OK, gotta fess up, as I guess I'm the one who goaded GL into starting this thread ...
Ran over my own whisker pole. It went OB during a major "blonde moment" on my part, and I had no idea if it would float or not. Immediately did an about face, and it was nowhere to be seen. Couple seconds later heard a dull thud from the CB area, and thought I either hit my own WP or a gator. Didn't see anything in the wake, so chalked it up to just plain stupidity and went my merry way sailing around the lake, bummed out but already dreaming up ideas about what my new and improved WP would look like ...
Lo and behold tho, when I got back to the dock 2 hours later, there it was, floating among the lilly pads. It does indeed float after all, and the wind had blown it to shore right there.
A kid who was fishing from the shore called out to me asking if it was something that had come off my boat, and I was forced to sheepishly admit that indeed it was. He waded in and grabbed it, and I thanked him for doing that for me. I asked him if he was fishing or catching, which is my same old tired line I say to everyone I see with a line in the water, and he said he was fishing, but hadn't caught anything yet, and was getting worried, because if he didn't catch anything, his family was not going to have any dinner that night!
I told him to keep fishing, and that I would be right back. Left the boat tied up to a tree, dropped the trailer off the hitch, went to the nearest place I could find (KFC), bought two of the biggest family sized meals that they had, and took it back. You should have seen the look of appreciation on that kid's face! I told him that he had been kind to me, so I wanted to be kind to him, and that seemed like a pretty foreign concept to him, but he thanked me and called me Sir and all that and took off. Before he left I told him that if he ever wanted to go on the boat, I would be happy to take him out, but I've never seen him again out there ...
I know, sounds crazy, but it's a true story folks. Up there at that lake where I sail, it's pretty "back-country", and there's a lot of folks who are just barely getting by ...