The ultimate punchline, then, for those of you raptly following my dragonboat uniform saga, is that at race day on Saturday, after squeezing myself into this tiny little “large” shirt, i look over at another guy on the team who’s about four times my height with a very mild layer of flab, and his shirt is hanging off him - just draped on him like Vegas groupies on a high roller. i said “How in the HELL does a “large” fit you that loosely??” And he said “Large? Erm … this is an extra large.”

An extra large, eh wise guy? i felt like i was on one of those hidden camera shows, except it was a subject that would only really interest someone who goes by the name of me. An extra large? All this time, i thought i was going to have to do something drastic to maintain the illusion that i wasn’t weighing the boat down with my errant ice cream eating, and there was a mothering, life-affirming, flab-masking extra large waiting for me the whole time.

Dragonboating itself is, on the whole, pretty terrible. i think i’ve said as much. It’s just such an unnatural way to move your body, especially when you’re as uncomfortable with your body as a baby in a … in a baby-exploding factory. For you more co-ordinated readers, let me break it down into terms you’ll grasp:

Your dragonboating coach sits you down and tells you to hold your paddle between your knees. Then you’re supposed to raise your arms up over your head, sneeze, and jerk your upper body backwards AS HARD AS YOU CAN. And when you do that, your coach will say “no - i said ‘HARD.’” So you throw yourself backwards with as much force as you can muster, and he’ll remind you to keep your knees clenched and your bellybutton at right angles to your elbows, whatever that means. All in all, it’s a very treacherous sport to take up when you find it hard enough to co-ordinate walking with breathing.

Race day last Saturday was especially awful. It was a 2000 metre race, with a couple of 500m heats to place our boat. The coach assured us that we wouldn’t do anything different than what we learned in practice. It was just another practice. Just another practice. My mind wandered back to our practices, where we had been steadily building up our endurance to tackle the grueling 2k race. We had also learned how to do a race start. You basically paddle like your face is on fire for 20 or so strokes. My brain retreived a soundbite of the coach telling us that we’ll never go as fast in a race as we do in a start. Fine. Dandy even.

So we paddle our boat up to the starting line. The ref, or boatmoustache, or whatever ridiculous and contrary word dragonboaters have cooked up for their starting line guy, said “the call will be ‘gentlemen, ready your suspenders … go!’” or something silly like that. i just remember it was in two parts, and aside from the word “go,” not a lot of it had to do with racing. But the word “go” came a lot faster than i thought it would, and there we were - paddling like our faces were on fire. Fine. Dandy.

Then we got to the part where we’re supposed to cool our jets. The boat was moving, we were past the starting line - all was well. The coach, from the back of the boat, yelled “LENGTHEN IT OUT NAW!” (He said “naw” instead of “now” because he’s got a bit of a Trinidadian accent, which can be fun. He also says “toh” instead of “two.”) Anyway, the people on the boat most certainly did NOT lengthen it out naw. Instead, they kept going stupid fast - way toh fast for poor chubby me to keep up, i’ll have you know. It was all i could do to keep my arms moving and not hurl my bulge out of the boat to end it all. To add insult to injury, we were getting completely smoked by the boat next to us, a trend which would continue in the next heat.

My friends, i could have quit right then and there. Forget all the effort i’d put into the practices until that point; forget the hundred clams i had just shelled out for a lifejacket. i was DONE. If races were going to be a complete Rain Man spazfest where all our technique just flew out the window, then forget it. i wanted out.

There was a break of about an hour between the placing heats and the dreaded 2k, during which we saw our place on the ladder second from the bottom. Oh, balls.

Looking around at the other teams, i could tell they were all a lot more fit than the semi-soft 30-something crowd that comprise our boat. One team was made up of kinda scrawny girls in their early 20’s. i asked the coach if we had actually placed second-last behind a boat full of little girls. He looked at me and said “those little girls represented Canada last year.”

Oh. i get it. The odds were impossibly, stupidly stacked against us. This race was organized by The Hated.

i solemnly zipped up my hundred dollar life jacket, popped a few final Timbits in my mouth, and marched gravely to the boat for the 2k race.

The 2k was an arduous, overlong paddle twice around Toronto’s outer harbour area, which smells of fish who have committed suicide. Being second last, only one other boat got out of the gate ahead of us. We tried very hard to catch up, but it wasn’t in the cards. Tougher still was the fact that the boat behind us gained enough water to sidle up to us around our 5th turn. We were paddling faster than them, and they should have given a berth, but they kept on around the turn and forced us to take it wide. Later, the coach would say that he should’ve rammed them. i don’t know much about the sport, but ramming sounds like one of the more enjoyable aspects. Dunno how it feels being the ramee.

The final stretch of the 2k was where we really earned our wings. Exhausted, the crew half-heartedly paddled while the coach kept calling for power strokes and pickin’-it-up and c’mon naw and get dis boat moovin’, but there was nothing for it. The guy in front of me had leaked so much energy that his paddle was flying everywhere; he was almost leaning on it every time he stroked. i was feeling near death myself. My body was exhausted, but my brain was still plucky and aggravated. i may not have been able to paddle, but i still had something left to give.

With the coach desperately yelling at us to pour more into it, i started to grunt. With every stroke, i let out a gutteral UNGH like Frankenstein’s monster trying to figure out a calculus problem. i made noises like i was punching telemarketers. Fierce noises. Feral noises. Embarrassing noises, the like of which you only hear from guys at the gym who wear mullets and grey camoflauge workout pants. And friends, about five shameful grunts in, something very special happened. The guy next to me started to grunt.

Every time we smashed that paddle into the water, we grunted. The two of us. And then the three of us. And then, magically, horribly, the entire back of the boat chimed in. As the third boat in line powered past us, we hemorrhaged strength and energy and passion into our finish. And by cracky, we finished. We had grunted the our way through a 2 kilometre race.

We limply paddled the boat back to the dock. When i dragged myself out, the waves of water we had taken on in our second turn splooshed out of the bottoms of my pants. The fat lip i gave myself by smashing the paddle into my face during the first turn had gone down. i was weak, weary, and ready to collapse. And i wasn’t quitting. Not for anything.

Something horrible has happened, as it often does, and it’s my fault. As it often is.

What’s the word they teach you in high school English? Hamartia? The tragic flaw that causes your own downfall? Well, my tragic flaw used to be my own extreme cleverness. Oftentimes i’d find myself holding a very important phone number or ancient artifact or piece of money and i’d think “Gosh! This thing is SO IMPORTANT that i’d better find a really, really good and safe hiding place for it.” Then i’d troddle along and stuff it under the sofa cushions or behind the floorboards or in the bathtub or somewhere ridiculous and, predictably, when i went to find it 6 months later, i couldn’t remember where i’d put it.

They say squirrels behave in much the same way.

But no, these days my hamartia is my striking nobility. It’s the quality that persuaded me to knit a stuffed pig for my unborn child only to come off as a gigantic pervert on the streetcar. But this time it’s really bitten me.

i may have mentioned once or twice in these pages that i feel i’m somewhat overweight. Fair? But far from being one to just sit around all day and grump about not being able to see my own toes, i’m constantly devising plans to fix my problem. (Incidentally, my current plan has me munching on nacho chips and root beer while i type. Way to go, fatty!) So in addition to walking 6 km each way to work and back, i decided a few months ago to take up dragonboating.

“Stop,” some of you may be saying, “Didn’t you say you were fat? And you’re taking up dragonboating?? For my unfamiliar readers, dragonboating is a team sport wherein twenty people plunk themselves down in a giant war canoe and contort their bodies into circusly-freakish unnatural positions to drag their paddles through the water and win races. There are no cash rewards for the races, but they cost money to enter. There are no nachos in dragonboating. i asked.

i’m not going to pretend that dragonboating is only for fit people. It’s not. You can easily be a little bit chubby and get along just fine, which is what i seem to be doing. But believe me: it’s work. i’m told that during the races we even have a drummer, leading me to wonder why we don’t just go whole hog and hire someone to flay our backs with a cat o’ nine tails while we row. Oh ee OH oh. Thump. Thump. WHIICRAKKK! It fits.

i’ve survived a month’s worth of practices now, two days a week, down at the scuzziest harbour Lake Ontario has to offer. i’ve only missed one practice, and i think that was because i let my water bottle roll around in the bottom of the boat, which was quite filled with Lake Ontario water (read: raw sewage), and i took a few swigs and fell deathly ill and was unable to make practice. But aside from one horrifying night of the sweats and the chills and the snots that led to my rather embarrassing need to spit in public (as i’ve recently and vividly detailed), i haven’t been doing too badly.

Until Wednesday night’s practice.

It was the last practice before our first big race, which happens tomorrow at 8:15 in the friggin’ morning. It was shaping up to be a wonderful night on the lake - the sun was shining and the water was still … a nice change from the HAIL and BRIMSTONE we’d been paddling through the rest of the month. There was just the small matter of paying for the team uniform that we’d wear on race day, which cost 35 bucks. Did i have 35 bucks on me? Ah, yes. i did. Wunderbar.

i paid for my uniform and made certain to ask for the largest size, aptly called a “large,” much like the large shakes and the large orders of french fries i’ve been enjoying for most of my young life. Having nothing breezier to wear that evening, i decided to slip on my new team shirt.

i … i decided to … ungh … struggle into my new team shirt …

… ungha ….

i … i decided to suck in my m… massive paunch and h… hold my breath until i could wrest the skimpy shirt down below my womanish nipples …

PHEEEWWW!!!

Exhale exhale exhale exhale exhale. Look around self-consciously. Exhale exhale exhale.

i was in the shirt, but friends, i didn’t like it. Not one bit. To call it “form-fitting” would be accurate … the real drag was that it was fitting a form like mine. NOT a pretty sight. Getting the shirt on had been like stretching a rubber glove over a birdcage. Every inch of my curvaceous torso was highlighted, with all the parts i regularly try to hide featuring prominently. It was punishment. i was being punished for trying to exercise. Foolish me! How dare i try to better myself? No matter where i go, they’re gonna get me. That uniform was clearly made by The Hated - sexy, svelt seamstresses with no regard for how a water shirt stretches over an unsightly frame. Not a single fat mannequin in the showroom.

Luckily, dragonboaters are required to wear lifejackets in case they spontaneously leap out of the un-tippy boat (the condition of Lake Ontario keeps me securely inside), so i thought i’d be able to hide the parts-which-must-needs-be-hidden behind some orange slabs of foam. i threw on the jacket and cinched up the straps to keep everything from oozing out the sides, and took my place in the boat.

We were practicing for a race that night, i mentioned - a very long one at 2km, with two 500m starting races beforehand. So it was a tough practice. We had to paddle like sweaty, angry monkeys with treasure to bury, and by God we did. By the end of it, i was feeling pretty decent, aside from a creeping pain in my side. The coach took some time to do one-on-one exercises with everyone and when he got to me, the pain in my side was really unbearable. i looked down and noticed the lifejacket strap underneath my ribs was really tight, and was yanking up on my tender, chubby ribcage. A friend of mine looked back at me and pointed out that my lifejacket was cinched so tight that the two halves of my jacket had buckled and were overlapping like tectonic plates grinding together to form the Rockies.

i loosened the straps, but ever since i’ve been walking around feeling like my ribs were cracked. i have a race to paddle tomorrow in an uncomfortably sexy wet shirt that shows off my man-boobs and an angry abscess pooling behind a few of my ouchier ribs.

And the punchline, dear friends? The point of the story? The tragic flaw causing my downfall? The whole reason i joined the dragonboat team was to lose weight and be healthy for the arrival of my unborn, stuffed pervert pig-loving child, and to one day show him or her a photo of dear old dad proudly posing in uniform with his dragonboat team.

It’s quite often easier just to eat nachos.

i was talking to someone i just recently met, and a name came up in conversation. i don’t like using people’s real names without their permission, so i’ll cook up a plausible pseudonym … let’s call him “Billy Q. Whipplestumps.”

So this person was gabbing away and strangely, providentially, mentioned Billy Q. Whipplestumps by his full name in casual conversation. i said “Billy Q. Whipplestumps? i think i went to high school with that guy!” Keep in mind that i live in Toronto now, which is far enough from The Shwa that any mention of the place is like invoking a sort of torrid Shangri-La. Shangri-Shwa.

So she said “You went to high school with Billy Q. Whipplestumps?” And i said “Yeah! We used to tease him all the time and call him …” Well, i can’t really tell you his nickname, because it’s based on his real name, which is most certainly not Billy Q. Whipplestumps. But let me give it a shot, just to keep the ball rolling:

“Yeah! We used to tease him all the time and call him … Billy Q. Nipplelumps!” (Phew! i pulled THAT one out of the fire.)

Then i got to thinking that maybe Billy Q. Whipplestumps wasn’t that uncommon a name. So i said “It’s the same guy, right? He has brown hair … ?” And she said - and this, dear readers, is the point of my rambling - “Mmm … brown hair? No. It’s kinda … grey.” i said “Grey? Oh. Then maybe it’s NOT the same Billy Q. Whipplestumps. How old is he?” She said “Twenty-eight.”

Same Billy Q. Whipplestumps.

It dawned on me that since it’s been nearly ten years, my memories of these people might not hold water if it came down to, say, providing a police sketch. Since i haven’t seen my classmates for so long, i have this fossilized image of them stored in my brain, like a snapshot archive of them in their youth - a yearbook in my brain - and my best memories of them are held as pictures of young, vibrant people with promising futures. Now Billy Q. Whipplestumps is a grey-haired accountant. In my brain, i’ve x’ed out his yearbook picture.

A few years back, i was ordering a pita, and a guy behind the counter asked me if i’d like mustard on that. He had been a good-looking, athletically able guy in the gifted program with whom i’d had a gentleman’s duel over a pretty girl. Now i was x’ing out his yearbook picture in my mind and replacing it with a snapshot of him in a paper hat.

Just a few weeks ago, i saw him again on the sidewalk. He was walking with his girlfriend, who apparently lives next door to me. He was smoking some kind of cigarello, and she was chawing on a cigar. She wasn’t nearly as pretty as the girl who in high school we had been vying for, but HE looked good … much nicer to see that he was reasonably employed and enjoying some of the finer things life had to offer, like … cigarellos? i dunno.

At any rate, i x’ed out the picture of him in the paper hat hunched over a dodgy salad bar of wilting lettuce and mealy tomatoes, and replaced it with a sunny snapshot of him walking along with his chain-smoking girlfriend, happily arguing about what to put on their nachos.

i remember quite vividly being in Thunder Bay where my mom grew up, visiting one of her high school friends and flipping through her PACI (Port Arthur Collegiate Institute) yearbook. i was pointing to snapshots of this person and that person, asking what became of them, being especially interested in the pretty girls (with their giant, stylin’ beehive hairdos). At any rate, i pointed to what was probably the only Asian guy in the yearbook - the only Asian guy in Thunder Bay, i’ll bet - and Mom said “Yeah - that guy died a few years ago.” i stared at the picture, finding it hard to believe. He was just a young guy, maybe 17 years old. And he was dead.

But no, that was just the strange trick played by yearbook photos. When he died, he was probably fat and bald, which made it a little easier to take.