Fish Belly White

Yesterday, after cleaning the boat for two and a half hours, a few of my coworkers and I had the brilliant idea to jump in the lake after we got done because it was hot. It was one of those things that, yeah, you mention it, and you think, okay, maybe, we'll see, and we were actually traipsing out along the pier toward the little shack thing that sits on the end before you get to the breakwater, and I was like, oh, shit, well, okay...

For the first time in my life I jumped off the Village Pier. In a sports bra, compression shorts, and my favorite baby blue Adidas shorts (a random here, have these from my sister a few years ago) in front of tourists and the four people that I work with - including two boys. While my shoulders and my upper body and lower legs might be tan, my tummy is an extremely attractive shade of fish belly white.

Which, incidentally, as I was sitting on the railing looking at the green-blue water and thinking, damn it, this is pretty high, not once did it really cross my mind that my hips might not look all that attractive or that somebody might think I was a little on pudgy side.

Okay, well, it did for a little bit - until Bones said, "I'll peel left and you peel right" from his position on the railing to my immediate left. And then he dove in and what else was I supposed to do but jump? And it felt awesome. Not just the jumping off the pier itself into the fairly deep water of the marina (which isn't like jumping off the boat house dock at school, because you'll hit bottom there - at the pier, toward the end of it, you'll jump from a good ten feet up and go down, and there's water above and below you).

Apart from the fact that it might have been more than slightly illegal (but everybody does it anyway, especially on the hot days), it was really oddly freeing. Like when Todd chucks the desk set off the wall during Dead Poets Society.

And I was sitting next to Bones and yeah, there was some initial butterflies, mostly dealing with oh, God, my hips, belly...dear Lord, can he see where my scar is from my surgery? and then it was like, whatever. And with Bre on my right, with hips like mine in jeans and a regular bra, both of us on the railing... it was a freedom.

Now that I think about it, I don't think I was really freaking out all that much about being half-naked in front of a bunch of tourists. Tattoo, hips, and fish-belly white belly. And it didn't matter, at that moment, what anybody else thought.

Which, come to think of it, is a crazy way to live, isn't it?