Travels with my Family Read Free Page B

Atlantic Ocean would separate us from our house. And my little brother didn’t know how to swim.
    â€œHey, Mom,” I called, and I pointed to the water all around us.
    Her dreamy face changed in a hurry. She dropped all her shells.
    â€œEverybody stay calm!” she screamed. “We have to head back — right now!”
    We had to get back across the channel. Quickly, my mother decided that she would hold my brother under one arm and swim with the other. I was supposed to hang on to her back and kick my legs as hard as I could.
    First, I stuffed my bag of sand dollars into my bathing suit. Then I grabbed her shoulder. The next thing I knew, we were fighting our way through the rushing current of the channel. Soon, the water was way over our heads.
    For every stroke we took to move forward, the current pushed us two strokes to the side. At that rate, I figured we’d end up in South America. Silver mullets flew past us, chased by the dolphins. My brother’s eyes were wide as saucers and luckily, for once, he kept his mouth shut. I pumped my legs up and down, and held on tight to my mother. The ferocious current crashed around our ears. But inch by inch, we moved closer to the shore.
    Finally, we made it. All three of us flopped on the beach, panting like exhausted starfish. I shook the water out of my eyes and looked up. There was my father. On the sand next to him was a big basket of blue, crawly crabs.
    â€œYou look like something the cat dragged in!” he said.

    My father’s really clueless sometimes.
    â€œWhile you three were relaxing on the beach, I was working hard for our supper,” he added with a proud smile.
    My mother and I just rolled our eyes.
    â€œNot crabs again,” my brother said. “I want hot dogs!”
    I wanted to show my father my sand dollar collection. I fished in my bathing suit, but the current had swept them away, bag and all.
    Oh, well. At least I’d saved my mother and my brother. And I’d had a real adventure of my own, too.

THREE
Alligators nearly devour us
in the swamps of Florida

    After we had to swim for our lives that day, we were more careful with the ocean. My mother cut a page out of the newspaper that gave the times for the tides, high tide and low, for the rest of the month. The water wasn’t going to sneak up on us again.
    After a while, my father started saying that he had itchy feet. Which means he was thinking about going somewhere new. So instead of scratching his feet, he did what he always does at a time like that. He took out his road map.
    â€œLook, Florida’s not far at all. It’s almost next door. And I’ve never been there.”
    Florida? My brother and I looked at each other. We couldn’t believe our ears!
    â€œ
Disneyland!
” we shouted.
    You see, we were normal, my brother and I, even if our parents weren’t.
    But Disneyland was too normal for my parents. Too much like everybody else, too ordinary. Not original enough. Somehow I wasn’t surprised.
    â€œWhy would you want to have a fake adventure in a theme park with plastic alligators?” my father wanted to know. “I’ll show you real alligators. And they won’t be made out of plastic, no, sir!”
    So it was off to Okefenokee Swamp, to go canoeing. The little bit of the swamp that hangs down into the state of Florida.
    I don’t think anyone else has ever even heard of Okefenokee Swamp. I don’t think anyone can even say it. Except for my mother, who told us about a comic strip called Pogo that had possums and alligators and skunks that could talk. They all lived in the Okefenokee Swamp.
    â€œ
We have met the enemy, and he is us!
That’s what Pogo used to say,” my mother told us.
    My brother and I laughed, even if we weren’t quite sure what Pogo meant. Or my mother, either.
    There we were in our boiling-hot car, with the windows rolled down, heading to Florida.