My dad, my mom, and I were going snorkeling. How fun would that be? I didn’t know, but I found myself looking over the pictures hung up in the snorkeling office.

In thirty minutes, we had been hoarded aboard a huge boat. We had been instructed to pile all our bags right in front of the captain’s view of the ocean, which made me extremely scared. How could they see?

Maybe they don’t care, I reassured myself. Maybe they memorized the route. Maybe that was what they did in Mexico. But I forgot all about it when the captain stopped the boat. It was time to go snorkeling.

My dad and I jumped straight in. We didn’t worry about my mom too much. She had never showed much interest in sports. If she wanted to stay onboard, then there was no convincing her. We shot away.

Hoards of fish greeted us. A snorkeling guide had brought along a water bottle filled with fish food, and the fish were swarming him by the hundreds. It was a pretty sight, and we set out to follow the guide.

My mom jumped in and choked on the water. She tried to open her eyes, but everything was blurry. She was still wearing her normal glasses, and had forgotten to change into her swimming goggles!

But oh well, she decided. She slowly started swimming with breaststroke towards the general direction we had been a few minutes ago. She hadn’t worn her fins because she thought they were cumbersome.

And so she began swimming towards what she thought was us. After a long swim, she finally decided that she couldn’t find us. She turned around, and gasped. The boat was gone.

The boat was gone. It had been right there a few moments ago? Where was it now? She choked on a bit of air.

The boat had actually moved a bit towards where most of the people were— not where my mother was. She could not see and had swam away.

Suddenly, she saw two figures swimming towards her. It was my dad and I. She happily swam towards them (or tried; she didn’t move far). “Where’ve you been?” she sputtered.

“Right here,” my dad replied, then his face turned into disgust. “Where are your goggles? Where are your fins?”

“My goggles I forgot, and my fins I think are uncomfortable.”

“But do you know how much faster fins make you swim? I can swim twice as far, and that’s not even…”