Pretty in Pink Neoprene

A Sweet 16 Spring Island Odyssey

 
The beach is still, the tide is high and we are waving goodbye to the water taxi which
begrudgingly returns a group of guests back to reality. Fifty year olds from Oregon. Doctors and
health practitioners. Our usual type of guests. We do not have time to mourn their leaving.
James, the lead guide and I frantically run around our Spring Island base camp to prepare to
welcome the next group to their first west coast experience. T minus one hour- and counting.
 
We replace the luxury beds with mattresses on the floor, the gourmet pad thai with grilled
cheese, the grey poupon with plain mustard, the tiramisu with a box of oreos. The air was
humming. A new breed of guest was coming.
 
The VHF radio crackles and Leo, the water taxi driver is announcing his arrival to our quiet
beach. James and I look at each other. We enjoy the last minute of silence for the week. It's go
time.
 
The nose of the boat slowly nudges the beach and the guests one by one get off wearing their
brand new MEC paddling booties complete with just off the shelf extreme camel back hydro
packs on each back. “It'll be ok,” I mused, “I mean it was only a mere *ahem* 11 years ago that I too
was a 16 year old girl from Toronto. And even though their kayak gear is more updated than
mine, I'm sure we can relate.”
 
Day 1. Our first low tide beach walk and the air is permeated with shrieks: “Ewwww what is
that?!!” a common question which usually meant we had a two millisecond window of attention
span to jam in an answer before the next series of questions:
 
Can I touch it?
I can't believe you just touched it!!
Let me touch it!
OMG it just moved!!
Ewww don't touch it!!
Will it bite me?
Can I touch it?!!
 
Imagine Alex Trebeck on crack asking questions as fast as he can and then hitting the out of time
buzzer before the clock even begins. Somehow we were going to have to adapt.
 
Our beach walk moves into the forest where James shows why he is the more experienced of the
two of us. “You know the banana slug will make your tongue numb,” he managed to say in his
brief window which then widened into at least 30 seconds of rapt attention. “I bet you won't lick
one,” he deviously offers like a devil waving around a chocolate cake the day after New Years.
 
“Ah ha! Make their tongues numb and quell their main instrument of talking! Brilliant
planning!” I can see his years of lead guiding are paying off. Two of the six girls give the slug a
sloppy kiss and soon the talking was replaced by gagging and laughing. They should learn two
important lessons; nobody is too old for reverse psychology and kayak guides are not to be
trusted. But despite all of that, they still trust us.
 
Mid week. We manage to take them kayaking with only minimal amounts of vomiting, splashing
and licking of things. James uses his reverse psychology prowess to get three of the girls to put
sunflower stars on their faces. We continue our shot gun style of interpretation. Blast a bunch of
facts out there as quickly as possible and hope something hits.
 
I was getting the hang of it until of the girls look down in disgust at her new MEC booties and
announces that they are still wet from the day before and she is sure she will contract a foot
fungus.
 
I stare at her, expressionless. I hope I am able to cover up the fact that all I can think about is the
scene from the movie Zoolander when Ben Stiller (a ridiculously good looking male model)
spends one day working in a coal mine and then in a pathetic wheeze-cough says “I think I have
the black lung”.
 
After snapping out of my momentary Zoolander cutaway, I hurl my credibility out the window
and say, “You're fine- try guiding for a few seasons and then we'll talk about foot rot”. Her face
shows that she is gathering her every reserve of revulsion and after an awkward pause long
enough to warrant a dot dot dot she says … gross.
 
But luckily her attention moves from worrying about her feet to the fact that it is raining. We all
huddle inside the kitchen shelter and make lunch. Another one of the girls is talking about her
career plans and her desire to travel. Her teacher brightly suggests: “Why don't you be a guide
like Sandra, and then you can travel?”
 
Pause for the dot dot dot
 
…
 
“Ummm, actually, I want a real job”
 
I take no offense. They are still young and naïve with perfectly healthy feet. What do they know?
Besides, I had a real job once. Grey cubicle walls, endless months of never seeing the sun, trying
not to get caught spending company time surfing the net to plan your measly two week vacation
which you have to wait 12 months for.
 
But there are even worse jobs than that I think as I munch on a gourmet grilled cheese sandwich
and flip through the teenage girl's bible, Cosmo magazine, that was left on the table. I would
imagine being a writer for Cosmo magazine would be even worse. How do you manage to
recycle the same 100 sex tips into fresh material decade after decade? Not to mention the asinine
quizzes such as 'What Type of Kisser are You?' or 'Is He Into You?'
 
Then it hit me. If only there was a way to combine Cosmo with kayaking I would have their
attention for sure. Cosmosis! Your Marine Fashion Magazine! Your Naughty Nautical News!
 
Below you can find a quiz excerpt from Cosmosis. But let me let me finish this story before I get
completely sidetracked and ungracefully segue away from the point.
 
</End Tangent>
 
Sitting around a campfire on the last night we all become scientists using the fire to fuse
chocolate and marshmallows together on graham crackers. Incredibly the girls tell us they have
learned so much more from one week with us than one year in school. I momentarily worry
about the quality of our education system but then decide to take their hyperbole as a
complement.
 
The last day. They all stand around the available mirror to make sure their makeup is firmly
affixed for when they are reunited with boys once again. They clamber onto the water taxi a little
wiser and a lot more salt encrusted than when they came. Many of them will not see the ocean
again for a long time, but hopefully will feel, as we all are, intrinsically connected to it. We wave
our arms off until the boat is a spec on the horizon. The banana slugs are safe again and the
beach is still.

 COSMOSIS QUIZ!!
 What kind of Marine Invertebrate are you?
 
1. When your boyfriend buys you a steak at a fancy restaurant you:
 
a) use your magnetite tongue to try and rasp any algae off of it
b) try to crack it open with your large beak
c) distend your stomach out of your body digest the steak while it's on the plate
d) use your feet to pick the steak up and bring it to your mouth
 
2. When you finally decide to go 'all the way' with your man you:
 
a) stand close together and spew out eggs and sperm and hope they meet each other
b) wait for his third arm to insert a sperm package into your mantel cavity
c) ask him to cut you in half so you can reproduce asexually
d) unroll your giant penis and hope he's not doing the same (awkward!)
 
3. During Yoga Class you:
 
a) have trouble with downward dog because your 8 interlocking bone plates stuck to your back
are always in the way
b) keep getting your suckers stuck to the yoga mat
c) can turn yourself right side up only if you're under water
d) are really good at headstands, but nothing else
 
4. If you are even threatened by your boyfriend you:
 
a) roll up into a tight ball and hope you don't get eaten
b) throw black ink into his face to disorient him long enough so you can hide under a rock
c) use your hundreds of tube feet to cling to any hard surface and not come off
d) hide inside the calcium shell you've secreted and hope he doesn't step on you
 
And now the results! If you selected:
 
Mostly A's
You're a Chiton! You're probably a homebody living on the same rock your whole life, but you
live a healthy vegan lifestyle eating only algae and other biofilms!
 
Mostly B's
You're the fiercest of the cephalopods, the Octopus! The fact that you have no bones in your
body means that you have an excellent career as a contortionist in your future!
 
Mostly C's
Welcome to the life of a Sea Star! It's ok if you weren't popular in high school, now you get to
rule the intertidal zone like Godzilla rules Japan!
 
Mostly D's
You're a barnacle! Way to break out of the rigid gender roles and sport both sex organs! You will
never have to compensate for your penis size, and many others will envy you. This makes up for
the fact that you're stuck to a rock your whole life.