I’m Not A Swinger!

 

My wife gave recently gave me an unusual gift for our anniversary. A bag hammock.  Why she thought an old guy like me needed one of these, I’m not sure. I think it’s another one of her plans to keep me out of the house as much as possible.  

Bag hammocks are quite popular with campers. It isn’t one of those giant numbers that fits on a metal frame; instead, it’s thin,strong material that is stuffed in a tiny bag along with two nylon ropes which attach to a couple of trees. This means that to use this device, I will need to be in the back yard, far away from our home. Now do you understand what she’s trying to do? 

Of course, I had no intention of even trying to use this thing until it cooled off.  Look, fending off mosquitoes and the fear of being pelted by bird poop is bad enough - I didn’t need to add searing heat to my  hammock experience. 

So last week, with the heat of Alabama summer beginning to give way to moderate autumn temperatures, I decided it was time to hang from the trees. 

I was surprised how easily the hammock went up.  Within a few minutes I had it strung between two large hardwoods in the middle of my property. Once I carefully maneuvered myself in the middle of the thing, I leaned back  and put my feet up.

At once, I was taken back to my childhood days when I had an old army surplus hammock in my backyard.  I used to crawl in that thing around dusk with a pile of old Marvel comics and a flashlight, then read until it was pitch black outside.  

This afternoon, I looked up and saw a canopy of oak, hickory, and maple over me.  Dollops of blue sky flashed as the wind gently moved the leaves to and fro. It was so peaceful. I’m sure I  felt my blood pressure dropping. After a couple of minutes I pulled out my phone and began writing until I dozed off.  

There is no rest better than hammock rest. Maybe it’s because the way the thing envelopes you gives you a sense of security that’s almost womb-like. Finally, it was time to get up, so I swung my legs over the edge, fully expecting to touch the good earth. 

That’s when I discovered that both feet were a good foot off the ground. I had stupidly mounted the hammock too high.  To make things worse, my attempts to escape caused the nylon webbing to roll up into hard edges on either side of the hammock, effectively trapping me. I tried in vain to arch my body over the edge, but it wasn’t working. I was trapped like a bug in a Venus Fly Trap. I heard a couple of squirrels above me chattering excitedly- I’m sure it was laughter. I’ll remember that when I get out of here because I still have a BB gun. 

Desperately, I began to rock the hammock back and forth until the tips of my toes barely touched the ground. I continued rocking higher, thinking if I could get both feet on the ground, I would just stand up and walk right out of the thing.  So I kept swaying until I was almost ready to stand up. That’s when I went too high, and the law of gravity took over, allowing the hammock to unceremoniously dump me out on all fours like a calf being birthed. 

“Are you all right?”, asked a voice from a second story window.  It was my wife, Carol, who had apparently been watching me the whole time.  

“I’m OK - I think,” I answered. “What are you doing in that window?”, I asked suspiciously. 

“I was going to take a picture of you in the hammock, but when I saw the trouble you were having, I switched the phone to video and got the whole thing.”

A wave of anger flooded over me.  I knew what she had in mind. I was about to become the next big Tik Tok sensation.

I spoke thru gritted teeth. “Delete it!  Delete it now!”

“Why?”

“You know why!,” I yelled. “Delete it or that video I took of  you falling off a jet ski goes on Facebook!”

“Ok,” Carol replied sheepishly. She seemed genuinely disappointed she couldn’t share my humiliation on the World Wide Web.  Then she countered with, “But you have to delete the jet ski video.”

“All right. Deal. ”

And I immediately kept my end of the bargain, then checked her phone to make sure she kept hers. Done and done. 

But what she doesn’t know is I still have have a two minute video of her snoring and swearing in her sleep. 

You never know when you may need to negotiate another agreement.