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It was their idea to go canoeing. I agreed while hiding my surprise at their suggestion. My two cousins didn’t exactly strike me as the outdoorsy type. When we arrived at the park, he asked somebody where we could find the canoes. The other night he had told me that he canoed here often.
The park was enormous. We walked down a winding path over several hills to reach the lake. Three teen girls were manning the rental station. Three people. One canoe. Forty-five minutes. Plenty of time to circle the lake. We each donned an orange life jacket and stepped onto our canoe. She sat in front, saying she wasn’t going to row. Fine. He and I shared that larger, back seat. The three girls handed us our oars and pushed us away from the shore.
I immediately learned a valuable life lesson: always trust your instincts.
The boy had no clue. As the girls were pushing the canoe, he turned to me and said, “Prima. You don’t have to row if you don’t want to. I can do it by myself.” Shit. I asked again, “You go canoeing a lot?” “Yes,” he replied. Liar. I explained calmly that he and I needed to row together. Since we were each sitting on a different side of the canoe, it would require both of us to row.
We were already drifting back toward the shore, and I told him he needed to row or we’d hit it. He responded by dipping the oar halfway into the lake and weakly passing it through the water before turning back to me with a smile on his face. I had no time to paddle that smile off his face as we were about to hit land. I quickly turned around and jabbed the oar into the lake, using it as a rudder to slow and steer us away from the bank. Forty-three more minutes of this? Fuck.
After a little prodding and coaching, I managed to get him to row with me. I compensated for his limp arm by stroking just as softly. Just one other problem. I couldn’t get the boy to row more than three times without stopping.
He would weakly stroke once, stroke twice, stroke three times, and then lay the oar across his knees to stare at the sky, the trees, the birds, the water… I was fuming. It was a gorgeous day. I wanted to see it all. I wanted to feel the wind in my face as the canoe cut through the waves. Instead, we were just barely creeping along, and I was having to work to keep us from drifting too close to the banks every time the bastard took another break.
I don’t think we’d made it one hundred yards before I looked at my watch and saw we had twenty minutes left on our rental. “We need to turn around,” I told him as he was admiring a clump of grass. “Why, Prima?” Because you’re a lazy, lying piece of shit whose fucking up something I love to do. I explained that our time was almost up. “It doesn’t matter.” “Don’t you have to pay more if you take more time?” “No.” Fuck that shit and my idiot cousin. I turned the canoe around by myself.
He continued his infuriating ritual: creep and sit. A particularly strong gust pushed us into a pier during one of his breaks. Resistance was futile. At this point I think he was sensing my fury, so he stepped up the pace after resting alongside the pier. Five strokes to one break. At this point I found it refreshing.
We had one last obstacle when we finally reached the rental station: parking. The canoes were parked diagonally away from us on the right. There was only one canoe-sized opening. My cousin immediately tried to veer right toward the spot. “Stop.” I explained to him that we needed to go left a bit, just past the spot, and then circle in order to enter it smoothly. “Oh, Prima. You’re so smart.” Shut the fuck up and row. “Softer now, ” I told him as we got closer. “Stop.” I finished steering us in.
He was right. One person sitting on one side of the canoe can row alone.
*** Feel free to include your own sketch through a comment and link back in your post. There are no themes. Choose any emotionally charged life experience, and write.
I looked down from my top bunk as she burst into my dorm room with her phone in hand.
“Here,” she said, handing me the phone. “My mom wants to talk to you.” Olivia stood nearby and waited. I didn’t know what to expect as I put the phone to my ear.
“Hello?” Olivia studied my face as I spoke. “What happened?” I looked into her eyes as her mother explained that Olivia’s grandmother had passed away unexpectedly. They were very close, and her mother didn’t want Olivia to be alone when she found out. “Of, course.” I patted the spot next to me, and Olivia made her way up the ladder. I was ready to hand the phone back when – click.
The phone grew heavier in my hand until I dropped it in my lap. I turned slowly to break the news, but I didn’t have to say a word.
*** Feel free to include your own sketch through a comment and link back in your post. There are no themes. Choose any emotionally charged life experience, and write.
photo by MikeLawrieI push back the shower curtain and step out into one of the small dressing areas created by the rows of lockers. I’m wearing a red and white striped, short-sleeved shirt and red pants. My mom has temporarily taken away my jeans and t-shirts. “You’re twelve years old. It’s time to start dressing like a lady.” I make my way to the end of the wooden bench after throwing my sweaty gym clothes in my assigned locker. As I sit down to put on my shoes, a few of the also-dressed girls start playing around. Snap!
I laugh until Brandy comes near me. Brandy is an artist who signs her name with a flourish and a star. She chases me around the locker room, and, even as I slip on the wet tiles, I’m careful to keep my back turned away. Brandy wiggles her fingers as she comes closer and closer. I laugh again to cover my fear of the seemingly inevitable public humiliation.
Suddenly, the bell rings, and all is forgotten… until tomorrow’s P.E. class, anyway.
I’ve got to get a bra.
*Feel free to share your own sketch through a comment. There are no themes. Pick any emotionally charged moment of your life, and write.
photo by Sujay Thomas
Casey and her long, silky hair sat in front of me in Spanish class. She always wore her pride loose, and every class her hair would hang over my desk. We had a routine. I would politely request that she keep her hair off my desk, and she would pull it back only to let it down again later that period, covering my papers and hands.
One afternoon she grabbed my student ID off my desk and wouldn’t give it back to me. I hated that photo with my frizzy hair filling the frame. No one seemed to be paying much attention to what was going on in that back corner. I leaned forward, wrapped one arm around her neck, pulled her back toward me, and stretched out my other hand palm up. She quickly returned the card, and I released my hold.
No words were exchanged, and she reached into her backpack for a hair clip. I looked up to find my teacher smiling at me.
*Feel free to share your own sketch through a comment. There are no themes. Pick any emotionally charged moment of your life, and write.
Every other school day I spent all of chemistry watching the clock. I would be the first to leave when the bell rang, in a hurry to see him again.
An unexpected schedule change during my senior year left a void to fill, and my counselor suggested that I spend it as one of her aides. Jared was asked to show me the routine that first day; from then on we did everything together.
We were walking slowly through the hall one afternoon when a door behind me slammed open, just missing me, and hit the wall with a loud crack. He spun around. “Are you okay?” An angry kid walked through that open door, and Jared charged over to him. He towered over the sophomore as he began a blistering verbal attack.
My initial shock melted into a warm pride as I watched my tall, blonde crush defend me.
photo by Miss Mags
*Feel free to share your own sketch through a comment. There are no themes. Pick any emotionally charged moment of your life, and write.
photo by pallid7
It was pizza day so the lunch line was extra long. I stood toward the end watching the two girls. My friends and I were nice and let them sit at our table, but today everyone was gone on some group trip. Crystal pointed at something with her fat finger and started laughing so loud that the kids behind them were turning around. Theresa looked confused as usual. Something wasn’t right with her; I’d heard whispers of “learning challenged.” She dressed like a middle-aged woman, probably her mother. She asked me last week if I’d hit “poo-burty” yet.
I got out of line and walked past the square table with empty orange chairs. I ignored Crystal’s chubby wave as I made my way to the vending machines. Stuffing the Doritos and Coke into my bag, I walked out of the cafeteria to the girls’ bathroom by the gym. I wasn’t as nice as I had thought.
I fiddled at the sink until the bathroom was empty. When the last girl left, I headed to the farthest stall to eat my lunch. I couldn’t decide which would be more embarrassing: sitting alone with Crystal and Theresa, or getting caught eating in the bathroom.
I had swallowed the last of the Coke to wash away the stale, cheesy taste when the door burst open. A group of girls walked in laughing, and I could soon hear the rasps of a lighter.
I quietly laid the trash behind the toilet, flushed, and walked out of the stall. The girls said nothing as I washed my hands. Then their leader leaned forward. “You’re not going to narc, are you?”
The bell rang, and I stared back just a moment before pushing through the haze.
*** Feel free to include your own sketch through a comment and link back in your post. There are no themes. Choose any emotionally charged life experience, and write.
sketch by Mike Thomas“The sketch is a short literary composition resembling the short story and the essay – similar to a preliminary study a painter makes. It needn’t have a beginning, middle, and end. For me, this tool was a way to inject emotion into my writing and to create more believable stories and characters.”
“Going back through your own life experiences and writing them down helps you (painfully, sometimes) to recall your emotions.”
“Sketch Your Way to Character Emotion” by Barbara Krasner
The Writer March 2008
**I will begin incorporating this idea as a weekly writing exercise (and therapy session) on my blog- Wednesday Sketch. Feel free to play along and include your own sketch through a comment. There will be no specific themes. Choose any emotionally charged moment of your life, and write. **
