Author: Shelley Powers

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

In a quiet moment of sharing, Jonathon said the following in a post today:

Though I don’t believe in regrets, I have just one: that I don’t have a child. All my closest friends have children and every time they invite me to their homes, I feel a sense of gratitude that I’ve been able to share the intimacies of family life. I’m well aware that I’m getting many of the pleasures with none of the pain, but the rewards seem so great that I’m always left wondering at what point I took the wrong turn.

Making the decision to have a child or not is the single most defining moment in our lives. No one act we take can have greater impact. No one act we take should have greater impact in our lives.

Think about it — when you have a child, you’re bringing a new person into the world. You’re teaching this new person love and happiness and sharing and the values and beliefs you think are important. You have the front seat of a show starring this new person, watching as she or he grows and becomes something unique and special. From my own childless perspective, I can’t imagine that there isn’t a parent anywhere who doesn’t sit down daily and marvel at what they’ve done.

However, with the marvel also comes the complexity in raising a child. When I watch my brother with his kids, it looks to me as if there is a daily negotiation between him and each child about what rules apply, because every day new circumstances occur and new rules need to be made to meet these circumstances. Even the rules themselves have rules — when should the parent intervene, when should the parent step back and let the child learn the lessons they need to learn?

In my own field, I have had difficulty working with neural networks; a child is the greatest neural network there is. The thought of all that complexity, frankly, scares me.

Adding to the complexity is the issue of maintaining your own individuality, separate from your role and identity as “parent”. You want to provide what the child needs, but you’re also a unique person with needs of your own. Again, as an observer, it seems to me that you have to walk this delicate balancing act of being “you” the parent and “you” the unique individual.

I made the decision years ago not to have children. The reasons were many, and complex, and beyond the scope of this posting. I don’t have regrets about not having a child, but I do wonder sometimes about where I would be and what I would be doing today if I had children. Of course, being in my 40’s it’s still not too late to have children, though the risk of complications increase as you get older. Sometimes I even think about the possibility of adopting an older child, raising him or her as a single parent.

However, I think there are people, such as myself, who just weren’t meant to have children. I genuinely feel I wouldn’t make a good parent. In fact, the thought of being a parent scares me to death.

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

At the Ford Service Center waiting on my 5000 mile service and thought I would write a story into my nifty energy efficient wireless weblogging tool, and download to the web later.

Chris asked for stories of pain. He is one sick puppy…probably why I like him so much. Well, I never deny my favorite chicken, so…

In my late teens I was going out with a guy who was heavily into hydroplane racing — stock outboard racing to be exact. Brian raced A stock, one of the smaller types with a maximum speed of 50-55 MPH.

I became a fairly decent and respected crew member, with Brian as well as other racers, to the point where they would allow me to take their boats for a ride after the races. There’s few experiences you can have in life to equal being on your knees at water level in a boat made of 1/4 inch plywood, racing over the water at 50+ milers per hour.

To set the stage for the rest of this story, I need to tell you that at that time there was a real sex bias in boat racing circles. Men raced, women supported. I was unusual in that I would help carry the boats and worked on the mechanics, including being able to set up a boat quickly and efficiently.

Once a year, at the biggest of the local (Seattle) races, the guys would let the ladies have a turn in a ladies-only racing competition — the annaul Powder Puff Race.

Now that you all have had your laugh for the day, I’ll continue with my story.

Brian’s hydroplane was a sharp turning little beastie, but didn’t have the power that some of the other boats had. For the race, he trained me to stay tight in the turns and to hit the mark (the clock) at the start line.

The day of the raced dawned. This type of hydroplane race is run in two parts, and the best overall score is declared the winner. A field of 11 boats took to the water for the first round, slowly circling, moving into start position. I circled the “field”, keeping my eye on the clock and determined to end up at the start line just as the clock hit zero, and also determined to own the inside lane.

The one minute gun sounds. I’m moving closer….closer…closer…mark!

I owned the inside and was fairly sure I hadn’t “jumped the gun” (crossed the start before the clock was finished). However, right beside me was the hottest boat of the show, driven by the woman who had won two years running. The Nemesis.

We stayed side by side all throughout the race, me able to keep up because I kept tight to the turns, her always ahead because she had the more powerful boat.

Round the field we went until I saw the green flag for the last lap (you actually don’t remember what lap you’re one when you’re racing). I poured on the power, I cut the corners, I leaned forward and down into the wind. Regardless of my last efforts, the Nemesis crossed the line ahead of me.

Damn!

I headed into shore to get re-fueled and was surprised to be met by a large group of people jumping up and down screaming at the top of their lungs. I had won!

It seems that I did hit the mark exactly — Nemesis had jumped the gun and was disqualified that round. Big huge smile. Too bad. So sorry. Big huge smile.

Next round. Again I circled the field, lining up … wind is picking up … circling closer … more chop in the water … closer…

Time does slow down. As I headed into my final approach, one of the other racers, Janet, lost control of her boat trying to fight the increasingly rough water. She wasn’t aware that I was on her inside, and yanked her boat to the left, right at me.

There are no brakes in a hydro. There’s no horn, either. And you can’t yank a boat around or you’ll flip it. Taking your hand off the gas will drown your boat with backwash. All I could do was gun the motor and hope to speed past her. But it was too late.

Janet hit me in the right side just as my boat dipped to the right, forcing the front of her hydro over the top of my sponson, crashing through the side of my cockpit and directly into me. Luckily, the hit on the cockpit slowed the boat, and she only hit me at about 40 MPH, we estimated later.

The force of the blow knocked me over into the other side of the cockpit and pushed Janet’s boat over, dumping her in the water.

I passed out, and when I came to I was lying across the front of the boat, which was, remarkably, still afloat — my falling forward kept it from being swamped by the backwash.

I turned towards the beach and saw Janet in the water, signaling that she was okay. Good. Good. I couldn’t move and just lay there looking at Janet and the people on the beach, not quite sure where I was or why I was laying across the front of the boat.

During this time, the emergency crew who originally thought I was leaning forward to check on boat damage finally realized that I wasn’t moving or signaling that I was okay and sped towards me. As soon as they realized that I must have received a direct hit from the other boat, they sank my boat in order to use water rescue techniques to minimize further damage to me.

After carefully loading me into a stretcher, they sped me to shore where a double line of racers was waiting to keep the crowds back and a clear path to the ambulance.

I don’t remember a whole lot of much of anything until I got to the hospital. I didn’t even hurt that much, though this was to change — drastically — over the next four months of treatment.

Janet’s boat caught me in my right thigh, literally liquifying the muscle, and shredding it into two pieces. Because of my kneeling stance, my bones were cushioned from much of the shock and weren’t broken. I did have cracked ribs from the hit to the cockpit side when I was thrown. Still, all in all, pretty damn lucky.

The result of the second round? Six of the original eleven boats were totalled, and the round was cancelled. Since I won the first round, I won the race. It was the last Power Puff competition held, as by this time, more women were getting into racing.

Today I have a huge dent — literally a dent — in my right thigh as a remembrance of my first, and last, hydroplane race.