Gone Fishing

We live the downtown part of Concord, so there are two parks close by, and we often walk to one or the other of them when it is warm out.  Which park we go to is determined by our willingness to chase the boys around, since one is much bigger, although this has gotten easier as they have gotten older.
As toddlers, one of their favorite things to do was go to White Park, where we could feed the ducks as well as enjoy the playground, so we spent a lot of time there with our stale bread when they were younger.  The pond  is a duck pond  - slimy, shallow, but lovely in its own right. The type of pond that makes me issue these warnings often - "Back up. Don't get your feet wet. Honey, BACK UP."
One day we were down there with our leftover offerings, and two year old Zach suddenly took his summer hat off his head, and threw it as far as he could (about five feet) into the water.
I looked at John, telling him without words there was NO WAY I was going into that water. As soon as Zach realized what he had done, he began to cry.
"I want my hat. Hat! Hat! Get it!"  It was starting to sink into the green water when suddenly, another hat joined it - plop. Gabe had decided to get in on the fun, and tossed his hat in as well.
Now they were both crying as their hats began their descent into a watery grave.  Still, John and I didn't move; it was a hard call, facing the crying children and buying new hats seemed much easier than facing the slime, the feathers, the mud.  In the end we knew we needed to rescue our darling boys from watching their summer hats drown, so we sprang into action.
Looking to the right and left, I attempted to find something we could use to grab the hats, but being a duck pond there wasn't a whole  lot in the way of tools lying around.  About twenty feet away a young man was fishing, calmly ignoring us.  Without a moments hesitation I marched over to him, smiled as I gestured to my screaming children, and requested the use of his fishing pole. With one look at the boys, who were pointing and yelling and making a general ruckus, he handed me the pole.   John made quick work of catching the hats, we returned the fishing gear, and made a snifffling, drippy retreat, having become a little wiser in the art of feeding ducks.