A Brief Word to Clear the Air

My Dear Correspondents,

While I have tried to be the better party and rise above the fray, I am compelled to defend my good name and clarify a few "facts" which have been bruited about since this weekend's kayak excursion upon the Charles River, also known as "Oh God Oh God We're Sinking It Must Be Sharks". I shall address these misconceptions in order.

1. I did NOT sabotage the foot pump of my inflatable kayak so that I could spend a peaceful morning on the couch. This is just silly. The lure of the open water holds great appeal to me. (Shadeless, probably toxic, beset by crew teams and berserk scullers and what IS THE DEAL WITH PADDLING BACKWARDS YOU NITWITS though it may be.)

Besides, I would have had to sabotage both pumps in order to have a chance of success.

2. It has been said that I "smirked" upon entering a portion of the river described seconds before as "The Gates of Paradise" and immediately, within two seconds, encountering a dead carp. Rarely has such a short statement been so off-base. Let me take the mistakes in order:

A) I do not "smirk". Smirking is an unsightly facial expression reserved for mean-yet-inexplicably-popular junior high schoolers and their mental peers, the talking heads in VH1 documentaries. *I* smile wryly. Occasionally, for special occasions, I'll bring my eyebrows into play and move things up a notch to Sardonic. But smirk? Never.

B) Regardless of what you call my expression, it was not the sight of the fish which inspired it, but rather my Companion of the Waves telling me "I thought it was a dead guy's bald head". Some people see a lagoon and say it's half full; some say it's half empty. A few special people see a lagoon and say it's got a corpse floating in it.

3. Yes, we went into the lock near the Museum of Science and met a Duck Boat loaded with tourists coming the other way. Did I "have the hell scared out of me"? Did I really "in my haste keep crashing into each other and the wall"? Fiddlesticks! Does a chihuahua crash into walls when confronting an elephant? Does Yoda pitch and yaw madly when attacking a Star Destroyer?

..they do?

Oh. I feel better, then.

By the way, and this is JUST a hypothetical note, it's a bad idea to try to start a water fight with a Duck Boat by using your oar to splash them. While you'd think the tourists are too high in the boat to actually reach the water with their greedy little clutching midwestern hands, that's not actually the case. And there are a LOT of them.