Caught With My Britches Down

Once a bunch of us kids went swimming at old man Goos’ farm pond near Loveland and I was wearing cutoff denims as swimming trunks. There was a girl I had a thing for there and her friends and her were swimming from one part of the bank and us boys from another, as if we’d all catch something if we swam too close together. We boys had a steep embankment to jump from, a good way to show off for the girls who were mainly sunbathing in the grass anyway. I suspect most of them weren’t there for swimming as much as to show off themselves and let us act the fool for them.

Naturally I obliged. I made a most spectacular half-twist and huge-splash running cannonball from the bank and hit the water a bit topsy turvy. Hit it hard, too. Enough to peel those baggy cutoffs clean down as the water filled em like a parachute catching air.

So now I am buck nekkid in cold water with an audience of giggling girls who have already seen my shorts surface several feet away from me. Far enough away in fact that rotten Melody Barnes, who I shan’t forget as long as I live, plucked them from the shallows and made for the hills, so to speak.

Now I can swim. But in the matter of how long I can tread water I was soon to find out because those rotten girls weren’t about to tender up my shorts to me. My so called friends, rusty Randy and runny nose little Nick Gabbard were laughing and not about to help, either. So there I was and might have remained treading water to this day because I am sure Melody was not going to leave before I clambered out nekkid…and cold…and smallll…when I was rescued by old Farmer Goos coming up the track hollering at us dang kids and cursing us good.

He was an old German and had a colorful vernacular. Everyone disappeared hither skither about as fast as a bunch of rabbits busting out of a grass clump and Old man Goos come barreling around the bend before I could get out of there.

“What the hail in tarnation”..then he saw the shorts abandoned on the spot whence the girls had fled.

“Caught ye with yer pants down, din’t ee?” He cackled. “Hoo boy had I un camera boy…”

I dog paddled to the side opposite him and was ankles up in pond muck wondering if I could make it home without being seen. I’m fast I’m thinking but probably not that fast…

The old farmer turned, his striped coveralls hanging off his sweaty longjohn tops as he put his hand in his pocket and pulled put his kerchief.

“Come on out boy…I ainta lookin..betcha that..”

He made a lot of moaning sounds which shivered me more than the cold as I swam for the exit closest my shorts. I dashed out and grabbed em on, kinda hopping one legged and turned for a last look before I beat it pell mell outta there. He was laughing, I realized, not moaning, holding his sides crying, he was laughing so hard.

So you see, I had many less than dextrous moments as a young man enthralled with but vexed and stymied by the fairer sex.