(Written Sept. 12, 2010)This week was a tough one. When Friday finally came around, it was a long day which ended rather late. We had a home football game, and then of course the obligatory visit to IHOP afterwards. When I finally crawled into bed, I was exhausted. Sleep was slow in coming due to the fact that my son had two boys sleeping over. For some reason ten year old boys do not get tired. Ever. Finally around 1:30 a.m. I informed them that they were, in fact, very tired and that they would be going to sleep.
The morning brought a rude awakening as Tom had to leave early for work, and I had to be up with my son and his buddies. Tom had already made coffee, and my son had already gone outside to play by the time I was able to convince myself to get up. One night’s sleep is just not enough sometimes no matter how much coffee I drink. Tom headed to work and left me drinking my second cup as I sat in my pajamas.
After a short while I began to become concerned because I had not heard or seen my son or his friends since I had gotten up. This is never a good situation. If a ten year old boy and his friends are quiet, you can bet there is trouble. I forced myself to pull on some jeans, and I walked out into the yard still nursing my coffee.
Now, it is important to note that our yard is pretty secluded. We live on a marsh and small bit of water. There are no neighbors or houses near us except our immediate neighbors on each side. It is rather unusual to see someone because it is such a long paddle to get back there. My son and his buddies play out there in the canoe and ride around splashing without disturbing anyone. I felt pretty safe assuming they were out there paddling around or fishing.
Walking very slowly as I was still half asleep I headed toward the water. When I got to the back gate, which is about half way, I heard yelling. Not kid yelling. Adult yelling…and in Russian. What?!? With furrowed eyebrows I shook my head to clear my thoughts. I was sure that my over tired body was imagining things until I heard it again. I paused where I was so as to use what little remaining energy I had in trying to decide what was going on. Russian people riding bikes on our road maybe? That was plausible right?!?
As a woman who quite possible watched one too many episodes of "Get Smart" as a child, my imagination ran wild. I expected "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." to show up from behind a tree any second. What the heck was going on?!? I shook my head once more for good measure and resumed walking.
I arrived at the water’s edge and strained my eyes to look down the canal. There they were, the Russians, paddling toward me and yelling at each other in that glottal, strangely compelling language. It had not been a figment of my imagination after all. Unfortunately. As I stood on the bank, I saw my son and his two friends both of whom were soaking wet from falling in the canal, standing on my next door neighbor’s floating dock. They were being towed by a small canoe whose capacity was being tested by the three large Russian gentlemen who were paddling furiously. Not productively, but energetically. They were obviously novices at the pastime. Two of them did not speak English at all, and the third was barely proficient. The one at the stern of the boat was apparently very frustrated with the other two who could not decide on which side of the boat to stroke their paddle, and thus the canoe went in circles all the while towing the floating dock with three little boys.
I cannot emphasize enough how surreal of an experience this was for me. I had some difficulty wrapping my brain around the fact that there were three grown Russian men in a canoe dragging my kid home. How could this happen to me? The same woman whose overactive imagination harbored strong suspicions that my parents were KGB agents when I was a child? A coincidence? I think not.
After much struggle and yelling in Russian, which quite possibly was Russian profanity that thankfully the rest of us did not understand, the entourage finally arrived at the shore. I was not quite sure how to react. Should I yell at my kid? Should I thank the Russians? I had little time to decide because as he stretched to hand me the rope he was holding my son fell right into the water. That made it unanimous. Now they were all soaked. Neither of their mothers was very happy with me as they both had on brand new shoes since school had just started.
We thanked the men for their help, and off they paddled. I have no idea where they went or where they came from. It was very bizarre. The three wet boys went inside to change clothes, and we set their shoes out in the sun in hopes that they would dry at least a bit before their mothers came to pick them up.
The funny thing was that my son and his friends thought nothing of this Chaos episode at all. As if nothing at all was strange about three Russian men appearing in our back yard and towing them home with a little bitty canoe. I went back into the house shaking my head trying to grasp the incongruity of it all. I poured more coffee. I really needed it. I was halfway hoping that I would be able to drink it in the Cone of Silence after all of that. Three Russian men. Would you belieeeeeve two Russians?!?
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