Article 3:
The Man on the Dock, Page 1
By Deborah Hedstrom-Page

The man on the dock finally spoke, startling me. I had almost forgotten him as I swam. Now I turned quickly, causing little ripples to radiate around me in the lake.

"What? Oh yes, it is," I replied, realizing that he had commented that it was a pretty day. The glare of the sun on the water made it hard for me to see him, and I hoped it also hid my nervousness.

Why had he spoken? I certainly hadn't encouraged him. As a matter of fact, he upset my daughters and me. For two years, I'd been a widow; my young girls missed the security of their dad. We were careful around men we didn't know. This man's muscular build and tan didn't inspire confidence as he sat on the dock from mid-morning to late afternoon. He didn't swim. He didn't fish. He didn't go boating. He just sat.

It was the only good place in camp to swim -- but it was also isolated from the campground in a small cove behind bushes and trees. I had cajoled my sons - 15-year-old twins - down to the dock for a short time, but they didn't want to stay. They wanted to fish at an inlet on the other side of the camp. They rarely got to fish so I didn't feel right making them stay with us. But because the man was almost always sitting onto he dock, my girls and I didn't swim as often as we wanted.

"Why does he always have to be on the dock," complained my youngest, Janet, after turning away from her planned swim once again.

"I'll bet he's rich and doesn't have to work," her sister Julie answered. "Last night, when we were riding our bikes, I saw his camp. He has a blue sports car."

Their disappointment at not getting to swim concerned me. This was our first camping trip since my husband died, and I wanted it to be happy. I decided to ease the situation with humor. "Oh, I bet he's a business man who belongs to a spa. He probably works out and uses a tanning booth every day."

Chuckling our way back to camp, we boxed the man into every stereotype we could think of. a little voice inside nagged me about our ridicule, but I pushed it aside. We didn't know the man and would never see him again once our camping trip was over. Besides, he was keeping us from enjoying our swimming.

The next morning the girls went to the dock early. They wanted to sit on it and read, lulled by the lake's gentle waves. But they stopped when they saw the man perched at his spot earlier than usual. "Just once I wish we could get the dock without that man there," Julie complained when they got back to camp.