Comic Life

Short Story

Paddling Blues
The nerves were larger then the fiberglass canoe we were carrying down to the water. It was my first regatta of the entire season, and I swear to god the longest 2 and a half miles you could travel over any stretch of water. This race was supposedly the most important race of the season to our club- it pretty much reflected to my crew however, on how many long hours we took out of our gossip stories and complaining of the heat to actually dip our paddles into the water to empress the coaches. Don’t get me wrong, paddling's a passion- but there comes a point when you just want to paddle. You don’t want to listen to the coaches. You just want to get out on the water and absorb the moment; this was one of those times.
The coarse was shown to us by finger pointing and buoys outlining the absolute boundaries of this race without lanes. As we all walked out- leaving the soft sand to our battleground, the Kailua bay filled with brightly colored canoes. The coach had informed us many times of the incidents that usually occurred at this race, this included flipped boats and broken paddles- this killed me. Out of all the encouragement she could have provided, she bobbed her blonde head in between rules, and pointed out the largest girls that we were already intimidated by. When she offered us an extra paddle, instead of accepting, we leaped into the canoe and shot off.
The paddle out there was none the less nerve racking. My little wood weapon was shaking from my hands, and coated with the seawater it had already hit. The team with scrawny girls who looked anxious and about to throw up was the team I belonged to. When the flag had finally gone up, after an exaggerated wait, everyone threw down a few heavy strokes to get the boat going, and eventually lead us to crashing into the sides of others. The race officials who wanted to keep everything "keiki" and "humble" prohibited cursing, but I'm pretty sure I learned some new words that day.
In mid race, after accidental blows to the ama, and run-ins with some of our larger competitors, my energy was at an all time low. The goal to win was at the least of our priorities since we had taken last in the second turn. It wasn’t until someone shouted, a single word of encouragement, or maybe it was a sound of them dying, something along the lines encouragement my team persisted and agreed to paddle our damn arms out until we reached the top three. And don’t get me wrong, this plan was genius and all, considering all we needed was our 6 bodies to pull our 6 paddles beside our 6 seats and make this 200-pound boat move. To bad we lost an element.
The race was really heating up; we were gaining places and showing off our (if you can imagine) muscles. Each blade went in simultaneously following the seat 1's "beat", and then I heard a silence from the rear end of the boat. No, there was no more water being flung onto my back, nor strength the boat used to have. I glanced back to see our seat 5 sitting there in shock. I then turned my attention to the little piece of wood that would have lead us to victory- floating in the open ocean, along sides of our competitors. When the announcement came from our steersman that someone had lost a paddle, like we already didn’t figure it out, my entire crew died. And all of a sudden the coach's words, " bring an extra paddle" became clearer then the water we were previously going to take victory in.
I no longer considered my arms limbs; they were long weights that caused pain up until the last stroke. When we crossed the finish line, we finished in third. Before me, along with our entire crew swore off paddling (until we had all been elected into the next race). Oh and the winner of the match, those "humble" phonies, gave us back the paddle they just came across while paddling in the water.
I learned a lot from that one race, from now on I will always be prepared for any event. Well, that’s not possible, I will take with me an extra paddle in my races, and maybe listen to the coaches if there words of wisdom come up. I guess the moral would be to be prepared, because what you forget could affect many more people then yourself.