The morning was a real cold one. 34 degrees. It was one of those seven A.M. practices where the water was warmer than the air, and there was a strong fog on the water. This was it. Our “on your own” or OYO practices were coming to an end Monday afternoon and organized team pod practices would commence. I had tried to organize a group of us, eight in total, all in sculling boats by ourselves, to race the last OYO workout, forty minutes continuous. We pulled up to the boathouse. The local rowing club was hopping, a daily occurrence at this hour. Six or seven masters scullers were getting off the water. They were hardened people, rowing at five A.M. relying on the dawn sun to illuminate their path. The Michigan Men’s Team, we are not that hardcore.
We stripped down to our rowing clothes. Tight fitting spandex, a water-proof vest, and some long-sleeves to make the near frigid temperatures bearable. After pulling out some oars, we all lumbered with our shells and oars in hand down to the dock. Some of my roommates were in a big hurry to get going, so we launched fairly quickly and paddled up to the starting line for our little forty-minute race. I estimated it would be about one and a half loops of the pond, roughly seven thousand meters per lap.
With one shout, eight or nine across we were roaring down the river. I had a terrible start. Almost lost it and went in the water, but I recovered to persevere. I had fallen back as a result and began the climb to the front of the pack. One by one. Stroke by stroke. The rhythmic click of the oar locks as you pull the oars out the water. The abrupt sound of the oar blades entering the water. The crisp fall air. This was why I loved rowing.
Falling into our typical order of speed and ability, I was riding right on the stern of the leader. He was a small, scrawny guy. Five eleven or so, hundred and seventy pounds. And he was beating me. Six two, almost two hundred pounds. We were crushing our legs every stroke to edge the other out. I was finally warmed up, keeping the shoulders down, the arms taught, body forward, and slamming the foot stretcher. If I had to guess, my heart rate had to be in the high one-sixties or low one-seventies. After about fifteen minutes, I passed the spin buoy and cranked the boat around to line up for the second leg. Josh, the leader, had just started again.
“You’re dead,” I shouted.
He didn’t respond verbally, but I saw his smirk and nod. This was the end. There was no more single rowing after this. I went for it. Keeping to the outside to pass him in the big turn, I focused on his breathing and oar locks. I could hear the deep exhale and oar lock click at the finish of every stroke he took.
Here it was: the big turn to port. I really started hammering it at this point. Frankly I wasn’t gaining on him, but we were having a blast. The fog, the glare of the sun, the still water, it was all so lovely. I glanced over my left shoulder and there it was.
The gigantic fallen tree.
Before I knew it, I was in the water, knocked out of the boat. The boat was capsized, my water bottle long gone, and the oars contorted under the water.
Springing into action, I righted the shell and climbed back onto the seat. I screamed a few expletives. And then I began to laugh, a crying laughter. The kind you cannot stop.
…
Our car pulled into the long, narrow driveway. Like drones in unison, we all gasped when John’s car, a low riding mid 90’s Volvo 850, barely fit between our house and the neighbors’.
One by one we entered through the doorway. Every time I walk into the house, I am overcome with a feeling of nostalgia. Today was no exception. For over 25 years, the rowing team has occupied this house. The walls are covered with writing. The house is decorated with thirty years of team memorabilia.
I cracked a few eggs and set a frying pan on the stovetop. All the while, reading the name “PRESTO” which was burned into the fall above the stove. He graduated from the team in 2017. It reminds me of the ceiling in my bedroom – which also has the “PRESTO” burned into the ceiling.
A little while later, I was out of the shower and getting dressed for the day. I had stood in the boiling shower, yet I still felt cold.
I had planned to set today aside for law school applications. I put some easy listening music on, Irish music, Christie Moore to be precise.
The first few weren’t terrible. It was natural enough to write about my personal interests and why I wished to attend XYZ school. Then I read this nightmare:
“HAVE YOU PREPARED A PIECE OF SUPERVISED OR UNSUPERVISED WRITING THAT HAS BEEN PUBLISHED IN ANY JOURNAL, PROFESSIONAL OR ACADEMIC?”
Frankly, these questions were making me feel a bit inadequate. I paused for a moment, thinking back to a lyric from a song I heard a few songs ago. “The Pope and John F. Kennedy, staring me in the face.” This felt like a slap in the face. I felt there was no way for me, a measly undergraduate student, to compete with some four-year paralegal from the Justice Department for a spot at the top schools.
I hated to click the “DOES NOT APPLY TO ME” box.
But it didn’t, so I did.
…
That night we had had some chicken shawarma for dinner. All eight of us, sat down in the living room to share the nightly meal together. It was a silent affair. Only occasional chat, usually between a pair sitting next to each other. It was a good meal. The plates began to empty, and the level of conversation began to rise.
When my plate was empty, I got up to begin the nightly ritual.
I am not really one for cooking. Fry an egg, sure, boil some pasta, easy, but to do something with several ingredients prepared separately, hell with it. I’d order some takeout if it came to that. That meant I was relegated to dish duty, which I didn’t really mind. I picked up my plate and headed for the kitchen.
I could hear cursing as I approached the doorway. The clanging of pots in our unreasonably shallow sink was apparent. The sound of the mist that sprayed from our leaky faucet was just within earshot.
It was just Kevin. We call him by his initials, KT. He was standing over our shallow sink, finishing up the dishes. He and I usually do them together, but he had decided to finish it up on his own.
“What the hell are you doing KT?” I shouted.
Kevin turned to me, looked at my wide grin, and started laughing. I grabbed a towel and began drying the dishes and pans he had washed.
“You know Kevin, you really didn’t do a very good job,” I joked.
“You’re in a good mood,” he responded.
After some more banter, we swapped the sink and the drying towel. The feeling of the hot water and soap on my hands felt good. One by one, we completed our mundane chore. It felt good. Joking with Kevin as the dishes found their way back to the shelves.
“Come on Kevin, we need to go … NOW,” I raised my voice. And with vigor, I began scrubbing the remaining pots.
We finished soon enough after that.
I rejoined the group. It was nearly nine P.M. at that point. The conversation had picked up. The general consensus was virtual learning was a hit or miss phenomenon. Some professors seemed to understand a large degree of flexibility is a best practice while others contended that nothing has changed – full steam ahead. That line of agreement gave way to complaining, laughing, and joking around.
My naval architecture roommate started in on one of his rants about his senior design project. My civil engineering roommate was never not complaining about his classes, and he joined the boat man in agreement.
When I had had enough of their enlightening chat concerning CAD modeling, I decided to pose a question to them.
“I am struggling to decide on a cohesive topic for this paper,” I said. “Have any of you had to make any big decisions recently, as a result of, some, big, life challenge?”
And the room fell silent. Not the eerie silence of the woods late at night, more of an introspective moment.
Then I began thinking, aloud, “What do any of us have to worry about?” I continued, “We are all students at Michigan. We’ve barely lived a quarter of our lives, right? We are all athletes on a collegiate rowing team. I am going to go out on a limb and say none of us have encountered serious obstacles of any kind in the last month or so?”
The room again entered a deep, cavernous quiet.
We were not debating the nature of humanity, or, whether P equals NP or not. But just the same, a group of soon-to-be Michigan grads … and we couldn’t pin down a good example that was worthy of being captured.
I scanned the room, looking at my seven roommates, silently. I saw a group of white Michigan students who could afford twenty-five hundred-dollar annual dues to compete on the rowing team. We were isolated from real life. I realized then perhaps my question earlier wasn’t pointed enough.
But it didn’t matter. My thought experiment was finished.
Like all good things, the silence eventually came to an end.
Those precious moments of quiet were the best I had all day. I knew I had stumbled onto a significant example of a facet of our society that I believed merited being demonstrated in a paper.
“Just a thought,” I said, as the conversation morphed into television, knowing I had found what I was looking for.
The TV was switched on. The gaming consoles lit up. And the unsettling roar of the joysticks overtook the room in a fit of disruption. I knew my time was finished here.
…
I picked up my water bottle and headed for the stairs. We live in an old house. The stairs are in a very bad way. I could hear each step as it creaked, begging for mercy. I knew I didn’t dare grab hold of the banister to share the weight. That would have been a one-way trip to the bottom of the steps.
Moments later, I found the light switch on the wall and my bedroom became illuminated. I returned to my desk.
Much like the Pope and John F. Kennedy, my empty word doc was staring me in the face. I placed my headphones over my ears and queued up some deep house music. When the beats began to sound the same, I drifted into a contemplative state.
I knew what my roommates were going to say earlier.
The pregnant pause was the most telling of all.
I looked back to my screen, with a strong conviction of what I wanted to say. It seemed so immediate and relevant. My fingers took to the keyboard and began to get something out onto the screen. I preferred the tactility of a legal pad and ink pen, but I persevered through the hell of typing to get my ideas out before they were lost to the unending bass beat of “Diary of a Studio 54 DJ” on loop.
Anonymous | Saturday, October the Third, 2020 | Ann Arbor, MI