100 Words: Lightning

When I was in gradeschool we spent the summer months swimming at crystal lake, behind my house. But you had to go all the way around the lake to the bathhouse and show your passes to the recalcitrant lifeguards. My parents said we couldn’t swim on our side of the lake because a drunk guy had once fallen in and drowned. Every once and a while our swim sessions would be cut short by megaphoned monotones warning of lightning so would everyone please exit the water immediately. Grudgingly we swam to the docks and hoisted ourselves onto the wet wood.

2 Replies to “100 Words: Lightning”

  1. Funny- I did something similar, except we were forced out of my Aunt’s pool. And afraid to go back in.

    I like the way you itallicized the voice/ speech- smooth transition, funny. works well.

  2. Oh, Crystal Lake….some of my memories of that place include running down to the water with sparklers on New Years, going for an illegal swim on the first warm spring afternoon, diving in after a hot bus ride home from summer camp…I haven’t been swimming there in years, but I always think of these moments when I’m on the T going west from Boston and we pass the lake.
    It’s interesting to compare different experiences of the same place…maybe that would be a good in-class or 100 words exercise.
    I wonder if there is a place, beyond campus locations, that everyone in our class as been to?

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