(Note, this article was published over 2 years ago, but now is mysteriously showing as blank. So, I'm going to republish it)

Look, I've never tried to be cool, or cared about being cool, which is cool. However, sometimes I've wound up almost looking cool quite by accident. Almost.

One of those times occurred way back in high school, when I was on a weekend camping trip with my church's youth group. We annually visited a Methodist youth retreat known as Elk Shoals during the long Labor Day weekend.

On this particular trip, I was equipped with a snorkelling mask. I'm not sure why I had it, as I'd never snorkelled before or since. Elk Shoals is situated on the banks of the New River, which is the ironically named second oldest river in the world, after the Nile. It is also one of only a few large rivers in North America to flow north.

One warm, sunny day, I was snorkeling along in the river minding my own business. Earlier that day, a water snake had been spotted by one of the other kids, so I was swimming with caution, always keeping an eye out for snakes. I have no problem with snakes on land, because they're generally easily avoided. In the water, however, it's hard to see them coming, and there's not much you can do to stay clear of them. I was swimming along, with my attention momentarily fixed on the bottom of the river while I was peering through my snorkeling mask looking for crawdads or  interesting lost items. After one swimming stroke, my hand closed on something. My first thougth was that it was a small piece of driftwood. I grasped it and began to bring it around to have a look  at it when it...wiggled. I immediately panicked, being certain that I had just grabbed the water snake that had been spotted earlier that day, and I let go of it before I could even finish turning my head to look at it. I did get my head around before it swam away out of sight, however. What I had managed to just casually reach out and grab was a rather large fish, probably a trout. I immediately felt disappointed that I hadn't hung on for another second or two. Imagine if I had popped up from the river with a large fish in my hand. "Anyone hungry?", I might have asked. But alas, it was not to be. I was almost cool, though.