I just happened to see the word “canoe” at random today, and now I can't stop thinking about canoeing. It had been so long since I have been in a canoe, and that blows. I like canoeing. In fact, I am pretty damn good at it, too. I have never once tipped over in a canoe.

I used to go canoeing in south Jersey back in the high school years. Most of the time, it was with the church youth group. We would drive down to some river in the Pine Barrens and spend the day canoeing, eating picnic lunches and, in my case anyway, trying to make feeble attempts to flirt with the guy I liked while simultaneously deflecting the flirtations from the guy I could only think of as a friend.

The river we canoed on was narrow for the most part, but it was creepy. The water was stained a dark brownish-red shade because the roots of the cedar and pine trees had colored the water. It was fragrant, and if you were splashed with that water it would leave little tan spots on your clothes. Tree branches would sometimes hang way down into the water so we had to maneuver around them, and that’s how I found out I was good at canoeing—I could steer a canoe like a fuckin’ champ. Like I said, I never toppled over. We wobbled, sure, but there was no falling into that dark, scary water.

I know I’ve mentioned my sick imagination before, and how I sometimes make up pretty gross things. Well, on one trip I was riding in a canoe with one of my good friends and I started talking out loud as we quietly moved over the dark water and ducked our heads under tree branches. I started to make up a story, about a woman who was drowned in the river by a crazy guy. But she didn’t stay dead, because it turned out she was crazy, too. So she lived under the water, swimming along and looking up at people on the river with her whitish-brown, water-soaked empty eyesockets. It got a lot more gross, but I won’t get into it here, since this is supposed to be the “funny” blog, and not the Fangoria blog.

Either way, I really scared this girl. She seriously got mad at me for saying that stuff, and I remember being a little hurt she didn’t join in and make up scary stuff, too. I misjudged this girl, and thought she’d be into scaring ourselves a little. Nope. We had to paddle a lot faster, so we could reach the more open parts of the river and the sunlight, and of course, to stay close to the rest of the group. She said that I was mean to make that shit up. After lunch, I got a new canoeing partner for the rest of the trip, and it ended up being very fun after all, with no more bony hands, empty eyes or ropy intestines.

Um. Other things about canoeing that rocked? The time me and my boyfriend at the time, Steve, went canoeing on a lake up near Lake Placid. My parents and sister were also canoeing and hanging out at the lakeside, and Steve and I started taking the canoeing very seriously. We went as fast as we possibly could go, and we tried to do fast turns and basically just push the limits of XTreme Canoeing. However, overall I remember it being very peaceful out on that little lake in the mountains. It was fun canoeing with someone who I just had a nice rapport with; we could just shut the hell up and canoe. At one point, he did something so weird: he asked me to sing. We were far enough away from my family that I decided it would be OK (I have this thing where I don’t want to sing in front of people I know). I sang some opera-type stuff, if I recall, and probably not that well. Later, he wrote a little essay about that day and how my voice sounded out on the water, with the sound of the oars pushing against the water. It was very cool.

Either way, I need to go canoeing again. I don’t care if I am alone, because really what I want to do is just glide along quietly and think; and also feel that awesome burn in your arms and upper back from the rowing. If you want to come with me, you have to be ready to let me be the boss, though. If I want to go this way on the river, you’ve got to back me up; if I want to tell horror stories, just let me finish it out. And finally, if you want me to sing, don’t ask for opera, please. Let me sing Creedence Clearwater Revival, because Fogerty is more in line with where my vocal range is nowadays. Scary.