Harking back to more carefree days

On enjoying water sports:
There are so many great things to do in the water at devil's lake. The first, quite obviously, is swimming at the beach. This is a good time to play some sort of made-up game involving standard beach activities such as splashing, swimming and the like. Secondly, and thus more dangerous, comes the 20 minute hike out to what our annual camping group has fondly named "the jumping rock." There's nothing quite like blindly jumping off a rock that is 25 feet high into waters of unknown depths. Points are awarded for style and precision. The winner is generally whoever can do at least two flips before hitting the water (since we are obviously an amateur cliff-diving team). Lastly, there is the annually occurring "great idea" to swim across the lake. Keeping in mind that we've been drunk for about 6 hours by the time we make it out to the jumping rock and that we did not hike out to that rock without a backpack full of beers and a few gallon jugs of wop, this always ends up being a poor choice on the part of all participants. Fortunately, someone has inevitably swam out towards victory assisted by a beach ball or other flotation device and upon reaching the halfway point (as indicated when one's shoulder is in line with the canoe rack on the north shore), becomes the best friend of all other swimmers. The drunken group desperately clings to the beach ball, inflatable alligator, etc. and slowly drifts back to shore.

If this sounds like a "sad choice" or better still, an "unsafe choice," it's because it is. But really, is there any other way to become a shining example for the reason they tell you to stay away from water when drinking?? I think not. Wouldn't it be wonderful to go down in infamy (forever mentioned as "that guy who drowned at the lake" in the behavioral-consequence stories we tell our teenagers)?
Someday, one of us will drown and the rest of us will be chastised as idiots who thought it was a good idea to swim across a lake after drinking.

Life should be fun while it lasts.