There aren’t many decisions to clutter your mind if you are a boy and it’s summer and a swimming hole beckons near your home.
Except one.
It involves the rope swing. The one which, year after year, has swayed off the bluff over the hole. There is no question about “if” you’re going to ride it into the water. Only one of when.
From below, this looks so easy, so graceful, so exciting. And oh-so-frightening. Those who have gone before you talk about the thrill of free-falling 25 feet into the aquatic abyss. You have imagined it and contemplated it, but always there were second thoughts.
Now, however, your mind is made up. This will be the day.
The face of the rocky bluff does not represent a long climb; 20 feet, perhaps. Yet the gradient is steep. It requires you to find handholds in crevices all the way up. Roots and saplings that poke from the stone lend assistance.
There is fear and trembling. But you would never admit it to the 10-year-old peers who are treading water below, waiting for your initiation in this rite of the season.
When you finally reach the summit and turn to face the world, you would swear you have just scaled Mount Everest. The broad, deep swimming hole looks to be just a cup of green tea. Those mop-headed dots afloat in the mixture are your bobbing buddies, shouting at you to go for broke and grab the rope.
Which you do, with one arm locked around the oak that holds the long strand in its crown. No time for second thoughts this year, you decide. The quicker you get this over, the better. With a death grip on the cord, you dart down the beaten path beside the tree and hurtle into empty space.
The wind roars in your ears. At first the world is nothing but a blur. All you can hear is your heart, which may very nearly thump itself right out of your chest.
But then a strange thing happens as you soar into the void. Everything seems to slow down. It is so peaceful, so deliberate. Maybe this is the sensation hawks feel as they sail lazily across the heavens.
A bolt of fear and a cheer from your buddies below snaps you back to reality. Another decision needs to be made. Do you merely ride the rope back to the oak and dismount? Or do you drop, now that the arc has reached its peak?
Your mind insists there is only a split second to decide. But things are going so slowly as you hang out here in space, it seems you have all morning to come to grips with the issue.
Drop, it will be.
Your fingers, clenched so forcefully they’ve lost color, spring open and you are catapulted back into the realm of speed once again. Back to the roar of wind in your ears. Back to the blur before your eyes. Back to wondering if this is what people go through as they die.
But there’s no time to ponder the situation endlessly, for the water is rushing toward your feet faster than a freight train. You gulp a deep breath. Close your eyes.
Whooooosh!
A hundred-million-jillion bubbles caress your skin in cool, soothing balm. It seems you will sink forever. At first there are concerns about hitting rocks, but you know the hole is deep. Within an instant, of course, you stop sinking and begin your ascent. Seconds later, your head bursts through the surface.
Your pals are all around. They are shouting and splashing water in your face. You realize you are laughing and yelling along with them.
Then you look back up at the rope, which flaps listlessly in the breeze. It doesn’t appear nearly as high as before. Here, below, this looks so easy, so graceful, so exciting. But certainly not frightening.
You swim back to the bank, climb the bluff, and go off the rope swing again. And again and again and again.
And you know the joy of being a boy in summer.