So I’m back in Florida, enjoying all the benefits of 450% humidity. The air is so thick with water here that most of the locals have begun sprouting gills. Today I finally found the perfect way to avoid drowning in my own sweat in Florida and it’s my sincere pleasure to share it with all of you: Do not go outside. Ever. Stay inside at all times, because that’s where the air conditioning is.

Now that I’ve finally figured this out, my father has naturally decided that tomorrow is the perfect day to spend Jet Skiing. I cannot possibly tell you how excited I am. I literally have goosebumps from all of the conditioned air surrounding me now that will absolutely not be accompanying me on this trip. The part of Jet Skiing that I’m most looking forward to is the moving around really fast on a powerful motorized vehicle. The part I’m dreading just a little is where I either die or become horribly disfigured.

“Ha Ha!” you might say. “Jet Skiing is perfectly safe! People do it all the time!”

Sure it’s safe when other people do it. But I’m convinced I’m going to die tomorrow because I’m going with my father, who has said the following 7 things to me in the last few days…

1) “Snakes? Yeah, there’ll be some snakes.” You guys know how I feel about snakes because I’ve been pretty forthcoming about it. And I’m sure that word of my disparaging comments has gotten back to the snake community, and they’re lying in wait for me right now. Maybe I’ll get lucky and the snakes won’t be poisonous…

2) “What kind of snakes? Water Moccasins, mostly.” And what is a Water Moccasin, exactly? “A venomous, semiaquatic pit viper.” I’m not entirely sure what a pit viper is, but I bet it’s a viper that keeps its victims piled up in a large pit so he can show off for all the regular, non-venomous, non-aquatic vipers.

3) “There are tons of gators out there, too.” Going to where gators live is apparently to ensure that there will be some type of Violent Serpentine Animal Danger in case the poisonous swimming snakes don’t show up.

4) “I went to start the ski today and the battery exploded.” Dad hasn’t taken the Jet Skis out in over a year, so the battery explosion took place during the routine maintenance one must do to prepare to kill his son. The battery had to be charged, it wasn’t coming up to temperature, so he figured he’d try to turn it over and BOOM! It exploded. “But it’s fixed now.” Is it just me, or is the Jet Ski sounding more and more like something Wile E. Coyote invented?

5) “Do you have any tight underwear?” First of all, this is never a question you want to hear from your father, especially when followed by… “Because your nuts will be beat to hell tomorrow without the right support.” Apparently the art of Jet Skiing leads to severe testicular trauma. If I do not wear the proper undergarments and somehow manage to avoid being eaten by alligators and poisonous snakes, my reward will be a painful case of Ski Balls.

6) “Oh, and then there’s the flesh-eating algae.” No shit. And this isn’t just your normal, run-of-the-mill flesh-eating algae. This is Killer Flesh-Eating Algae, because it, like, kills people and stuff. And my dad knows all about it. It’s like you say, “Hey pop, I just read this article about this lady that died from flesh-eating algae in the St. John’s River. It got splashed on her while she rode a personal watercraft!” And then Dad says, “Hey! Great idea! Let’s go ride Jet Skis in the St. John’s tomorrow!” So despite years of evidence to the contrary, it’s becoming pretty clear that my father is just fucking stupid.

7) “Don’t worry! This is called a ‘dry ski’ because it’s virtually impossible to fall off.” This would have been very reassuring had it not been immediately followed by two stories where people fell off of these exact Jet Skis. The only caveat was, “The only way to really fall off is if you go really slow and turn just a little.” Meanwhile, I’m thinking that other great ways to fall off would be if the battery exploded, or if flesh-eating algae splashed in my eye and ate my brain, or if I got pounded in the balls repeatedly, or if one of the hundreds of nearby alligators and snakes jumped out in front of the guy on the Jet Ski who is deathly afraid of sneaky reptiles and has sore balls and a glob of algae sucking on his neck. I might just fall off this ‘dry ski’, is what I’m thinking.

But I’m going anyway, which is why I’m writing this. This, dear friends, is my Last Will and Testament…

I, Jagre, being of sound mind and body, do hereby bequeath all of my Cool Stuff to the relative who laughed least after learning the details of my untimely demise. To my brother, who undoubtedly blurted out “What a dick!”, I leave both of my middle fingers, especially if they have recently passed through the colon of an alligator. Please also pass on my sincerest condolences to my mother, because there’s no way I died in flesh-eating, snake-filled waters without finding a way to strangle the crazy sunuvabitch formerly known as My Father on my way down. If by some miracle my father survived, please print a copy of this entry and mail it to the local District Attorney in an envelope labeled Exhibit A.

Jags
(written 5.5 hours prior to leaving his safe, air conditioned surroundings to die in a river that smells like zombie crotch)

Tags: last will, jet ski, jet skiing