Canoeing ≠ Drink Beer and Paddle Around Lazily. It Equals Drowning

Last weekend I was at home with my boyfriend, and his mom decided that we should all go canoeing together. All of us= The boyfriend, me, his mom and dad, two of his sisters, his sister's husband, his other sister's friend, our three roommates, our Czech roommate's cousin, and our friend Bao.

Two people per canoe. So that's 6 canoes, and a kayak for extremely lucky 13th person (boyfriend's bro-in-law). Extremely lucky, because canoeing is actually kind of hard. If you aren't good at communicating verbally, like a caveman, you are going to look like failure.

Keep in mind that it's June in Mississippi. If you've never been to Mississippi, well, you really aren't missing anything. But there's no way you've ever been to Mississippi in the summer, because you're reading this right now, and if you had been there, you would have laid down on the lava-like asphalt on Highway 90 during rush hour and prayed for a car to hit you before your face turned into tar. Because it's HOT. It's the kind of hot that does not fuck around. That was why we decided on canoeing to begin with. The only reason I can survive the heat is because there is so much Mississippi in my blood that I'm sadly used to it. It's learned helplessness.

After an hour-long drive into the bustling metropolis of Brooklyn, Mississippi, we found a canoe rental business. This place looked like the bus station from Total Recall, and the bathrooms looked they could have recently housed a meth lab. But we threw caution to the winds, because we're RISK TAKERS, dammit.

They put us on an unmarked bus, warned us about using the rope swings with the threat of paralysis, and took us to the bank of the creek. We waited around for another half hour while they yanked our canoes off the back of a truck and dragged them down to the water. I didn't realize right away that the ALUMINIUM canoes were roughly about a bajillion degrees. I sat down on the unforgiving seat and immediately leaped back to my feet, because I thought that maybe someone had thrown hot fry oil on my ass.

I put a towel down on the seat and sat back down, paddle in hand. Boyfriend (who I guess is really fiance', since we're getting married in two weeks) pushed us off the bank and off we went, joining the caravan of other canoes made up by our friends and his family.

It wasn't long before I decided to start drinking. Keep in mind that I'm 5'3" and weigh about 120 pounds, and have a notoriously low alcohol tolerance. Five beers and about an hour later, I am blitzed.

But I continue to keep up with my sunscreen application somehow (I am also notoriously pale) and I'm happily rubbing SPF 80 into my shins when I notice that something is awry.

While I had been taking a break to reapply my sunblock, we had sneaked up on roadblock of sorts, made up by two or three other canoes. We'd been running into this problem all day. The creek was only about two or three feet deep tops, and quite often the canoes would just bottom out on gravel or sand in the more shallow parts. Obviously two or three boats had just run aground.

I grabbed my paddle in a panic, but Fiance' assured me that we could just navigate around the other canoes. No big.

(3:16 PM) We approach the roadblock. We realize something is wrong.

(3:17 PM) No one has run aground. There is a mothereffing tree laying across the water.

(3:17 PM) This is the closest thing I've ever seen to a river rapid. We can't stop. We are going to hit his little sister's canoe.

(3:17 PM) We t-bone her canoe.

(3:17 PM) I realize we are going to flip over, but I'm strangely okay with it.

(3:17 PM) We flip over. Even though I realized we were going over within plenty of time to actually get out of the boat, the alcohol has slowed my reaction time to the speed of a Chevy Suburban full of soccer moms and their overachieving children oogling at Christmas light displays.

I'm underwater for half a second when I inhale at least a half a gallon of murky creek water full of bugs and twigs. If you have never inhaled water, it hurts. It's like a million angry bees stinging your lungs.

I also blame this on the beer. If I were sober I would have realized not to breathe underwater. Among other superpowers like epic self-confidence and attractiveness, being drunk also apparently makes me think I have gills.

Now that my lungs are on fire, I start to get kind of desperate to find the surface. I know that the surface is in the direction I know as "up," but I am unsure where "up" is. I decide to kick up from the bottom, but this is the part where I realize that this part of the creek is six feet deep, and I can't find the bottom either. I flail around haphazardly.

(3:17 PM) I hit my head on something. I decide it must be the canoe, and I am close to escape. But I still can't find the surface. I swallow more water and flail around some more.

(3:18 PM) I realize I am drowning.

(3:18 PM) Because I am drunk, I become at peace with the idea of drowning. I decide it's not so bad. I stop flailing.

(3:18 PM) Someone grabs me hard by the shoulder. Suddenly I can breathe. Sort of. Fiance' is gripping my arm really tight, and it hurts. I try to tell him to get his meatgrabbers off me, but instead I start choking on air and cough up water. A lot of it.

As I'm hacking up pee-colored creek water, I look over in time to see Fiance's sister clinging to the tree, my pink flip-flops floating downstream, and I realize my sunglasses are missing. Someone is screaming about the sandwiches in the cooler being ruined, because for some reason we were in charge of keeping the cooler safe. My beer is gone too. Damn.

I manage to wade my way to shore, where I lay down in the dirt and continue coughing. Fiance' comes to check on me after he fished all of our belongings out of the water, and told me that he hadn't even realized I was underwater until he had flipped the canoe back over and saved the cooler. For a moment I contemplate being mad that he hadn't saved me sooner, but decide against it. I do owe him my life, after all.

We managed to end the trip without any more major mishaps. Part of that is because after awhile I just let Fiance' paddle and I sat down in the bottom of the canoe and ate Doritos.