Sailing School Chaos.

I love to sail. My parents signed me up for sailing lessons at the age of 8. Off I went with my lifejacket, my bathing suit, my boxers with hearts all over them, my Hypercolour cap and my brand new Teva sport sandals.The amazing thing about learning to sail when you're 8 is that they don't put an instructor in the boat with you. You pile into the bathtub-like boats with 3 other kids and away you go with minimal knowledge of sailing, let alone actually skipping a boat. You get a theory lesson or two, and then they just throw you in head first.

I went pretty far with sailing. I graduated from the bahtub boats, or as we called them "sea cows" and moved on to a Laser II. This was the only time I actually enjoyed wearing a diaper. The wire that comes down from the mast (trapeze wire) hooks onto the diaper that you're wearing and then you 'hike out' as the below picture displays. The feeling of trapezing is awesome, especially when you put both hands behind your head and stretch out over the lake, your body parallel to the water.

It's not me, but it's what I looked like when I was a cool sailor.

I got up to Silver Sail VI but when I was sent to boarding school, my sailing dreams came to an end. Taking sailing lessons was a thrill, and racing gave me a competitive edge that I didn't know I had. This being said,  there was also a kind of chaos that went on behind the scenes at sailing school. A couple of incidents that I'll never forget...

I think I was about eleven or so, and being that age you sometimes forget to do important things. It just so happened that all four of us forgot to put the plug in our boat. About an hour out, in the middle of the lake, we noticed that our boat was sinking. Slowly but surely our speed decreased and the gunwale (pronounced / "gunnel" to rhyme with "tunnel"- a nautical term describing the top edge of the side of a boat) was almost underwater. The emergency sign to hail the instructors over is to stand on the deck and flap your arms like a bird. We were in total panic mode and by this point we could swin in and out of the boat without any effort, meaning the whole top side of our little sailboat was under water. I flapped my arms, flapped and flapped until the instructors saw us. The zodiac turned in our direction and came at us full speed. I sat down/floated in the boat with a sigh of relief (and terror as I didn't know what the consequences would be for sinking a boat).

The zodiac approached really quickly and it was almost too late when we noticed the instructor putting up a battle with the steering shaft of the engine. He was freaking out, flailing his arms in every direction, yelling at us, making crazy hand gestures...and then... WABANG!!!! He ran us right over. Did you know that the bottom of a zodiac dinghy is made of fiberglass?

I think we all semi got out of the way when we realized he was going to run us over, but we got pretty pummeled. Four hysterical crying children swimming around in lifejackets, trying to figure out which way was up. I sprained my wrist, one of the girls broke her arm, my other friend got a concussion along with a HUGE egg on her head, and all of us were traumatized. The bruises were pretty hefty as well. Apparently they had the wrong motor on the zodiac and the driving shaft got locked. Don't ask me why the motor wasn't just turned off, but the instructor was all of 17 years old and probably wasn't thinking. I'm surprised the motor didn't chop anything up. We were legendary, and I'm sure this story still circulates at my sailing school.

'Chopping up' leads me to the next best sailing story that I can remember. I was about 13 years old. As we drifted along in our boat, my sailing buddy and I noticed something white floating in the water. It turns out it was a GIANT catfish. I'm not kidding, it was about 3 feet long, white, and super bloated. It was just bobbing along, belly up, and it stunk to high heaven. We poked at it a bit and every time we sailed by we tried to get a better look at it's face. This is what teens do, okay? Finally the sailing instructors (their nicknames were Toast and Jam, so you can imagine what kind of hooligan teen boys they were) came over to see what had peaked our interest.

They got so insanely excited about the catfish...they hauled it out of the water and started throwing it around. It was putrid and it smelled terrible. Toast and Jam thought it would be funny to throw it in the water and run it over.

Fish explosion. They took to that catfish at high speed and the thing got shredded in the motor. Fish guts flew up into the air for miles and our sails were sprayed with fish parts. Goo all over us, rotten fish, stinky fish. I can't even explain how gross this experience was. Toast and Jam pretty much died laughing and of course they didn't get one ounce of fish guts on themselves. We were unfortunately in the line of fire and we were shunned by the sailing community for the rest of the day.

I sometimes wonder where I could have gone with the sport if I had actually climbed to the top. For starters, I would be in wicked shape and I would probably be way more cocky than I am now. I would also have a great farmer's tan, calloused hands, blistered feet, a sense of invincibility, and advanced knowledge of cloud formations and wind changes.

And maybe I would even have a sailing medal or two hanging in my bedroom.



Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow.

Once again, I've just cut all of my hair off. This is a pattern with me. I get to a point in my turbulent life when I need a change and the first thing I turn to is my hair. I'm a wanderlust changing paths from day to day and my hairstyle follows my mood, wherever it may go.

I had a mushroom cut until the age of about 6 years old. I can still remember the day when a kindergarten classmate asked me if I was a boy or a girl. As you can imagine this was quite a traumatizing experience for me so I freaked out on my haircut and wanted nothing more to do with mushroom shaped hairdo's. My mom took me to the hairdresser as a result of this boy/girl comment, and it was just a few days before I was going to see Phantom of the Opera with my class. The mushroom cut turned into a hideous pixie cut that made me look even more like an androgynous little being. I was so upset that I convinced myself that the Phantom from the play would be looking into the crowd while onstage, spot me due to the hair, and burst out laughing while pointing directly at me. I cried myself to sleep that night. I've blocked the rest of my childhood haircut experiences out of my memory.

The teenage years were filled with angst and rebellion. I went through short hair, long hair, green hair, red hair, yellow hair, purple hair and attempted dreads. When I was 19 I got extensions. My hair was about 2.5 feet long, and it was all braided with added-in fake hair. It weighed about 30lbs, but it was cool. I used to wear it up in a massive bun and strut down the street like I was some kind of awesome exotic person from another country. I really just looked like some white Canadian girl wanting to have an excess amount of hair. I found a picture of myself the other day with this mass of braids on my head and it truly looked ridiculous. It took about 10 hours to get the braids done, cost me over $200, and it lasted for about 2 months before I actually started to have neck pain from the weight of it all. I took them out and I was free once again.

In my second year of university I started to date a guy who broke up with me after two months. My reaction was to break up with my hair. I went into my room after the boyfriend talk, looked in the mirror, took the scissors out and chopped off my ponytail. Two hours later I was in the salon being tisk tisked by my hairdresser. She fixed it and made it look awesome. The next day I had a class with the ex boyfriend and he got to take a good long hard look at the new me. Ha!

In 2008 I went to Iceland on a little trip and I immediately fell in love with the platinum hair blue eyed look that all the ladies were sporting. They are a stunningly beautiful people and if I couldn't have the blue eyes I was going to get that hair. I got back to Toronto 3 weeks later, went to the hairdresser, got my hair coloured platinum blonde and cut it just below my chin. I did this without warning anyone, including my boyfriend at the time. There it was! That beautiful platinum colour! I loved it...for about 3 months. Then my roots started to grow and my hair started to break and I started to want to shave my head. I killed my hair with chemicals, it was dead. I sucked the life right out of it and the maintenance was overwhelming. I dyed it back to brown and until two days ago I hadn't cut it in a year. Completely unacceptable.

Two days ago I was ashamed to take my hair out of the elastic it had been hiding in for a year. Two days ago I was growing it and it was well passed my shoulders. Two days ago my hairdresser pulled the elastic out and gasped at how damaged my hair was. She gave me a sharp bob with a little fringe, and I love it. It gave me back the pep in my step and I've actually booked my next hair appointment already. The next time I go I'm cutting it boy short and dying it blonde again.

Sometimes I think the life of my hair is almost more exciting than my actual life. Then I remember that it's a bizarre reflection of the life that I lead. Right now my hair is looking pretty darn good.

It's fun being a girl with guts.

Growing Young.

For some reason, I've started going backwards in my life. There are things that I missed out on when I was younger, and I don't mean fun things like learning how to ride a bike or getting your first Nintendo. I mean things that you should do when growing up so that you don't have to face them when you're older.

Let me start with getting my licence. If you've read my older post called A Long Time Coming, you know that I'm working tirelessly to be able to drive a car one day. I have yet to get the road test done. It would have been much better for me to have started driving lessons at the age of 16, but I was dropped off in boarding school for my teenage life so the driving thing never came up.

The other really important thing I neglected to do was math. I've always struggled with that subject, and I passed grade 9 math (the second time around) by the skin of my teeth. Actually, I'm positive I failed it the second time but my math teacher Mr. MacDonald took pity on me and gave me a 64%. Since grade 9 math was a complete disaster I was only permitted to go into low grade 10 and 11 math. I took the art stream and I much preferred finger painting anyway. When would I ever need math?

Well, now that I'm in my late 20's and I do that 'pondering life' thing a lot, I've decided that being a vet would be splendid. What am I passionate about? Animals. I love them, I understand them and I want to know more about them. Apparently you need to be a superstar in the science and math world to even attempt vet school applications. I enrolled for grade 9 math with the Toronto District School Board at the beginning of October. Twice a week from 6 until 10pm, for 4 months.

A lot of free time would be taken up with this endeavour and my dog would probably resent me for the rest of my life but it had to be done. I had to face my math demons and conquer the fear of possibly being called upon in class and not knowing the answer. I was so nervous but excited to know that I would finally pass math with flying colours and not have to be ashamed that I don't really know my times tables anymore. Everyone would be in the same boat, right? I was sure that the other students would be people like myself looking to further their education. Turns out I was wrong about that and the whole experience was a massive disaster.

1) My teacher's name was Mr. I4rf??savx12387#$5, and he was from Sri Lanka. I couldn't understand him...could't even make out his name. I was more focused on trying to make out the words and numbers he was saying and I completely missed ALL of the math concepts.

2) When the principal came in to introduce herself and explain the school policy and rules, she stopped after the 'no hats' rule and looked at one of the young students. He was wearing a hat, and he was peeved. What followed was an 11 minute argument with him not wanting to take off his hat and her threatening to expell him. Really? Did we just waste 11 minutes on this? Where the hell am I?

3) My calculator stopped working mid-class.

4) At least 80% of the class was in the 17 year old range. I was mistaken when I believed most people would be in my age bracket. All of them were there because they had messed around in math the previous semester and now they were messing around in adult ed. Great. Chatter in the back of the class, giggles to my left, some kid sleeping to my right, and there I was squinting my eyes and straining my ears so much trying to discern what the heck the teacher was going on about. I got a beast of a headache as a result of over-squinting/straining.

5) I lost all motivation and hope for success. I never went back to night school and now I'm waiting for my math book in the mail after registering for grade 9 math online. It cost me an arm and a leg, but I would rather suffer from a financial amputation than have to go back to that classroom. If my child ever wants to be an artist, he/she will also be a math genius. Never will I make anyone go to math class as an adult because it's plain wretched.

The last thing I missed out on as a teen was getting my teeth fixed. I had a few retainers here and there, but I didn't wear them often enough so my parents just figured I didn't want to put the effort in to having perfect teeth. The last orthodontics step was skipped, and I never got braces. My teeth aren't horrifying, but they aren't straight either. January is around the corner, and that's when the braces are coming. I want straight teeth so now I have to pay for it and have the train tracks put on my face for 2 years. My roommate is getting braces at the same time as I am. We shall live in metal harmony, complaining together, cleaning our teeth together and cursing our youth together.

I'm doing everything backwards. When I complete these tasks I shall give myself a big pat on the back and throw a glorious coming of age party. I'll let you know how the next few years go.