Relaxing can get old at times ... or so I am told. 

The vacation mentioned in this previous submission played out a little like being at summer camp.  We all waited around on the dock before heading out on what was a 2 ½ boat ride to our island atoll 55 miles off the coast of Belize.  The crew looked nervous.  The winds made the ride choppier than normal.

But this was fun.  It quickly separated the wheat from the chaff, or so I had hoped.  As the ride got choppier, I was left alone at the bow of the boat standing with my legs straddled, iPod blaring, and my eyes closed trying to guess the roll of the waves.  All looked on as if I was crazy, save for the camp sous chef who found it hysterical.

Regardless, there was lots of time for the obligatory people watching to figure out who would become your camp friends for your stay. 

And I had bleak prospects.  Of the 11 guests, I was only one of two males, with the other male being on his honeymoon, meaning he should have only been coming up for air to rehydrate his body and to allow for his bride’s hip cramping to abate.

This worried me greatly.  In my mind I expected there to be several couples where the women would want to peel off and have slow days so I could have some male companionship while kayaking and snorkeling.  Closest thing to a guy next to the honeymooner was the butch side of a lesbian couple, and, trust me, she wanted nothing to do with me.

But that night there were hopeful signs.  The lead organizer forced us into that obligatory situation of stating our name and a little about ourselves.  It reminded me of those failed attempts to get the Gordon Gekko's of the world to learn at coprorate retreats in the 1990s that it was OK to cry.  It failed, but think of how much easier their lives would be today up before the populist cabal feasting on their entrails.

So I like playing that closer to my vest than normal.  I hate that forced conviviality and do my best to channel my inner misanthrope in such situations to keep the nitwits at bay.  “Hi, I’m Geoff, I’m from New England, and I am here to Kayak.”

Figured that was enough to put off the off-putting.

And then came this little whirling dervish of a woman who was a bundle of nervous energy.  While not exactly her life story, she did inform us that she had originally intended to hike the Belize mountain ranges, but her tour was cancelled and she was given this as an option.  She hated the water, wanted nothing to do with it, but here she was.  She was here for the lizards.

The nervous laughter indicated she was on edge.  Perhaps even a little neurotic.

I was intrigued.

And that night she did track lizards with her camera during a walk to a bird sanctuary.  She really was into lizards.  It wasn’t a joke.  (Later on she would confess to finding bones, taking them home, putting them together, and then trying to identify what she had collected.  An out there hobby for an out there lady.)

Her travel plans had been screwed, and yet she was still having fun.  You have got to love that kind of flexibility.

Snorkeling wasn’t her bag.  She’d been thrown into the water as a young girl by her grandfather to sink or swim.  Her memories of grandpa do not conjure up Wilford Brimley or Hume Cronyn, if you get my drift.  

Charles Manson turned 74.  It sounds like he’d fit the bill.

So, imagine my surprise when the lead guide offered to provide kayak lessons to people and this woman was quicker than I to say she wanted to learn how to roll a sea kayak.

Now I was really intrigued.  Either she had a huge force of will, or I had better learn to sleep with one eye open as she was certifiably insane.

I couldn’t wait to find out.

There was the obligatory nervousness as we took turns working with the instructor in our first hour long lesson on how to right oneself in an overturned Kayak.  I want to learn this in order to whitewater kayak and get myself out of trouble before my head slams into rocks.  

Why this woman wanted to do it was beyond me.

She was a little rushed when flipped.  When I would try to mention this encouragingly, she would look at me and say something to the effect of, “Yeah, that’s because I don’t  like being upside in the water trapped in a fucking kayak.”

 Like This.  That's me splashing and crying like a school girl.  

But ....

... You can learn to pull it off.

Jersey girl.  Very direct.  Confessed later to having a hard time assimilating to the more gentile manner of Texans.  Has a real problem with dinner invitation tardiness.  "If I say come at 5.  I mean 5.  Don't stroll in and give me a dirty look at 8:30 when I've put all the food away, ok?"

And we thought the Germans could make the trains run on time.

So I was becoming evermore impressed with this woman’s courage and grit, but I still was not sure about her sense of humor.  I wasn’t sure if I could tease and get started with a little banter to have a few yuks as we went through this stuff or not.  I’d taken a few self deprecating shots and she’d laughed, but you just never know.

But ultimately I will be unable to filter my inner pain-in-the-ass and some sarcastic shot will come flying out of my mouth.  It’s inevitable.

Indeed, my estranged wife used to cringe about this during my drinking days.  We'd go to parties and before we'd enter she would look at me pleadingly and say, "Just once I would like to leave a party without being remembered as 'that poor woman,' ok?"  It never worked.  She had about as much a chance of getting to avoid that as I did of getting to have sex on those nights with someone other than myself.

So I knew it was only a matter of time before I committed a fox paw of epic proportions before an appreciative audience.

Well, appreciated by everyone but the target, that is.

This happened while we were practicing together while our instructor sought to help a rather, uh, sturdy female likely more comfortable in flannel shirts whom I will call “Butch.”  Butch had come down during our second lesson to try to learn how to roll and was struggling.  The instructor had us working together.

In this application the person in the kayak had no paddle.  They would flip over with their hands by the side of the kayak.  The person assisting would then grab a hand.  The Kayak-trapped person would then hold on with both hands and perform the body contortion movement that helps flip the kayak back into the upright position.

I am 5’ 11” and 220 pounds.  (Well, 226 after vacation, damn it all to hell.)  This woman was about 5’ 1” and 110 pounds. 

I did not have any trouble whatsoever holding still while she grabbed my hand with both arms and thrashed around flipping the Kayak into the upright position.  She did it quite well.  It was all in the "Hip Flick" or "Zee Hip Fliiiick" as our French Canadian instructor with the spanish name would say.  She attributed this to gymnastics.  I insinuated it perhaps had something more to do with more lurid pursuits of an ill spent youth.

If looks could kill, I'd have never been able to put my foot further in my mouth.

So we got to work on her "hip flick" rather productively while Manny kept using a gaff hook on Butch to get her upright.

Turning that around now to work on me became a problem.  She had to be in water nearly up to her chest in order for me to be able to flip without driving my head in the sand.  When I grabbed her hands to do the rolls, I would wind up dragging her around rather than being able to use her as a stationary anchor.

We knew this and were having a good laugh, but it was making my ability to try to tackle this step in the training a tad tough.  I was also getting tired sucking in sea water when I floundered.  Furthermore, my balky knee was beginning to make its discomfort known as I kept wedging my legs on the sides to work on my hip flick.  The naproxen wasn't doing it's thing.  I was getting cranky and frustrated.

Ultimately I had one difficult time as I knocked this poor woman around.  Luckily, however, we were both taking it well and laughing as we flub dubbed around in the water.

Once upright and giggling, I turned to the instructor helping Butch and said, “Manny, you have to got to help me man, I can’t do this with a fucking Garden Gnome as my anchor.”

What happened next was a blur.  I remember hearing her scream “Garden Gnome?  Garden Gnome!” 

There might have been a fuck you in there, but I am not sure as I was too focused on feeling the shove that flipped me back over into the water, upside down in a kayak.

And I did not have a paddle.

So a lot went through my head as I quite literally forget everything I had been taught based on being taken by surprise and simply regressed to pulling on the cockpit skirt and “wet exiting” the kayak.

I was not sure what was going to meet me once my head surfaced out of the water.  Would she be pissed?  Would she be hurt?  Would she be firing conch shells in my general direction?  Worse yet, was the Jersey Girl packing heat and ready to go all Meadow Soprano on my ass?

I came up laughing.  She was standing on the beach looking at the instructor pleading her case as to why she had flipped me over and high tailed it back to the beach.  “Did you hear what he just called me?  He called me a fucking Garden Gnome!”

We had a back and forth that had the instructor and Butch looking on in disbelief.  I can’t recall it much, but we were laughing our asses off.

And so there, on the afternoon of my second day, I came to find my camp play mate.  Instead of some solid male body, it came in a petite female body looking ten years younger than it was, and having a great sense of humor and an awe inspiring force of will.

So for the rest of the time on the island we had far ranging conversations and lots of laughter and moderately insulting banter.  She got used to the term Garden Gnome, as her efforts to forestall me with the term asshole barely made a dent.  Little did she know that was likely muttered to me as an aside during the recitation of my wedding vows lo those many years ago.

And the conversation never ceased to fascinate.  It covered a number of issues including Texas real estate taxes, her city's growth and corruption, the chiropractic profession, art history, the school of hard knocks, dysfunctional families and how to survive them, marital difficulties, Mel Brooks movies in such detail we could have dubbed sound tracks, fear of water, disbelief at some of our other campers, national politics, each other's weaknesses, and other adventures that might be fun to try in other vacations.

Through it all, it became clear to me that this was one fascinating human being, but definitely not one you should ever want to piss off.

If you do you might not live to see this ...

-- 30 --

Don't forget to rate.  Kittens don't deserve to die.