I had to limp while bent over all the way across the lot and was pretty much as far from where I had encountered mom and grandfather as I could be and still be in the parking lot. That is when my streak of good luck continued. A familiar van pulled up and I recognized it immediately as belonging to my recently met Mexican gang members.

“HOLY SHIT IT’S ALVIN!” one of them shouted out the driver’s window as the van screeched to a stop.

The commenced to recount for me everything that had happened right after I had been pulled into the water.

“Everyone thought you drowned man, but someone said the saw you down the beach a couple minutes later.” I was told.

After sharing with them how I ended up still alive they were amazed and were going on and on when I saw through the van windows and about two hundred yards down the street a man in a half-off wetsuit carrying scuba gear.

“GUYS! GUYS! GUYS!” I shouted and pointed through the van.

“I think that’s him! He said he was my uncle but I think it might be my dad for real. He said something about sleeping with my mom! Guys you have to help me!” I begged and almost broke down as my emotions seemed to be right at the surface all the time now.

Without hesitation, they grabbed my stuff and pulled me into the van. To anyone looking on, it probably looked as if I was being abducted. My board was pulled in after me and then we were off like some bad television cop chase scene.

I was sitting across the laps of three of the guys and one of them looked down at my lap. Having seen me at my worst and knowing of my plight, he told one of the guys behind us, who’d ended up with my bag to pass it up.

Blushing and trying to not fall over as the van turned this way and that to get us out of the parking lot and follow the man who said he was my Uncle, I fished a GoodNite out of the bag and while sitting on those three I shimmied out of my shorts and into the GoodNite.

The leader of their gang was in the passenger front seat but he turned in the seat, and was pulling a pair of shorts out for me.

I took them and slipped them on too with some help from the guys beneath me.

A shirt was found near the bottom of the bag and my Huarache sandals too.

“Oh awesome!” I shouted when my sandals appeared.

“Were’d he go!” The driver asked.

“THERE!” one of the guys all the way in the back said.

“What happened to your leg?” the leader asked.

We made one more hard left turn, causing us all to slide across the seats.

“You’re gonna kill us!” someone from the back cried.

“There! There!” I shouted and pointed to the man as he turned and walked down between two large buildings.

“SHIT MAN! HOLD ON!” the driver said as he floored it and shot past where we’d seen him go.

“You passed him!” I shouted.

“DID YOU NOT HEAR ME SAY HOLD ON?” The driver shouted back.

“HE’S GETTING AWAY!” I cried.

We took a fast right turn and then another and then the van screeched to a stop causing me to slide off the guys lap and to the floor.

Cussing and fists flew toward the driver.

“HIT HIM FOR ME TOO!” I cried as the three guys pulled me back up onto their laps.

Something else happened when they were pulling me back up. Something, given the company I was with at the time, I did not react to or bring attention to. However when it happened, both me and the guy who did it, know he’d done it and done it on purpose.

When the guys were picking me up off the floor and lifting me back onto their laps, the guy nearest the sliding side door on the passenger side, instead of grabbing my legs like you would expect, grabbed my crotched. It wasn’t an accident either! He was copping a feel.

However, one look in his eyes and I could see that what he had done in the heat of the moment, was not something he would have ever done around these guys. I could see the fear in his eyes as they begged me not to say anything about it.

I think I did a pretty good job myself with telling him with my eyes that it was not okay for him to have done it. I also saw his apology there in his eyes. He knew he’d crossed the line and he knew I could make a big stink right then and he’d probably get beat death just from the accusation that he had done it.

All that occurred in the space of about three seconds.

“SEE THERE HE IS!” the driver of the fan shouted and pointed.

We all stopped and looked out the passage side of the van and sure enough he was walking right too us.

“OPEN THE DOOR! OPEN THE DOOR!” I cried while trying to scurry off their laps.

My Huarache sandal clad feet plopped out on the ground, my leg screaming under my weight.

“You again!” he exclaimed and then realized who had just dumped me out at his feet.

 

The tanks dropped and before I realized it, he was pointing a gun at the van and screaming. He thought they had abducted me or something. I quickly explained that they were friends and had been helping me a lot during the competition. I then turned and saw seven guns sticking out of the van and trained on… well on the man.

I rather lost my cool for about twelve point three seconds. I’m warning you now… what I said was not pretty at all and completely out of character for me.

“HOLY FUCKING SHIT! PUT THE GOD DAMN, MOTHER FUCKING GUNS AWAY!”

My Mexican friends lowered their guns and all nine of them looked like little kids who’d just got yelled at by their mothers.

“Damn, you have your mother’s temper!” the man said.

Speaking their native language I quickly thanked the guys for their help once more and with that they sped away after giving my bag of stuff and my board.

He turned, “What?!”

Mouth agape and to reassure myself that I wasn’t crazy I reached out and touched the man’s bare chest. He pushed my hand away.

“Dad?” I whimpered.