Embarassing Moment #4 - The "Lost My Bathing Suit" Story

Age eleven to thirteen was basically just one long embarrassing moment. Look at my glasses! And my bangs! Oh well, I may have looked scary, but I at least I always had a good time. These years are sadly very well documented with many pictures just like this as well as many hours of home video. My siblings like to watch these videos for a good laugh every once in a while and I have promised them all if they ever put one on when Bobby is present I will make them pay. Why anyone let me get my hands on a video camera during these awkward, awkward years is beyond me! Anyway, I'm using this picture to segway into my cluster of embarrassing moments from my childhood.

My mom used to take us to the beach A LOT during the summer. I have always enjoyed swimming at the beach and used to spend all my time there in the water or playing on the shore in the sand. Often after a few hours of playing my suit would catch a lot of sand, so I would go deep into the water where noone could see me, pull my swimsuit down around my knees, and shake the suit to loosen the sand. On such an occasion when I was about the same age as I was in the above picture, I had my suit around my knees and a big wave came and whisked it away! Panic-stricken, I reached down under the water frantically grasping for my suit, but it was GONE. To make matters worse, we were nowhere near where my mother was sitting with all our stuff. The tide was bad that day and we had drifted at least 50 yards from where she was. I asked my sister Julia to go find mom and grab me a towel so I could get out the water. So here I am, drifting farther and farther away from my mom, totally naked, in the ocean. Every once in a while I'd pass someone else who was swimming, trying to hide the fact that I was totally nude. It felt like an hour before Julia came back with that towel, but I was so grateful to see her when she finally did. We walked back to where my mom was and after we laughed about what had happened, she actually asked me to walk down the beach and look for my swimsuit, in case it washed up on the shore! But not before I could put on the shirt and shorts I brought as beach cover-up. I guess I can understand- it was a sweet blue Bodyglove swimsuit- remember the kind that used to zip up the front?