Dolphin Encounter!!

A beautiful evening, a gorgeous sunset, a light wind, a speedy boat, my family.......what's missing from this picture? Oh, right! A dolphin!!
I'd seen dolphins cavorting in the distance from my daughter's dock on the May River in South Carolina but it was my deepest desire to actually see one up close. Wednesday evening Trevor and Colleen took my husband and me out for a spin in their boat and we were having a great time watching the pelicans and cormorants, and laughing uproariously while we rescued Trevor's "hat overboard!" (which almost resulted in "daughter overboard!") when suddenly my daughter yelled, "Look! A dolphin!" I jumped up in time to see one dolphin fin break the surface of the water, rise up again, and then the entire dolphin leapt out and splashed back down! It was amazing! Trevor slowed the boat and we drifted along, watching this dolphin playing alongside us, but quite a distance away. Well, you know me.....I asked that dolphin to come alongside us so that I could see him closely; so that I could say hello. Instead, he disappeared............only to reappear RIGHT BESIDE THE BOAT! He rose up out of the water and bobbed his head while "waving" at my daughter! She was speechless and finally said, "Oh, my god, look at that! He's playing with us! We've never had a dolphin come that close before!" The dolphin dove again, seeming to go under the boat so I followed and crossed to the other side of the boat, too. And suddenly, directly under my nose and so close that I could have reached out and grabbed him, was the dolphin! I could see every single spot on his skin; every single blemish; every single glowing part of him!!!! Being the literate type, I went, "WHOAAAAAAAAA! OH, MY GOSH! NO WAY!" My dolphin friend looked back at me, winked, flicked his tail and was gone.
And I was left staring into the water, mouth open, speechless.....Colleen broke into my reverie by again saying, "We've seen tons of dolphins but we've never had one come that close to the boat before!" To which I replied, "Well, you only needed to ask." I'm sure you can all imagine how that answer went over! Rolled eyes and, "Right, mom." But we all know differently, don't we?? I TALKED TO A DOLPHIN!!!!!!

And then the sound of long, heavy, perfectly gray bodies rolling away into an unknown fathomless deep, quietly giggling."
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)