The Day I Almost Died

This morning me, Lori and James met at Waffle House (they don't just serve waffles, you know) at 8:30 to have breakfast (what else would we be eating at 8:30?). James ordered the "Big Breakfast"( what a joke). This coming from the man who never eats because he doesn't like food and forgets to eat and has pants that fall down because he refuses to put his belt past the 3rd hole because then he will have gotten too skinny. (I don't really think it works that way, but we won't tell him. ) Anyway, he ate a couple bites of his many items and when we blessed our food, James prayed at the end, "And God, help us not to die today, Amen." Can we say... morbid? I'm not sure he actually blessed the food or not, but he made sure to mention we shouldn't die. Call it a sixth sense, call it the Holy Spirit, call it James, but it's uncanny how things like that tend to make sense later on at the end of the day.
So James and I hopped in my car with the better gas mileage and bigger sun roof, kissed our best, The Lori, goodbye and tore off down Monroe. (James driving, of course.) We made it in record time reminiscing about past drives to Wakulla Springs and remembering all the times Sarah and James raced down that road (quickly, fastly, safely, right?), or when we biked down it, or when we wondered if there were cops waiting in the woods for us to go by, and we got there and it was kinda chilly so we played frisbee with my awesome light-up frisbee that I got for my birthday, although we didn't need to light it up because it was light outside already. (It's still awesome, though.) We got some nice sand spurs in our feet and stubbed our toes on the cement and got thoroughly warmed up and ran up to the high dive. Then we played the game that everyone who's been to Wakulla Springs plays. You stand on the high dive and stare off and think about how cold it's going to be for like, 15 minutes until you finally decide that it's boring just standing up there so you jump off. There were some nice English people up there with cool accents that we were listening to, so we weren't in a hurry. You know, the typical tourist kinds in khaki shorts, sunglasses, with binoculars around their necks and a camera with lens the size of a smaller NBA player.

You know, the kind that kinda look like this. (except with a camera and binoculars. Use your imagination. I couldn't find a good image.)
So, there we were, about to jump in, when the English guys say, "ey, loo' a' tha' aligatowr". (You know, the English don't pronounce their "t"'s at the end of words, only in the middle. For those who were at Jenshka's birthday party, you might remember, "Is tha' a queen an'?!")
The alligator was about 6 or 7 feet, probably more like 7 and it was swimming around really fast over on the other side of the big expanse of spring. Not that he was that close at the time, but usually they're so lethargic during the day, so I thought it was strange that he was so hyper. It's like he drank too much coffee this morning, or something. So we watch him for a minute, and then I got bored, so I was like, "James, let's jump in." And he was like, "Calyn, it's cold." So we played the game for a while longer and listened to the english accents and then the alligator started swimming, quickly, I might add, towards the high dive. Well, he was still a good 30 yards away, so I wasn't too worried about it, and I was about to jump in. But I was also fascinated because i'd never seen an alligator swim fast like that before. I mean, he was going somewhere. So, soon he wasn't so far away anymore and me and James were debating jumping in. I really, really wanted to jump in, but I decided at the last minute (with my feet on the very end of the ledge) that I'd wait until he went away. Right as I stepped back from the edge, a 7 foot alligator comes up out of nowhere right next to the rope! Not 3 feet from where I would have landed had I jumped!


Picture me being fangoriously devoured by this. Not Pretty.
So I suppose Alligator One was upset with Alligator Two for something because he obviously didn't want him around. Maybe Alligator Two stole his girlfriend, or called his momma a mean name or drank his smoothie or something. i'm not real familiar with Alligator Conflict, so if anyone is educated in the area, enlighten me. I'm just glad I didn't jump. Although James said he would rescue me. Or...what was left of me. Definitely would have been closed casket. Eeeewww.
But don't worry, all was well because we didn't see them after a few minutes and jumped in the water to a chorus of little kids (or ankle-biters, as the English people called them) screaming from the boat for us to jump in. No worries, kids. Backflips for all.
Oh, and don't tell Mrs. Debbie Wright about this, because she won't let Jesse come with us anymore. And don't tell my mom I didn't put sunscreen on and I got a sunburn. Crap! She reads my blog!