Survival of the Most Well Read

As we face the thick of summer here in Toronto people begin fleeing by the SUV full to get away from the sticky days where the city offers no escape, not even beneath the shadow of the CN Tower.

Every Friday evening in drive-ways across town people begin loading their cars until every inch of trunk, floor, and passenger lap is covered in suitcase or food. If a foreign observer from far off Belarus or Paraguay should happen to catch this sight they might conclude that Toronto was undergoing a mass exodus, that its citizens were filling their cars with enough supplies to last them months. In fact most of us are only leaving for a weekend, and its far from a mass exodus (though try convincing yourself of this while your inching your way out of Toronto on a Friday night), rather its a trip to the cottage.

The word cottage implies different things around the world. For instance its a labourer or fisherman’s home in France, but here in Canada while some cottagers may consider themselves fishermen there is little labouring to be had. In fact few of those whose claim to ‘fisherman’ status are truthful, rather they are men who sit in a boat for three hours watching to see if anything is feeling stupid enough to bite into their hook, essentially worm life guards.

A cottage here is a word that invokes a retreat to a summer home on a lake. Its mornings spent in a canoe or afternoons in a hammock, sun tanning (pronounced: burn) and swimming in water that’s never quite as warm as your body was expecting, it was hoping for a nice little cool down but nature decided to go into a different direction and give you water that makes your goose bumps shiver.

Years ago over the August long weekend I was up at a friend’s cottage when she decided it would be fun to strap a PVC plastic tube to the back of some 300 (Sea?)Horse Power motor and take turns sitting in it.

I had a bit of an infatuation with the girl in question, who for the sake of this column we’ll call her Lizz.

Because that’s what her parents call her… and her dad still intimidates me.

Lizz walked me through the in’s and out’s of tubeing, which was basically being in the tube is good, being out of the tube is going to hurt as we’re moving at speeds that will make the water feel like concrete. At this point I decided this wasn’t my idea of a vacation, a decision that didn’t really matter as the hormonal teenager with a crush half had already decided we were doing this no matter what.

I was also told to signal with my hand if I felt the need for the boat to go faster, slower, or stop. It was comforting to know I had choices as to the speed of my death.

So I strapped on a lifejacket, grasped tightly to the sides of the tube, and suddenly I found myself tubeing, or as they call it in Texas, ‘Butthole Surfing’… please trust me on this, nothing good can come from Googling ‘Butthole Surfing’.

It was around the time the motor got itself up to speed that I realized a problem in the hand signal system, both my hands were far to busy clinging for dear life to the rope in front of me.

It appeared I had one of two choices, fall or wait till the motor runs out of gas.

I had every intention of being dragged around the lake until it began to sputter, a plan that lasted far too short.

The handle of the tube snapped, sending the rope that was tied to it hurtling away.

Or at least I assume it hurtled, myself and the tube were a little busy at the moment. When once we had been traveling the speed of the boat we had now lost all momentum, causing tube and Derek to summersault all too briefly through the air before continuing the gymnastics underwater.

Busy daydreaming about finally wooing Lizz back on land and unprepared for submersion I hadn’t really had a chance to grab a breath. I quickly became painfully aware of this, and of the disorientation the summersaults had caused. I looked frantically all around, trying to see which way led to oxygen.

In every direction there was nothing but water.

Now I’ve always had a strange fascination with books on survival skills. I love pouring over the pages of information and the diagrams. I love to sit and imagine what sort of adventurous life leads one to needing such a book. Because of this I could tell you the way to land a plane or the safest way to jump from a moving vehicle. I know how to filter water though a sock and how to build traps for food.

I can’t say I have ever had to use this information, no one really needs to know how to fend off a shark when you grow up in a neighbourhood where the biggest drama is that “Patrick, not like short Patrick but like you know, Patrick from history class, he totally cheated on Ashley with Megan, not like Megan Megan though, the curly haired Megan.”

The survival books were mere curiousities. That someone out there could be reading the same book and then actually needing to use them has never ceased to stir my imagination.

But here I was, lost and low on oxygen, as author Bill Bryson once put it, I was about to take the swim that needs no towel. I started to get a little disappointed that my life hadn’t begun flashing before me, began to feel a little cheated.

I debated what way to swim, I knew any one of these directions could lead to air, but that I only had enough of it in my lungs to allow for one choice.

Then it occurred to me, some a small tidbit, a short and dull fact I had breezed over in several books to get onto the exciting stuff: people die all the time by swimming for what way they think is up, but if you let your body go limp it’ll float its own way there.

And it worked.

Did I really need to tell you that?

Within no time I was being scooped up from the water and into the boat as we raced towards solid ground, that wondrous place where the stuff that feels like concrete is concrete, and which won’t drown you… unless of course you’ve offended someone with certain connections.

News traveled fast around the cottage and everyone soon had listened with baited breath to my story of near death.

In my imagination these action heroes, these survivalists, always just barely escape with their lives, able to live on to get the girl and whose heroic adventures are held in awe by anyone whose path he crosses.

I escaped with my life, using something I had read no less. But in real life death is a tragedy deserving of no one, near-death is just a story that you can trade in on until Bert goes to build a fire and burns his eyebrows off.

Did you enjoy this column? Want to share it with someone?

Click to Email Column to Friends

And don't forget the easy way to ensure you don't miss the latest installment of Cidiot, just hit Subscribe