my vision, I was able to look up at her concerned face and managed a smile. “OK,” I thought. “Maybe this wasn’t so bad as far as first dates go.”
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