Thirsty Georgia.

I have no doubt that I undo all of my environmentally friendly efforts by taking unnecessarily long showers. (Who doesn’t like standing around with nothing to do other than be warm and clean?) I didn’t give it much thought until late fall, before I went home for Thanksgiving.  Home… Georgia… wait, is that drought still going on? I was about to take a shower. Standing around in a towel, I put my voicemail on speakerphone. There was a message from my dad. ”Lake Lanier’s down a few more feet, a lot of the docks are dry…” Well, that’s just too bad, isn’t it? This was not upsetting news for me, because (and anyone from Georgia will understand how genuinely unintelligent this is) when I heard “Lake Lanier”, Atlanta’s major water source, I thought “Lake Burton”, the ultimate yuppie weekend-destination north of the city.

I’ve been to Lake Burton a number of times, mostly with my high-school boyfriend and his family. Having grown up with the lake, nothing about it seemed weird to him, but my first experience was  surreal. As I sat there on the pontoon boat (with a glass of wine in one hand and a brie-laden cracker in the other), I thought, normal people don’t do this. I wore a pilling, oddly-patterned, ancient L.L. Bean fleece that I found in the garage, and the wind had restyled my hair into a giant tangled wad. My teeth were Barney-purple from the wine, and I was covered in crumbs. Coppers, the elderly Springer Spaniel, curled up on the floor of the boat next to me. I slipped off my flip flop and started petting her with my foot. I may have been a bit drunk. My image certainly did not match their hospitality.

On my last visit to the lake, we went to ”the bridge”. About 40 feet off the water, it was the site of many ritualistic jumps. These people have thousands of dollars worth of boating equipment, yet they jump off a bridge for fun? Ok. In a deeply misguided attempt to be impressive, I decided that I, too, would take the plunge.

 I separated the cartilage between six of my ribs and couldn’t laugh for two weeks.

Normal people don’t do this, either.

That was my last memory of Lake Burton. I’d almost forgotten about it completely until I misinterpreted my dad’s message. I tried to imagine the lake short of several feet of water.

A little boy in tiny Sperrys, with one hand in his mouth and the other down his miniature J.Crew lobster-pants, stands on the dock. His father, wearing the adult version of the same outfit, walks up behind him. “Hey there, Sport. It looks like we can’t take the waverunners out today.  I guess we’ll just have to go drive the golf cart instead.” The boy begins to cry. In his rage, he picks up a Power-Rangers action figure and hurls it off the dock to its untimely death. His mother tries to pacify him with a packet of Dunkaroos, but the child is tragically inconsolable.

I stayed in the shower for a good forty five minutes.