Awkward Moment #36:  When You Make Someone Cry

Let me tell you a little story about taking care of other people’s things.  I was at Beaver Lake a few weekends ago having fun with a girl I had just met.  I forget her real name, but for the sake of this story, let’s call her Katie.  Katie had a beautiful toy fishing pole that was decorated with characters from the movie Moana, which she was practicing fishing with.  I asked her if I could use her fishing pole, and of course, she said yes.  I kept trying to let the bobber at the end of the pole go into the lake, because that’s how you fish, of course.  For some reason, I wasn’t doing it correctly, so Katie told me the right way.  Apparently, I wasn’t letting the button go to release the bobber when I should have. When I finally released the bobber correctly, I unfortunately let the whole fishing pole fall into the lake!  We watched in horror as the fishing pole slowly sunk to the murky bottom of the lake.  I felt horrible!  I felt like I might faint from embarrassment!

“I’m so, so sorry!!!” I exclaimed.  “If there’s anything I can do to help, just ask me.”

“It will be fine.  We’ll fish her pole out of the lake,” her dad told me. 

By then, my friend was crying her poor little eyes out!  I felt dozens of eyes on us, searching for what had happened to cause such a commotion.  So, I took her to a rocking swing, and we sat down.  I tried to comfort her. 

“It’ll be okay,” I said.  “It’s all my fault.  I’m sorry.” 

“No, it was my fault,” Katie managed to say between her tears.  “I shouldn’t have let you use it.  *Sniff*  Moana’s my favorite character.  I won’t ever fish again!”

By now, I bet you can guess what I felt like right at that moment.  I wanted to curl up into a ball and disappear!  By my clumsiness, a girl would never fish again!

“Well, if you try hard at fishing, you might be very good someday and catch a lot of fish!” I said trying to cheer her up.

Finally, her father called out that he had got the fishing pole!  (Yippee!!!) Problem solved!  A wave of relief washed over me!  I can’t believe I had lived through the whole ordeal!  That day, I learned a valuable lesson, be very careful with other people’s things…especially when you’re a klutz like me!

THE END