April 25th, 2008
Trouble in Paradise
Our friends Megan and Kaiser, Steph, and I just got back from our annual around-the-time-of-my-birthday trip. We started this tradition in college when we went to Megan’s parent’s beach house before we all went home for the summer, for two years in a row. We’ve returned every year since, except for the spring of 2006, when we all went to New York City, which is not Atlantic Beach, but still somehow made for a good time.
I wish I could tell you the transition from 27-years-old to 28-years-old — an event that is free of age-related milestones that require doing or reflecting on something specific — was relaxing and breezy. Unfortunately, at the beach, I had to wrestle with the possibility that my marriage is doomed to fail.
You see, Kaiser and Megan’s present to me this year was to get us all spaces on a kayak tour, courtesy of the NC Aquarium, around the sound and protected swamp areas they maintain. When we arrived and got prepped, our guides Kurt and Jess — your consummate Laurel and Hardy of nature expeditions — gave each of us the option of taking our own one-person kayaks, or pairing up with someone and using a two-person model. Being rugged and, I’m sorry, but seriously muscled in the arm-area, I could have handled my own kayak no problem. And being so tough and self-reliant, I would have preferred this, but my waifish wife was worried she wouldn’t be able to keep up and, ya know, sometimes you just have to do what the woman wants and besides with her in tow it would slow me down so I wouldn’t finish the tour and be on the dock drinking a beer while the others were still figuring out how to use their paddles. Amiright fellas! Bwah-ha-ha-ha!
“These two-person boats are great relationship counseling,” Kurt explained to us as we slid them into the water. He grinned and called back to his better half, who was adjusting hip waders, “Aren’t they Jess?”
“Yep,” Jess answered indifferently, not taking his eyes of what he was doing.
Kaiser and Megan opted for separate one-seaters. For some reason, they were not interested in trying to get their paddling in sync while a bunch of strangers watched their every move and drew elaborate conclusions about their relationship. I got a little nervous as we hit the water. “Why weren’t we required to go kayaking before we got married? What was the state thinking? What was the church thinking? ”
After some clumsy paddle-contact and a little drifting around, direction-wise, we began moving at the same cadence and solidified our steering roles. And we took off! We were doing it! We were propelling ourselves through the water and through this little compatibility test! And we were going to make it!
That’s when we tipped over. In the muckiest part of the salt marsh we were passing through. I’m not going to say whose fault it was. All I’m going to say is, to review, me: rugged, well-muscled, tough, self-reliant. My wife: waifish. Also, a “land lubber.” Also not particularly “sea-legged.” Also, “not very good at the kayaking, particularly the part about not causing the boat to tip over.” I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions about who was to blame.
The tour was still a lot fun. The bad news was, with the tip-over that Steph caused, she had sabotaged our kayak trip/marriage. I tried to mask my pain as we righted ourselves.1 When we returned to the aquarium I fully intended to obtain a divorce packet (which I assume all public aquariums keep on hand). Then, however, I thought about the previous year’s trip. A trip which saw us conduct one of the most glorious displays of connectedness and closeness ever.
It happened during a game of Cranium, which we played on Saturday evening. It was couple-vs.-couple and things were getting a might competitive, thanks to a certain person in our group. I’m not going to point the finger at who it was, bu…. Oh screw it: it was Megan’s fault. So, as with the kayaking, there was an acute understanding that whichever couple could accomplish this arbitrary challenge most efficiently had the blissful marriage. The losers might as well pack it in that night.
The score was neck-and-neck toward the end of the game. That’s when I drew one of the “Creative Cat” cards that calls for you to sculpt an object out of clay, while your teammate has 30 seconds to guess what it is. I have a BFA in Art which, as I once revealed, gives one a serious advantage in Pictionary-type situations. Even with that, however, we were way up the creek with this clue. As I read it off of the card, it seemed totally impossible: “Buddha.” Pretty obscure for that context, and pretty hard to render a three-dimensional likeness of in 30 seconds.
The clay was handed over, the timer was flipped and, as the sand started to fall, Steph began guessing. “Pencil…! Bird…! Buddha…!”
Five seconds into it, we were done. All I had done so far was roll out a “snake,” twist it into a pretzel to make the crossed legs, and slap it on the lump of remaining clay. There was no way the monstrosity I was holding looked anything like a Buddha.
Three jaws dropped in silent disbelief. Steph was sitting on the opposite side of the floor from the rest of us, and is a big rule-follower anyway, still we made her take a solemn oath that she had not somehow seen the clue. “What Bob was making just made me think ‘Buddha’,” she explained. This round propelled my wife and I forward to win the game.
So as we made our returned to our point of departure in our kayak, I decided I’d stick this thing out. I guess it can’t always be wine and roses, right? “Richer or poorer….” “Sickness or health….” “Kicking ass at Cranium or drenched in slime and smelling of dead fish.”
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1 Of course, I’m laying on the sarcasm with a trowel here, but by the way Jess and Kurt seemed to want to delicately “diffuse the situation” when they were helping us get back in our boat, we could tell that they must have honestly had couples get into shouting matches as they sat there in swamp water with their belongings getting soaked and their kayak rapidly sinking. Poor guys.
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