Beware the Dangling Participle

Back to Young Lakes...

I was 13 when Jay and J.J. (my brothers) and I were poking around the distant shores of Young Lakes on that glorious Sierran afternoon. The meadowy, water-logged grass stopped abruptly at the shoreline, and as we walked along our boots made sucking protestations in the mud. The wind blew in and out of our ears, and the pure, high altitude light clarified our vision and our purpose. Silently, we searched for the perfect rocks, the dense granite ones that felt good in the hand, the ones you could throw into the middle of the lake. And there the rocks would sink into the purgatory of the mossy depths, waiting for the next Ice Age to come along and welcome them like distant relatives.

We were alone, we thought, up here in the relatively inaccessible high country. But then we heard it, an unnatural splashing sound, different and out of sync with the sound of the water lapping the shore. Jay shushed J.J. and me. He pantomimed that we should join him and remain inconscipucous behind a granite boulder. We did so promptly.

We then heard a human voice, a lady's lilting laugh, followed by a large splash and more laughter and an exuberant shout. "Hey," we simultaneously realized, "There's someone swimming in our lake!" We cautiously poked our heads over the lip of our boulder like consternated marmots:

We all saw it at the same time. There, a stone's throw yonder, in ankle deep water and gazing at the mountains, stood a 20-something woman glistening naked in the afternoon sunshine, marble-white buttocks contrasting with her tan torso, joyous breasts, which seemed really big, shimmering and silhouetted against the azure sky, dark brown hair falling to her sloping shoulders and legs stretching upward from the ripples in the water to her womanly graces.

Holy Toledo! This was so unlike the life-size statues of the aboriginal women in the DeYoung Museum's dioramas, or the anatomy drawings in my dad's medical text books, or the lady on the cover of Herb Alpert's Whipped Cream album. Jay, J.J. and I stared ferociously. It was like Christmas in July, and for a long while we stood silently, desperately trying to stifle our rising respirations (no simple task at this altitude!).

Somewhere during that eon of a moment a different voice, a male voice, called from behind a boulder on the shore. It startled us and shook us awake like a phonograph needle dragging across a record.

"Lookin' good!" the male voice yelled. The naked woman laughed.

"Chad!" she replied. "Come on out and show yourself, you big 'ol hunk of love!" She had a Southern accent.

A naked man climbed to the top of the boulder and playfully posed like a man in a Mr. America body-building competition, flexing his biceps and tightening his flabby gut. A pair of gold-rimmed spectacles rested on his nose. He was hairy and grotesque. I hated him immediately.

But wait a minute. There was something familiar about his face, his goofy moustache, his voice, his ape-like demeanor. I turned to my brothers. "Oh my God!" I whispered loudly. "It's Mr. Twist! You know, the school librarian! Mr. Twist! Chad Twist!" He was like an encylopedia volume on the magazine shelf, out of place and out of context, a librarian in the Sierras, so it had taken a few moments for recognition to dawn.

Jay and J.J. gazed intently at the orangutan man from our hidden vantage. "It is! It is!" Jay finally whispered. "What is he doing out in the middle of the Sierras?"

We bit our lips, we put our hands over our mouths, and we pleaded with each other not to do it by mouthing the words "Stop!" and "Don't!" while gesticulating hysterically. But in the end it was all pointless, and our laughter burst forth like the water in Yosemite Creek cascading over Yosemite Falls in the middle of May. And once that happened, Chad and Princess Nekkida spun around and faced us like startled cats. The game was up.

We stood from our crouched positions and showed ourselves. "Hi, Mr. Twist!" I gleefully shouted, "What brings you to Young Lakes, the middle of nowhere, on a beautiful afternoon such as this?"

Mr. Twist stood in shock with his mouth open, his dewey decimals retreating in embarrassment. His lady friend, meanwhile, was screaming and running for cover, her breasts bouncing randomly and without purpose in all directions as if they were performing a Laurel and Hardy routine.

"Oh my, God, Oh, my God, Chad!" she bellowed from across the meadow, "Who are these little twirps?"

"Honey, please keep your voice down," Mr. Twist beseeched while carefully descending from his perch.

In the end the awkwardness belonged only to Mr. Twist and his silly friend, and we knew that. So we stood with huge smiles watching them fumbling with their towels and their boots. Finally, half-dressed and dripping wet, they skulked off to their campsite on the opposite shore.

Jay, J.J. and I turned, put our arms around each other and walked toward the setting sun. It was almost dinnertime.