January 16, 2001

breaking college boy

Link of the day: AOLiza. Has to be seen to be believed.

I told my sister that I wanted to do something fun on Monday, Martin Luther King Day. "Kayaking, skiing, rock climbing, whatever," I said. "I have to get out of the apartment and do something. Anything. Something fun. I have to get out, out, out, out, out...."

"We'll do something," she promised, hastily. "Sure. Whatever you want."

So on Monday, College Boy -- from work, you know -- and I drove up to the City to try some kayaking off of Treasure Island, which is where my sister's boyfriend lives. My sister's boyfriend is really cool. Of course, all my sister's boyfriends have been pretty cool, but this one's a keeper, (according to her, fickle as she can be), and I'm prone to agree with her. He's an avid sportsman with a great deal of charm, an all-around Good Guy. Plus, he has kayaks. Many boats, all lined up on top of each other behind his house in an old military house.

"This is his baby," my sister told me solemn, as we hoisted one of them up on top of his Jeep. "He polishes it with a soft cloth. If anything happens to it, I'm dead."

It was light. "What's it made out of?"

"Kevlar."

"Isn't that what they make bulletproof vests out of?"

...which all goes to show you that the universe does listen, and that it does have a sense of humor, however unfinished and unrefined.

College Boy was excited, which my sister accepted phlegmatically. Her reaction, as far as I could tell, was that anybody would be excited to go kayaking in the choppy San Francisco bay in the middle of January. I was as well, so I can hardly blame him. She went through all the steps of teaching us safety, while College Boy and I skidded happily around on the massive rocks that made up the 'shoreline'. "This is what I want to do," she confessed, halfway through the instruction. "I want to be a guide. Um." She eyed the choppy waves, and reached up a hand to clutch her hat to her head. The wind was kicking up a bit. "I think I won't teach you how to roll. It's a bit cold for that."

We learned about skirts, rubber things that resemble lampshades, that scoop out and seal the mouth of the kayak so that no water can make its way inside. We learned what to do if we capsized. "Get out of the kayak and hold on to it," my sister urged. The skirt came complete with a little ripcord, which one can pull in order to unseal one's self from the boat. She demonstrated how to paddle, a complicated maneuver at first for the uninitiated. Finally, she buckled a lifejacket around College Boy, and with my cheerful participation, dumped him into the Bay.

In under a minute, she was out on the water as well, while I danced gleefully on the shore to watch.

In under two minutes, College Boy had capsized and was bobbing, cursing and spitting.

My sister peered down at him, interested, and leaned over to fish him out of the swells. "Grab the boat," she lectured him, and gradually steered him and the kayak back out of the water. Poor College Boy looked like a drowned rat, and he was dancing with fury and excitement. His teeth were chattering. I sat down and laughed until I cried. "Are you okay?" I asked.

"I'm c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c...."

Despite his initial failure, he was determined to go back in. Like all extreme sportsmen, his setback had merely aroused his passion for the activity. His eyes gleamed, his jaw set, and he splashed back to the car to find another change of clothing, the kayak skirt still bouncing ridiculously around his thighs, while my sister and I stayed by the boats and murmured together.

"I didn't think he'd capsize," my sister said, ruefully. "I've never taught kayaking. I didn't anticipate."

"Well, we're brand new at it," I comforted, "and now you know. Besides which, it's the Bay. He wants to try again."

My sister brightened; like any true enthusiast, she's excited by the thought of making a conversion to one of her passions. "Good. I was worried he'd be scared off. I should give him a wetsuit, maybe."

By the time College Boy had returned, complete in wetsuit and skirt again, the waves were even more choppy. I watched them coming in with fascination; a hitherto unrealized sense of adventure was being tickled into life, and I was experiencing an urgent desire to get out on that water myself.

Once more we strapped College Boy into the boat, and once more the two of them skidded out onto the waves. It went better this time; very soon they were out of sight, around the curve of the shore.

I climbed on top of one of the big rocks to wait.

And wait.

And wait.

(and wait.)

After a long while during which I began to wonder if they'd decided to kayak around the entire island, a figure waddling across the parking lot caught the corner of my eye. I watched it approach. After a while, I decided that its strange version of duck locomotion was due to the fact that it had no shoes. A little bit later, I realized that the reason its hair wasn't flapping was because the hair was all wet.

In a few seconds, I had decided that it was my sister, who never capsizes unless she wants to, and had dashed over to meet her. "Are you okay? What happened? Where's College Boy? How's the boat? What happened? Where are your shoes? Did you fall in? Are you hurt? What happened to your shoes?"

My sister was shivering so violently, her teeth were literally rattling in her head. "College Boy capsized. I think he's had a shock. I lost my shoes."

"You're wet," I said, blankly.

"He's going to kill me," she wailed. "I fell in. I think the kayak is cracked. There's a hole in it, I think there's a hole in it. Oh my God...."

What a bullet couldn't do, the San Francisco Bay accomplished in half a second, flat.

I ran back to the dock to grab everything that we had left out, then stuffed both it and her into the car to wait while I crawled around on the rocks to go around the shore and find what was left of College Boy. He'd capsized, right after they'd gone around the corner; my sister had attempted to save him, since the waves were smashing him up against the shore, and had ended up falling in herself. The tide was coming in with a vengeance, and the waves were starting to hit the two-and-three foot range where they collided with the rocks. I was starting to imagine the next day at work, and my next department meeting.

"Of course, College Boy won't be joining us today," my boss would tell the rest of the group. "Yuhri killed him over the weekend."

This would not be doing good things to my reputation. Of course, the way my company runs, maybe it would actually be an improvement. I started imagining all the things I would be able to accomplish; the alarm that would motivate everybody to do the things I wanted them to do, the second they heard my voice on the phone.

"Better do what Yuhri wants. You'll end up dead, otherwise."

Every cloud has a silver lining, after all. As it turned out, College Boy wasn't dead at all; only much bruised and scraped and bleeding all over the algae-infested rocks. He was cursing to himself, and white as a sheet, but still had those bright, shiny eyes that come from adrenaline and excitement. "I fell in again," he announced, outraged. His feet were leaving a shiny red coating of blood over the rocks; he'd gotten his shoes wet from the first tipping-over, and he'd decided not to take them in for the second try out.

There was a rusty chain link fence verging the shore, part of a secured lot that had no visible means of egress. Between the three of us -- my sister having emerged from the car, still shaking, but urgent about rescuing the boyfriend's kayak, at least what was left of it -- we hiked the boats to safety. It was quite an accomplishment, getting the kayaks over the chain link fence; fortunately, the car was an SUV, and we simply padded the top of the fence and tipped the boats over it right onto the racks waiting on the car's roof.

"Your sister is really strong," College Boy whispered to me, later. "She just leaned over and grabbed me when I fell in. With one arm. She lifted me up."

Afterwards, when the expected storm broke and turned out to be a light drizzle -- ("The important thing is that you're okay," he said, showing inhuman understanding and sympathy) -- my sister came stumbling downstairs to treat glass cuts in the soles of her feet. College Boy watched with attentive interest before doing the same thing to his own lacerated feet. She and the Boyfriend looked on, helping him out and giving him first aid lessons as they went. "You'll need to get a tetanus shot," Boyfriend told College Boy.

The next day, College Boy showed up at work in calf-leather work boots, hobbling like he'd lost feeling in both his feet. "Did you get the tetanus shot?" I asked him, first thing. "Hi. Did you?"

"Yes. My arm hurts. I hurt all over." He said it quite happily, as though it were a privilege granted only to a select few. As an afterthought, he added an awed: "Your sister is really strong."

I passed by his cubicle a few minutes later, glanced in, and discovered that he was now wearing soft, fuzzy bunny slippers over his feet. Poor kid.