STORY TIME- SOMETHING FISHY ABOUT THAT SHARK

Ladies and gentleman, children of all ages, I present to you my newest creative blog post idea. A series of blogs entitled -Story Time- in which I will tell you a variety of stories about my family. And trust me, there’s a lot of them. Plus, I’m adding a trivia question to each blog post to help expand your knowledge of the Allen Family.
To kick this thing off, allow me to tell you the story of the shark.

It was a fine day in April, 2013, and the Allen family was enjoying a fun day at the beach in Myrtle Beach, SC. As the day drew later, several members of the family headed toward home to complete various tasks before dinner. Some went back early to ensure they had hot water for a shower -oh the joys of life with nine people on a bus. I think I actually took a cold shower that night… Anyway, some of us chose to stay behind for a while longer and play in the waves as the tide was coming in and they were HUGE! So, Danielle, Josh, Zach and I stayed and hung out at the beach a while longer. We walked out into the water and battled the waves, but then Danielle and I decided it was too cold and we wanted to go home. So we headed back to the beach, leaving Zach and Josh in the water. Once we arrived at the beach though, I glanced back to see where my brothers were and saw something in the water. I pointed it out to Danielle thinking it was a dolphin, but then I realized it wasn’t a dolphin at all. I yelled to get my brothers’ attention, and when they looked back at me I pointed to the thing with the dorsal fin. Josh’s eyes got as big as golf balls and he and Zach made a mad dash for the beach yelling, “Shark!” I’ve never seen anyone run so fast through the water. By the time they reached shore so had the ‘shark’, accompanied by a crowd of curious vacationers who had been drawn to our little section of beach, most likely wondering what our ruckus was all about. The creature had successfully made it to shore and was lying in the sand, sides heaving. We got as close as we dared to it, and upon closer inspection found that it wasn’t a shark at all. In fact, it was a fish. A really BIG fish that just so happened to have a dorsal fin and look an awful lot like a shark. A random guy walked up to the fish and pushed it back into the water, but when the fish turned back around and again ended up on shore, the guy half picked him up and tried walking into the water a little ways with the fish, trying to get it to stay there. The fish conveniently ignored the man’s attempts and after several times of watching the man carry the fish out and watching the fish swim back to shore, another guy took pity on the first guy and helped him carry the fish out. After meeting with the same circumstance a few more times, I suppose the fish finally got tired of the humans shoving him off the beach and eventually just gave up and stayed out in the water. I can’t imagine the embarrassment my brother’s must have faced when they found out they had been running and screaming from something as harmless as a fish -albeit a rather big, and slightly menacing one- but they handled it rather well. I’m sure some of the vacationers were a little annoyed because they had walked all the way to where we were, expecting something spectacular, like a shark, but were met with a fish. An impressive fish, but a fish nonetheless. Anyway, thus goes the tale of the shark. We never did figure out what kind of fish that was…

Trivia Question- Which Allen has been left behind, (unintentionally), the most in all of our eighteen years on the road?

Answer- will be included in the next blog post. =)

I’ll see about posting again next week if I can find the time. We’re about to hit another one of our ‘busy seasons’, so I make no promises. But I will do my best and see how it works into our schedule. God bless!

-Abby