Falling into the pond

When my sister read my last post about falling through the ice, she reminded me of another time I fell into a body freezing cold water.  Here's what happened:

I was about 12 or 13 years old and we were at that adolescent stage where there's nothing fun to do;  Too old to "play" and too young to have money to go anywhere.  The only thing we could come up with to fill our time was hanging out at Twin Ponds.  As the name suggests, Twin Ponds are a set of man-made ponds that are separated by a road in Brampton.  They are a fairly decent size but an unreasonable bylaw prevents anyone from using it to swim, skate or fish.  The only thing they were good for was sitting on the big rocks that frame it, and light fires by aid of WD49.  (Remember we were 12/13 years old!  Our brains weren't fully developed yet!!)

The one other thing that drew me to Twin Lakes was they were right behind the house where a crush of mine lived. 

On a cold November afternoon, a few friends, one crush, one can of WD40, one lighter, and myself were hanging out on the rocks.  We were amusing ourselves by spaying WD40 in a pattern on the rocks, lighting the end of it, and watching the fire consume our designs before it starved out.  This may also have been the time we learned that fire will travel UP the spray and into the can....quickly remedied by launching the can into the lake.

At some point I must have found something particularly funny and I leaned back with a hearty laugh. This bold move -likely a combination of my natural grace and agility, or designed to draw attention to myself- culminated in me toppling off the rock into the fridged November waters below. The pond wasn't deep enough around the shore to threaten my life; only my pride, which was deeply hurt.

Once my friends had finished howling at my predicament, I hobbled out of the water and we made our way back to my crushes house.  Wanting to die from embarrassment, his mother traded my soggy frozen clothes for his clothes and then called my mom to pick me up. Both ladies enjoyed a laugh at my expense together and I was brought home to a rendition of "under the sea" by my loving brother and sister.