Keith had a lot of illnesses when he was young. During the spring when he was about 12 he got pneumonia. Keith was sick for a long time, but he was feeling better by the time we went up to the cabin for our summer vacation. Just the same, Mom didn't think it would be a good idea for him to go swimming in the creek.
Just below the cabin was a pretty good swimming hole. The summer before Dad had taken the tractor down and dug the rocks out to make it even deeper. Most of the hole ended up being about five feet deep, but there was one spot, right in the middle, that even came up over my head, and I was five foot ten.
A huge cottonwood tree grew on the far bank of the hole. It's roots made great benches for us to sit on, just at water level, and it had one huge branch that stretched out over the hole. If we were brave we could climb onto this branch and inch our way out over the water. It made a great place to jump off into the hole.
The first afternoon after we got to the cabin all of us kids headed down to the swimming hole. We were all wearing our swimming suits except for Keith, since Mom didn't want him to go swimming. He was kind of cross about that, but he had a plan. While we all jumped into the water Keith walked out onto the big branch hanging over the swimming hole.
“You better not fall in or you’ll get in trouble,” we laughingly warned him as he dangled his feet above us.
“If I fell in on accident I wouldn’t get in trouble,” he told us with a gleam in his eye. “It's pretty hard to keep your balance on this branch, you know, and I just might fall in by mistake.”
“Oh, yeah, right.” I laughed. “Accidentally, huh?”
“It could happen,” Keith said. “But I better take my wallet out of my pocket just in case. I don’t want anything inside to get wet.”
“Like what?" Linda asked. “A picture of your girlfriend?”
Keith just smiled his tantalizing smile and pulled his wallet from his pocket. He walked back along the branch to the trunk of the tree, climbed down, and set his wallet on a rock.
We were all laughing, pretty sure we knew what was going to happen next. Keith climbed back onto the branch and began walking precariously out over the swimming hole.
“Don’t slip!” we called up to him as we splashed around in the cold water.
Keith leaned far out over the creek, holding his arms out at his side to give him balance, and then dropped into the water. We were all hooting and laughing as he surfaced, blowing water out of his mouth like a whale.
“Oh no! Keith fell in,” we exclaimed in mock surprise.
But one of us wasn’t impressed with his little accident. Julie, only a few years old, was horrified that her big brother had done exactly what her mother had told him not to do. She began running up the hill as fast as she could, yelling, “Mom, Mom. Keith jumped into the creek and he’s going swimming!”
Thus ended Keith’s ‘accidental’ trip into the water.
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