Hit it! Oh, never mind

My mind keeps telling me I'm still a young kid, but my body lets me know in no uncertain terms that I am no longer 25 years old, but a 45-year-old mature (some may beg to differ) adult.

I proved it to myself last weekend after spending an afternoon on the lake with my son one day and my husband the next.

My son just bought a new boat -- not like the other two boats we have stored in the back yard that we use for fishing, but a real, get-up-and-go boat -- the kind that can pull skiers and innertubers and knee boarders.

I was the first one in the water. I'd watched people skiing all my life -- usually while I was fishing off the bank or sitting in a boat with the speed maxed out at seven miles-an- hour. After watching all those people, I knew it couldn't be that hard. I could never understand why the newbies had so much trouble getting started.

That day, lying there in the water with my skis on, hanging on to the ski rope and curled up in the taking off position, I was confident I would be skiing by the end of the day.

Jeremy used the boat to tighten the rope.

I yelled "Hit it!" and off he went. The rope bounced across the water for about 50 feet, before he started to make his turn and get it back to me as I sat there in the water in the starting out position.

The second time around, it was the same scenario, only I was able to hold onto the rope long enough to be drug through the water, swallowing about two quarts as he pulled me in the starting out position for another 50 feet and I lost my grip on the rope.

I tried a total of about six times before I removed the skis and had him throw the innertube out.

A week later Jer and I were at the lake and once again I was out on the skis. It was the same thing -- six times of trying and simply sitting there in the water until I couldn't hold on any longer and six times of swallowing enough water to hydrate me for the next week.

The next day, Brad and I went out. The first round of attempts ended pretty much the same way they did with Jer. I waited for about an hour and decided to try it again.

This time was a little bit different. I carefully prepared myself, remembering all the advice I had been given by my husband and the many Web sites I had visited.

As Brad moved the boat forward, I could feel the back of the skis starting to rise behind me. I leaned back as instructed, and let myself sit on the skis, then I began to slowly lift myself to a standing position -- and lost my grip on the rope.

The second time around was pretty much a rerun of the first.

Attempts three through six echoed my initial attempts of being drug through the water and swallowing most of it.

I finally took my skis off and started swimming toward the boat.

"I think I'm tired," I told Brad. "Maybe we can try again next time."

Next time hasn't actually come yet. Thank God the rain came, it gave my body some much-needed time to recuperate, and I didn't have to tell the guys there was no way my sore muscles would even allow me to jump off the boat.

Now I have one more thing on my list of things to do before I die. I will learn to ski. After that I'm going to work on knee boarding and wake boarding and possibly a little slalom.

Of course with all of that, I had to move my climb up Mount Everest down a notch on my mental list of things to do.