First of all, it was her fault.

As we climbed out of our sailboat and
into the dinghy after a completely delightful afternoon of sailing,
she handed me my baseball cap and said, “I put the car keys in the
hat.”

Not that I'm looking to blame anybody for it...but it was her fault.

Okay, let me back up a little.

It was a beautiful day for sailing on
Narragansett Bay. The wind was out of the south at ten to fifteen
knots, the seas were around one foot, the sun was shining, and the
temp was in the eighties. And, the BEST part was. . . Mary Ellen and
I were sailing just for the sake of sailing! We had no place to go.
Just to there and back again...kinda like Bilbo Baggins without Orcs.

We got back to our mooring in Bullock's
Cove around three o'clock, climbed into the dinghy and headed for the
dock all happy and in love and warm and salty and tired and
sunned-out.

It was at the dinghy dock that this
gorgeous day turned decidedly sour.

Mary Ellen got out of the inflatable
first. And I began handing her things as I emptied out the dinghy:
the spare oars, the cooler, her tote bag, my baseball cap with the
car keys inside of it......

The dinghy dock is situated in four
feet of water...Bullock's Cove water...water that you cannot see
through...mucky, slimy, brown, brackish water.

As I handed her my cap, I saw her take
it, and then, in slow motion (I swear!!!!!),
I saw the cap open up, and I watched as the shiny keys to the Camry
fell out.

“NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-O-O-O-O!!!!!!”
I remember shouting, as if in a slowed-down dream. My hand reached
out for the keys as I watched them leave the cap, flit through the
air like autumn leaves, slowly and playfully bounce off the wooden
dock, and then gently slide into the sea.

They made a divot
in the water's skin, and then I watched helplessly as the brown water
slid in place back over them, obscuring them from sight immediately.

SHIT!

I looked up at Mary Ellen, and intelligently fought off my first
impulse, which was to look at her and scream, “LOOK AT WHAT YOU DID! NOW WE'RE SCREWED!!!”

But I judiciously didn't say that. In a rare display of rationality
and constraint, I told myself that I should have reminded her that
the keys were in the cap. I should have made sure that she had the
cap securely in hand before I released it. AND, if I
ever wanted to have sex again, I'd better find something else to say
instead.

So I stared down at the water and, in as calm of a voice as I could
muster, whimpered, “Now what are we going to do?”

Mary also looked down at the water and matter-of-factly replied,
“We're going to have to get in the water and find them.”

The water looked like the murky, scummy liquid that pickled eggs are
floating around in at those old fashioned general stores and in those
gritty, blue-collar bars. You know what I'm talking about? Those
two-gallon glass containers filled with greenish water with the eggs
floating around in them. And when you stomp the floor, the eggs
wiggle and undulate, and you wonder how and why anybody would
ever eat those things.

“I'm not getting in that water,” I stated flatly.

“Okay. Then what are we going to do?”

“Maybe
we can call Scott or Rich (two of our sons) and have them
come and get us.” (They live over an hour away from where we were
standing.)

“Okay. Where are our cell phones?”

My heart sank. They were in the glove compartment of the car. Along
with our wallets, which contained all of our credit cards and cash.

I looked at Mary Ellen and asked, “Do the words, 'we're fucked' mean anything to you?”

The only thing I could think of doing at that point was to sit down
on the dock and have a good, productive cry. But, there were too many
people around who might not know how to take that.

Without
another word spoken, Mary Ellen slipped off her sandals and watch,
and then slid over the edge of the dock and went up to her shoulders
in the brackish glop that some folks in the area laughingly refer to
as water.

“The bottom's all mucky and filled with seaweed,” she reported
with a shiver and look of disgust. Then, she slowly and methodically
began feeling along the bottom with her toes. All at once, her eyes
lit up. She bent down into the water, and she came up with . . . and
handful of seaweed and mussels.

After about ten minutes of watching her pull up pound after pound of
kelp and shellfish, I grew impatient, took off my sandals, watch,
hearing aid, glasses (We old folks have a TON of artificial
enhancements), and I gingerly slid over the side of the dock, my feet
landing in a soft, squishy, cool and disgusting cushion of
vegetation.

DOUBLE
Fucking Gross!!!!!!!!

After a few moments of feeling around with my feet, mimicking Mary
Ellen, I came to the conclusion that this was an exercise in
futility. So I climbed back out and onto the dock. (As one of my
heroes, W.C. Fields, once said, “If at first you don't succeed,
try, try again. And then give up! No sense in making a damned fool
out of yourself!”)

At that point, a man who had been working on his boat in the marina
and observing the whole situation came down to the dock and asked,
“Can I help you with something?”

My first macho instinct was to get indignant and blurt out, “No!
Everything's fine! Go away!”

But common sense got the better of me, and, knowing that Mary Ellen
would want me to ask for help, I decided to make her happy, and I,
exhibiting great chivalry, said, “She dropped our car keys into the
water.”

The Good Samaritan let me use his cell phone, and I called the AAA
Auto Club, hoping that they could send somebody out just to unlock my
car so that I could get to our cell phones and call my son to make
the hour and a half drive down to pick us up.

Well, to make a long story just a little bit longer, I no sooner got
AAA on the phone when Mary Ellen screeched, “I'VE GOT THEM!!!!!!!”
I looked down to the water, and, sure enough, there was my wife, neck
deep in greenish-brown liquid, dangling the keys over her head and
beaming from ear to ear!

I rushed to her and offered to help her up onto the dock, but she
decided that she would rather swim to the boat ramp.

So I took the keys, and ran to the car. (I was not sure if they would
work. I knew that they had computer chips in them, and I wasn't sure
what being dunked in salt water for twenty minutes would do to them.

They worked just fine!

I unlocked the door, jumped in the car and started it up. As Mary
Ellen approached the vehicle, dripping wet and looking like a drowned
rat, I rolled down the window and said, “You're too wet. I don't
want you in the car..”

She didn't see the humor in that.