First published through The Paris News on June 26, 2017. The article can be found on their website at http://theparisnews.com/opinion/article_0d83eb58-5a8d-11e7-a3d1-3fbdbdf41530.html

On Memorial Day, I went inner tubing on the lake with family and we had a blast.

For some reason we thought it was a good idea to get to the lake around 1 p.m., which means we’d end up on the lake during the hottest time of the day. Regardless, we got in the boat and puttered around until we were in the center of the lake and my brother and niece jumped on the inner tube.

After my dad pulled them for a while, Robert fell off because he was trying to ride the tube without holding on. A little while later, he and my niece were about to get off and I asked him if he wanted to ride with me on the tube.

This is when it got fun.

First off, not only did I jump in the water, I tried doing so by belly flopping on the tube — that didn’t work. When I jumped on the tube, I jumped too far forward, which caused the tube to fall out from under me.

Unashamed, I tried to climb on the tube, but I couldn’t pull myself up. When I tried to, it would slide in the water and flip. So I had to get back in the boat and try again.

Luckily, with a long struggle, I finally got back in the boat and jumped — softly — on the tube. Robert climbed on after.

After the boat started up, Robert would take his hands off of the grips of the tube periodically. I thought to myself how I could use this to my advantage. The boat began to move, we were gliding across the water, enjoying the coolness, while the heat was still beating down.

Well, as I said, Robert was taking his hands off of the grip and at this time he was on his knees with the boat pulling about 30 mph.

As he would occasionally let go of the grip, in an irresponsible way — especially with me riding next to him — I would watch and see how long he would go without holding on. It was about 5-10 seconds of shear foolishness on his part.

I glanced over and saw his hand grab the grip, and I leaned to my right, rearing up my left shoulder to knock him off. As soon as he let go, I shoulder checked him off of the tube and into the middle of the lake.

I didn’t think I really hit him too hard, but we got back to the boat and he said it was pretty hard. He even complained a bit about how it hurt.

All-in-all, it was fun and with the hotter weather, go out and enjoy the sun, ride an inner tube or try to ski, you won’t be disappointed — unless you get shoulder-checked.