Swimming With Dolphins

Friends who see my site usually ask me “Is that picture on your site you as a kid?”, or comment “Gee, you were cute then…what happened?”. Hmph. Yes, the kid is me, and no, nothing happened (except for being bounced off the crossbeams by my father as a child). But like all pictures, there’s a story behind it.

When I was four, my dad got homesick for Australia, where he was born and raised. We decided to return to Australia for an extended visit, “we” being my parents, because let’s face it, I didn’t really have much of a say in the matter. We moved into a notorious region around Sydney called Bondi Junction for six months, and later spent another half year in Fongaray (near Whangarei) in New Zealand. One day we went to visit my grandparents and go for a day at the beach.

As luck would have it the weather was dark, overcast, and the skies were threatening to rain at any moment. Ominous black waves were rolling into the beach, like perfectly cast cylinders of smoked glass. Intermittently, a dark shape shot down an incoming wave, flashing down the tube before the wave collapsed into the shallower water.

“What’s that in the waves?”, I asked.

“Looks like the dolphins are having some fun surfing the waves,” my father replied.

Now, I was only four, and I didn’t know a lot of stuff (a condition I still suffer, some might argue), but if there was one thing I knew about dolphins is that they were friendly. They liked to play. I liked to play too. Well, that settled it then.

I stripped off all my clothes and headed for the waves like a shot before my parents, preoccupied with the clouds and grown-up conversation, knew what I was doing. And I would have made it, if it weren’t for my father sweeping me up in his arms just as I reached the water’s edge, and wrapping me in his sweater.

And, of course, took a picture.