....what was I thinking?

Have you ever done something completely ridiculous that at the moment seemed perfectly reasonable, but afterwards, made you embarrassed just thinking about it?
Earlier this week I was studying super hard- for four days in a row I was putting in 14-16 hours and I was totally exhausted. Sometime during one of those days I was frustrated and annoyed and decided to go for a walk outside. I went out of the school and there is a park across the street and I started marching around the city block, talking to myself and praying. A man passed me by and said hi. I kept walking.
Halfway around the other side of the park, I ran into him again.
“Hi!” He said, “Nice day for a walk! Do you mind if I join you?”
He changed directions and fell in stride with me. I wanted to say no, I’m not interested in going for a walk with a complete stranger, but I was so caught off guard by his request that I couldn’t find the words to say no. (In retrospect, I could’ve just said ‘no’, but that didn’t come to me at the time).
He began to prattle on and on about his job as a computer programmer and how he liked to go for a walk during his lunch hour, etc. In the meantime, I was trying to formulate the words in my mind to say ‘please go away and leave me alone.’ Instead, I decided to try something that I’ve never tried before. I decided to scare him off by acting retarded.
Yes, I know it was ridiculous. But I did it. He asked me what I was studying and I put on a weird stilted accent and started flapping my hands and swaying from side to side.
“I--- am--- studying---- medicine---“ I stuttered.
He looked at me funny. “You mean to become a doctor?”
“Yes---- to---- become----a----- doctor.”
I made myself go cross-eyed and then rolled them back in my head. When I got to the end of the block I said goodbye and he walked hurriedly in the other direction. I walked into the school feeling rather pleased with myself.
But that is not the end of ridiculous things. After the end of this long exhausting week I went with Katie to the church young people’s winter retreat. We went to a little town about an hour away and slept in a cabin and played millions of board games and had fun together with 20 other people. I gained 5 lbs with all the junk food I ate, but it was fun nonetheless.
Sometime yesterday I decided to go for a little walk. Down the hill from the lodge we were staying at was a little lake, completely deserted this time of year, with a bridge and a boat house and dock and canoes and paddlewheel boats lined up on the shore. I looked at them for a bit and then decided that yes, it was a good idea to take one of the boats out for a spin. The only problem was…. The lake had ice on it. But it had warmed up a bit so I figured the ice was pretty thin and I could break through it and go for a little paddle.
I dragged one of the fiberglass canoes to the dock and pushed it into the water and the ice shattered all around it. I found a paddle in a little shed and then gingerly stepped into the canoe. In the air my breath was making steam and I hit the ice with my paddle and broke it up a bit and then started paddling.
Away from shore the ice began to get a bit thicker, but I discovered that I could lean over the front of the canoe and hit the ice, then paddle forwards a few feet, and then repeat. I was working my way along the shore but then started to get impatient with my progress. I decided I would have more leverage if I stood up and was able to reach farther with the paddle. So I was standing in the canoe, braced against the seat, reaching out and shattering the ice and then paddling. It was grueling work. The boat was rocking a bit but I wasn’t too worried about falling in. (Come on, that type of thing only happens in movies.)
I discovered that the boat would move forward without me paddling if I rocked back and forth a bit. So I started moving back and forth (sort of the same idea as pumping your legs on a swing so you can swing higher.) However, I had to be careful that I didn’t rock side to side, or so much that I fell over, so I braced myself securely and starting just thrusting my hips forwards and backwards to get moving. The ice would crack a bit and I would thrust my hips forward, and then thrust them back again and so on. It worked rather well, I thought, and I moved the canoe around for a bit like that.
After awhile I got tired even of that, so I paddled back to shore. I got out of the boat and pulled it out of the lake and lugged it up the hill to it’s place. Then I went for a walk in the woods for a while, tramping through the snow, and made my way back to the lodge.
I came in the door and was greeted by a bunch of smiling faces. Was there some secret I was missing here?
“So, Heather….” One of the ladies finally said, “We noticed you decided to take a boat out?”
“Yeah, we were kind of worried you might fall in.” One of the guys said, “So we were all standing at the windows watching you.”
I had forgotten about the big bay windows that overlooked the lake.
“I thought that dance you did was pretty good.” Another one of the girls said.
“Yeah, that whole hip movement thing was pretty funny.” Someone started laughing and mimicked my hip thrusting moves and they all cracked up.
I turned a few shades of red and laughed along with them, what else can you do? I bet that they were just jealous they hadn’t thought of taking one of the boats.
…. Unfortunately it is useless to try to convince people to make their own adventures. They either will or they won’t, but in my experience it is always more fun when you decide that it is worth the embarrassment and it is worth looking ridiculous. After all, we all will look ridiculous at some time or another in our lives, we might as well just get used to it.