A funny memory of Mom, from Beth

[kyrielle]

Mom's cousin (and mine!) Beth sent an email with a funny memory from when they were young. I share it below - Beth writes:

This is one that was told and re-told and it's entirely true.

As you may know, I grew up in a house on about an acre lot right on the shore of Lake Erie (Catawba Island, not really an island, but a peninsula east of Port Clinton, Ohio). Your mom spent a lot of time there in the summers when we were kids. We rode my pony, went roller-skating and spent A LOT of time swimming in Lake Erie. (I spent time at the farm in Napoleon, too, which I really enjoyed.)

One day we were swimming and decided it would be fun to go skinny dipping.....so we took off our bathing suits. We were swimming around and goofing around and, all of a sudden, Julie realized she didn't have her brand new expensive bathing suit in her hand anymore. We searched around, dove under water with eyes open to look for it, searched some more, and searched some more. No luck. So I put my suit back on, went into the house, and very innocently asked my mother where her bathing suit was. She sensibly enough asked why. I mumbled something about needing to borrow it. Soon, of course, the truth was out. I took my mother's suit out into the lake where the naked Julie was patiently waiting in water up to her neck. She donned the suit. We went inside. Julie decided she would not tell her parents because the suit was brand new and expensive and maybe they wouldn't remember she brought it to the lake with her!!! All was forgotten and that was the end of that.

UNTIL......Uncle Bob and Aunt Evelyn came to pick Julie up to take her back home after her stay with us. We were all sitting in lawn chairs near the lakeshore when someone noticed something on the rocks. We all walked over and there.....washed up on the shore.....was Julie's bathing suit wrapped around a large, very dead, very stinky catfish!

Julie never lived the story down.

(Bob and Evelyn were my grandparents, Mom's parents, as you likely realized.)