Honey, I Bought a Boat!

#2: It's all fun and games until the mildew and blackberries take over

It starts out so hopeful, with visions of packing up the family and heading over to Eastern Washington for some sun, or maybe camping down near Mt. Rainier. Of sunny days out on the Sound, motoring out to the islands, or maybe packing a cooler full of beer and going out fishing when the humpies are running in the fall.

You’ll do fun stuff, the stuff you remember from when you were a kid, and your dad spent a couple days before the trip prepping the RV, making sure the battery was ready and the water tanks full. You’ll help Grandpa get the tackle together, the stuff he hasn’t used since he sold his boat. 

You can do it all because you bought it cheap. Do you know how much a new one of these would cost? Only suckers buy these things new. 

And then reality sets in. Summer’s the busy season at work and you can’t get much time off. The kids signed up for soccer and now you spend every weekend shuttling them them to their games. The first big weather system blew in on the weekend you set aside for fishing ... and who wants to sit in the rain?

A season passes.

The toys sit out in the side yard. First one season, then another. Before long the kids are too old to go camping: they want to hang out with their friends. And it hardly seems worth paying for a fishing license when you know you might not use it.

The blackberries and the mildew just keep coming.

You talk about putting up a “For Sale” sign ... but you probably oughta clean it up before you do that and that’s gonna take some work. Maybe next summer. 

“When are you gonna get rid of that damned thing?” she asks. Again.

You know she’s right, so one night, after you and the boys meet up for a beer, you hook it up to the trailer and take it down to River Road. You pull over to the wide spot in the road, the one where you can’t see any houses, and you loose the ties and push the boat off the back, down into the grass. No one sees you. You drive away. It’s not your problem anymore.

PS: I’ve never owned a boat or an RV and I never will.