Learned an end-knot from Sierra-Oscar (Sophie) today. Easy! You put these little knots at the ends of the lines so they don’t slip through the hole thingys and go flapping out in the water.
When I asked Sophie where she’d learned all these knots, she got this look that she sometimes gets when you ask her questions. She gazes out across the water, as if the answer might be there on the horizon. “I dunno,” she said. She looked down at the rope between her fingers. “Maybe someone showed me a long time ago.”
Got the radio code memorized. Beat Mr. Know-it-all to it. Huh, huh, huh.
Both sun and dolphins joined us today, so it was a fine day. You can’t beat sun and dolphins. Even my father came up on deck to watch the dolphins. He said, “Makes you wish you were a fish, doesn’t it?”
First time we’ve agreed on anything in a long, long time. You look at those dolphins and they seem so carefree. Nobody’s scolding them for doing things wrong. They’re just enjoying the water and their flips into the air.
While Dad was up on deck, he saw the drawings I’d made of a clove hitch and an end-knot. “Hey,” he said, “when did you learn how to draw?”
I could either take that as an insult, as in I have been so unaware of you that I haven’t noticed that you’ve been drawing for the past couple years, or a compliment, as in Hey! You draw pretty well!
I wonder which it is, insult or compliment?