Sailing Away

I’m sure by now that you’ve all seen the video sensation that is currently sweeping the nation (or at least my dorm), “I’m On A Boat,” by Lonely Island. I have to admit, I have seen that video more often in the past week than I’ve seen my Anthropology professor this semester (in a possibly related statistic, the number of times I’ve seen the video exceeds the number of questions I got right on my Anthropology exam). But as much as I love the video, it also makes me a bit nostalgic and homesick.

You see, growing up in Hawaii I was always surrounded by water. I learned to swim before I could spell (to be fair, I could have learned to swim last week and this would still be true) and I can probably swim faster than I can run (of course, some people might say that cadavers swim faster than I run). I loved the beach, and I also loved riding on boats. I always took the ocean for granted, not realizing that Midwesterners still think that the ocean is some mythical land of sea serpents that suddenly drops off into hell.

So needless to say, after I decided to go to the University of Colorado, I was disappointed to find out (after some extensive research), that Colorado is not next to the ocean. The biggest body of water in Colorado as it turns out is my toilet. JOKE TIME: So this Colorado State student walks outside when he sees another CSU student in the middle of a field. Rowing a boat. The first CSU student shakes his head and yells at the student in the boat: “You know, it’s idiots like you that give CSU a bad name. If I could swim, I would go over there and slap you in the head.”

Ha ha, get it? No? You must go to Nebraska. Anyways, the ocean is one of the things that I miss the most up here (right after spam, rice and one lane roads). Especially riding on boats. I have always said, a nice boat is the first thing I’m going to buy if I somehow get rich. (I don’t know exactly how that is going to happen, but I’m looking at lawsuits. For instance, I am currently alleging that Windows Vista has given me herpes.) One of my dad’s former co-workers used to have a small fishing boat, and when I was younger they used to take me on fishing trips. To be fair, I don’t really remember what happened on that first trip. You see, we had to wake up early, which is not a specialty of mine. On top of that, my dad gave me Dramamine, which is designed to prevent seasickness (but I don’t get seasick, so I still don’t get why he gave me any), but would be just as useful as a whale tranquilizer. The stuff knocks you out, so I was basically asleep for most of the trip.

But aside from that first trip, I have had lots of pleasant boating experiences. It’s hard not to have fun when the sun is shining, the ocean is spraying in your face and there are dolphins swimming alongside the boat. Although to be honest, fishermen actually hate dolphins, because they are actually vicious animals that eat all the fish you are trying to catch. One second you’re reeling in a fish and then all of a sudden the fish feels lighter, and by the time you reel in a fish head, you realize that a dolphin has gotten to it.

I mean, catching fish is fun, but the main purpose of catching fish is to prove to the women that you were actually doing something productive while out on the boat. You see, I may be stereo-typing here (and as usual, I don’t care), but women don’t go out on boats as often as men do. Some of the fun of being on a boat is that we get to do guy things, like eat lots of greasy food, fart and burp freely, wipe our hands on our pants, sleep in the sun, swear, and spit. We can’t be going back to shore every ten minutes for bathroom breaks, so as men our ability to pee standing up is of great advantage on a boat. If you’ve never peed into the ocean off the side of a moving boat you’re missing out; it may be the funnest thing you can do legally (at least I’m pretty sure it’s legal). For some reason, women view these activities as unproductive, so we have to catch fish so they stop nagging us about wasting an entire day on a boat.

So boating has gotten better since the days where they got scurvy and got killed by large white whales (literally and metaphorically). But there are still some dangers to boating. Once, I reeled in a fish that had a large chunk bitten out of it, and we looked into the water and saw a shark. If you’ve never seen a shark in real life before, it is scary as hell. You always tell yourself that when you meet a shark, you’ll just punch it in the nose or whatever Animal Planet tells you to do and then you convince yourself that the whole “sharks kill less people than bees” crap is true. But that stat is only true because sharks can’t fly. The second we saw that fin come out of the water we moved to the center of the boat, as if the shark might jump up and bite our heads off. But those are the risks that we take as boaters, because we hear the call of the ocean. It’s saying we should stop peeing in it.