Swimming with the ducks

Everyone who has been swimming in the pond in front of Stanford Hospital raise your hands!!! ......What? Only Tommy and me?


Yes that's right. There is a huge cement pond in front of Stanford Hospital with several large fountains and planters throughout - it's quite pretty. Plus there are several ducks, and they just had baby ducks a few days ago. Tommy and I go there all the time and walk around the pond and look at the plants and the ducks. It's only a couple blocks from where we live and we love to stop there after walking Dave back to work in the evening.

Above: Stanford Hospital Front Entrance

Well, on Friday afternoon, Tommy and I went to see the baby ducks. There is a cement step around the pond, and Tommy usually climbs up on it then walks around the pond. He's done this hundreds of times and I thought he was quite reliable around water. Well, on Friday afternoon he just stepped off the edge like he was trying to walk on the water and fell completely in the pond. I thought the pond was only knee deep so in my haste to prevent drowning my instinct was to step over the edge into the pond so I could quickly grab him. However, the pond is deeper than it looks.... about waist deep. As you can imagine, miscalculating the depth, I quickly fell all the way into the pond, too, since my other foot was still on the step. I was surprised but was still able to quickly retrieve the boy, who was coughing and not pleased at all to have fallen in the cold pond water. I'm sure it all looked ridiculous to onlookers. I imagine they were marveling over my grace and agility.

Afterwards, of course, we were both completely soaking wet and had the pleasure of enduring many odd looks as we sloshed our way back home.

The only real casualty was my cell phone in my pocket which began to short out and vibrate occasionally. Luckily, after it dried out completely, it started working again.



Above: Tommy the next day, contemplating another jump into the pond