Champy

Part Four

We had to give our parents a good excuse to leave the parade, so naturally Freddy and I told our mother that we were going to go fishing with the boys. She told us to be careful, and made me promise to keep an eye on Freddy. That's when I knew that it was possible she had been slightly skeptical about our Champy sighting the day prior after all. However, knowing our mother, if she had truly believed us that Champy existed then there would have been no way that she would've let us back out on the lake. She always believed that we were capable of taking care of ourselves, so she was never too strict with us about curfews or letting us go out. She did want to make sure that we were always safe though. Then again, her trust in us probably had something to do with the fact that we were great kids – we always listened to her when she asked us to do our chores or our homework – and all we ever really did outside of the house was go fishing anyway. How much trouble could we possibly get into while fishing, right?

So that's when Ricky, Sam, Freddy and I grabbed the row-boat and headed down to the lake. I recall feeling the confidence surging through me as I acted as their tour guide on our adventure. We ended up at about the same spot that Freddy and I had been at the day before, and we stopped rowing. I explained the direction from which I had seen the supposed Champy before, but I explained that he could be anywhere, so I told everyone to keep their eyes peeled. We were smart boys, and we had figured out that if we all put our backs to each other, then we would have a 360 degree view of the lake from our boat, each of us getting our own direction to be on the lookout for Champy. We had to have been sitting there in that row boat for at least an hour without seeing anything unusual before we decided to give up. I remember feeling bad for Sam and Ricky, but also disappointed that I couldn't show off what I then thought to have been the greatest discovery of my young life.

We made it back to shore, and we dragged the boat up onto land, leaving it in the same spot it had been before. We decided then to go back to the parade, since it was where all the excitement was. The entire walk back consisted of talk of how upset we were that we hadn't seen Champy. I tried to keep the spirits up by suggesting that we could always go searching for him another day, and the boys were uplifted by this but mentioned that it still would've been cool to see the real Champy on Champ Day. I couldn't blame them for feeling that way, but I was more optimistic than they were. Had I known at the time that would be my last trip to search for Champy, it's possible I would've been more upset by the failure of our voyage.