Dad?  Dad?  Are you there?  I don't trust this boat.

One day we were out in the middle of a calm lake.  Dad commented about how it was a particularly deep lake and how the two of us were right then afloat in its deepest spot.  Just putting out some interesting trivia, he was, as if no one special were listening.  It was how he always spoke to me.

I peered over the side, down onto the lake's absolutely flat surface, the water below only blackness.  "How deep is it?" I asked.  He answered in an exacting way a five-year-old could comprehend:  in multiples of the height of the house back home.  It was hundreds and hundreds of feet, many houses' worth.

I wondered aloud as to our fate should the little wooden rowboat develop a sudden leak.  He was so steady, so assured:  "Well, we'd have to swim back to the car."  Besides not knowing how to swim, I didn't know where the car was.  He had to have seen it in my face.  "We'd make it," he said.

Dad?  Are you there?  I worry about this boat.