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.