How Stealing a River Helped Me Teach My Daughter Important Life Lessons
If you're not supposed to be doing something, you can rest assured that somebody will come along and tell you
This is a sweet story. May it brighten your day, and if it does, please consider leaving me a tip :)
“Come on sweetie, we’re going on an adventure,” I said. “I need you to bring a swimsuit, water shoes, the ace of spades, a harpoon, a laser, three hairpins, a box of colored markers, a roll of duct tape, and a hammer.”
By giving a list of bizarre items, kids are less likely to complain that they don’t want to go.
“I don’t think I have all that stuff, Daddy.”
“Fine, then just put on your swimsuit and water shoes. I’ll handle the rest.”
“Where are we going?”
“We’re going to steal a river! That’s our adventure for the day. Every day has to have an adventure and today I have chosen river piracy. Come on!”
With the right mix of curiosity and confusion, kids will follow you anywhere. They are very much like readers that way.
How the heck can you steal a river?
A mile up the road from my house, there is a gigantic city park. It’s an amazing place with hiking trails, hyenas, two tigers, and a white buffalo. I’m serious. The place has a zoo.
A gently winding creek meanders through the park. The creek is about as wide as a two-lane road. It’s knee-deep for the most part, but you never know until you jump out of the boat.
Every single time I’ve walked through that park, I’ve longed to float the creek. Many of the hiking trails follow the water, so I’ve scouted it out. I know that there are a few spots where rocks stick up and the current races, but for the most part, it seems like it’s a pretty gentle stretch of water.
Then again, you never know for sure until there’s no going back. That’s why water calls us, or at least it calls me. I can only resist for so long before I find I have to answer. Ask Odysseus about the sirens and you’ll get the general idea.
My plan was to ride our tubes through the creek in the park. I suspected it might be prohibited which is why I refused to ask. Instead, I had resolved that we should embrace river piracy! As rebellions go, it was a modest one, but even small revolutions get the blood going!
Kids need to know things like this.
Are we supposed to be doing this, Daddy?
I went to the parking lot that was halfway between where we’d be putting in and where we’d be taking out. These points were determined by the placement of waterfalls. You’re better off not riding a tube over a waterfall, even a little one.
I parked the car and looked at my daughter. “We’re going down the river. First, we’re going to inflate our tubes. Then we’re going to walk briskly to the base of the waterfall. If anyone tries to stop and talk to us, look at them and smile and say, ‘Good afternoon,’ but don’t stop walking. It’s very important that you don’t act as if we’re doing anything wrong.”
“Why not, Daddy?”
“Because if you act like you’re doing something wrong, people treat you as if you’re doing something wrong. They start blowing whistles and banging on pans and making all sorts of noise. But if you act like you’re supposed to be there, they will stay quiet and let you live your life in peace.”
“Are we supposed to be doing this, Daddy?”
“Well, do you see any signs that say we shouldn’t?”
“No, but maybe we should ask.”
“NO! If you aren’t certain about something the last thing you want to do is ask.”
“Why not?”
“Because if people don’t know, and they probably don’t, they’re more likely to tell you no rather than yes. Everybody starts acting like they’re your parent when you ask them for advice.”
“But…”
“There’s no shortage of people who will come along and tell you why you have to stop doing the things that make you happy. There’s no need to seek those people out. One of the secrets to deriving joy from life is to learn how to avoid them. Remember that.”
Don’t develop “resting suspicious face”
“Don’t make any furtive glances,” I said to my daughter. She was hopping from foot to foot looking nervous.
She stopped hopping and asked, “Furtive glances?”
“Yeah, it’s when you have a look on your face that makes people think you’re up to no good. Purge yourself of resting suspicious face or you’ll attract the wrong kind of attention.”
“How do I prevent the look that comes to my face?”
“Smile, like this,” I said. Then I gave her the kind of big, unnerving smile that gave off the impression that I was desperate to have a conversation.
My daughter took an instinctive step backward.
“There, you see, the trick to driving people away is to make it look like you really want to talk to them. Make people think you’ve just come out of the wilderness and you want to discuss the manifesto you’ve been working on for thirty years.”
“That’s odd.”
“Life is odd. I didn’t make the rules,” I replied.
If swimming is allowed, so is tubing
My wife keeps raising my kids to stay out of trouble. Personally, I think it’s better to prepare them for trouble. Trouble is as inevitable as running into rapids on a river.
“Don’t succumb to self-sabotage. Think positive! You must give yourself pep talks to cultivate the courage to follow your dreams. ‘Everything I’m doing is fine. It’s okay if I tube here.’ Keep repeating that to yourself! Have your justifications ready, ‘Well, there’s a swimming area further down the river. Tubing is just a sort of swimming, so I thought this would be permitted.’”
“But if it’s okay to tube down the river why isn’t anybody else doing it?”
“No! You see? No! That’s the wrong assumption to make about your fellow human beings.”
“It is?”
“It is! Don’t assume they aren’t doing it because it’s prohibited, assume they aren’t doing it because they’re cowards. You’ll be right more often than not. Most people prevent themselves from having wonderful experiences. Whenever you’re lost, just look where the crowd is headed and then go in the opposite direction. I could tell you some really interesting stories about parking…”
“I think Mom has mentioned those stories,” my daughter interrupted.
“No more talk, let’s get these tubes inflated.”
The trek to the waterfall
We were about to embark on what I thought was the most dangerous part of the endeavor. There was nobody to stop us from driving through the park, so there was no issue there. If the park overlords came to yell at us after we were done tubing, then it wouldn’t matter. We’d have already won!
But if they detained us on the way to the waterfall with our inflated tubes, I wasn’t sure I could bear it. To get so close to your objective and fail! That would be intolerable.
My handheld compressor was fast, but it was also noisy. I glanced around to make sure no deranged nosy-pants had become alerted to the sound. The coast was clear. We hoisted our tubes and made our way to the water.
The path was short and I could see the waterfall. I had just started to relax when I noticed a man and a woman were standing by the overlook. My daughter took her coaching to heart. She marched up to them and said, “Good afternoon!” Then she dropped her tube in the river right in front of them.
The woman gave a look of concern, but the man’s face had broken into a wide smile.
“You can’t leave a patch of river unconquered now can you?” I asked.
“Have fun!” he said, clearly wishing he was in my place.
I tied my daughter’s tube to mine and then we pushed away from shore. Hooray!
I began to laugh
“That’s it! We’ve done it!” I called out in triumph.
“But Dad, we just got started.”
“I know, but we’re on the water now. I highly doubt anybody’s going to wade in and make us get out of the water.”
“But what if they yell at us that we have to get out?”
“Then we’ll pretend we didn’t hear them,” I said. “We just smile and wave and call out, ‘I can’t hear you. The water is really loud. You have a nice day now!’ Clear as can be. You’ll have something we adults call plausible deniability. You know, like when we tell you to go to bed and you sit around watching the last fifteen minutes of your show first.”
“Uh… no?” my daughter said, looking a bit disconcerted.
“Exactly!” I said back. “It’s not going to be worth it to anybody to crawl into the water and physically grab us. People are surprisingly reluctant to do that. So if you can avoid the kind of self-incrimination that ruins most great ideas, you’ve got it made. That’s another lesson you need to remember!”
“Okay, Daddy.”
The water started getting rough
The current was both fast and slow, it depended on where you were in the river. It’s hard to steer a tube. I’d tied my daughter’s tube to mine so I could pull her away from rocks, branches, and other obstacles.
“When we hit the rapids, you have to lift up your butt so it doesn’t scrape on rocks,” I said.
“What?”
“Don’t worry, you weigh next to nothing so the tube will absorb most of the impact.”
“Daddy…”
“Face forward, keep your feet up, hold onto the handles, and scream, “Yee-haw!” Make sure you sound like you’re having fun so that nobody calls the authorities.”
She might have had other protests in mind, but the current caught us and flung us into the white water. The tube bounced around and turned us about. I caught the white flash of my daughter’s smile and heard her squeal in delight. When we came out on the other side, we were splashed and exhilarated.
“Okay, that was fun,” she said. “I think I like being a river pirate.”
There were a few witnesses
A little bit further down the river, we came across a man and a boy who were fishing. I called out, “Do you have any lines in the water?” I couldn’t see them and I didn’t want to get hooked.
“No, you’re okay,” he said. He’d just pulled his lines in.
We floated gently past and the boy said, “I’ve never seen anyone do that. Can we do that?”
The man said, “Look at how he is using the rope to keep his daughter off the rocks and branches.” I could hear the gears turning in his mind as he watched me. “Maybe we can do that, in a few years, when you’re a bit bigger.”
When he said that, I dreamed of a world where it would be considered normal to traverse any old random stretch of water with a tube. I dreamed of looking down at the creek from the vantage point of the boy and seeing the water covered with a rainbow of brightly colored vinyl with handles and backrests and giggling kids.
All it takes is a few brave souls to change everything. We can all be river pirates if that’s what we want.
The snag
We passed the place where we’d parked the car. There was a slow spot. It was near where we’d seen a fawn on a family walk not too long before.
We came around a leisurely bend and the water started picking up speed. Looking ahead, I saw that a tree had fallen across the river and there was no way through.
“Uh, Daddy, what do we do?”
My daughter was right to be concerned, a snag is dangerous, but we kept our heads. The tree was in the water at an angle and we were able to push along it with our feet and guide the tubes to shore. I didn’t want to risk climbing over the obstacle, and it felt like we’d pushed our luck enough for one day.
We climbed up the bank, deflated the tubes, and headed back to the car.
Kid camouflage
“That was fun,” my daughter said.
“Thanks for coming with,” I replied. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“What do you mean?” My daughter asked.
“Well, when you get to be my age, the world gets all serious. It’s considered ‘undignified’ for a mature adult to go tubing by himself down the river that runs through the park.”
“It does?” my daughter replied. “That doesn’t seem fair.”
“It’s not. But like all obstacles, there’s a way around. If the adult has a kid with him, then it’s no longer strange. Everyone assumes it’s the kid’s idea. The adult is just going along as a good father. You see, you’re my camouflage.”
She seemed to like this, and she grinned. We packed up our things and began to drive home. On the way, my daughter caught my eye in the rearview mirror and said, “You don’t have to worry, I’ll always be your river pirate camouflage.”
I smiled back at her and said, “No, you’ll always be my river pirate captain!”
Who doesn’t want to be a pirate captain?
I think… no, actually I’m quite certain, that she’ll be able to look back years from now and remember this adventure. My 50 years of life experience also leads me to believe the memory will make her smile.
Much as I am smiling now.
That river will belong to us forever.
You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! I have payment tiers starting at as little as twenty dollars a year.
I'm so happy you're here, and I'm looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.
My CoSchedule referral link
Here’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. If you sign up through this, it’s another way to support this newsletter (thank you).
Wonderful Life Reminder and I thank you from my deepest heart. Children teach adults so much and that’s one reason it’s so important for young voters to get involved in standing up to cowards and bullies. You taught your daughter a marvelous life lesson that I wish every parent would do. I am a Senior citizen—when I was a kid, my Dad took me on the adventures of camping, taught me to water ski in the Hudson River with Barges all around, took me on an ice skating trip to learn how to ice skate and many more. That’s how I got the inherited grit and guts to face the impossible probably with no fear. Your little girl just learned that. What a wonderful gift!
I love love love this more than I can say! Thank you! And please say Thank you to our river captain. Many of the things you highlight are a damning commentary on our conduct today, trapped by our own fears and by God! Nobody will have any fun since we aren’t having any! Self-imprisoned! @Anthony Christian @Heidi Cuda @Karen Vladeck