Danielle White
Personal Narrative
Blisters so bad you feel like your hands are going to fall off isn’t what most people would
consider a good day, but it was one of the best days I’ve ever had. Timothy and I decided we
were going to row across the bay to visit the houses that we always look at through binoculars.
Honey, our great-grandmother, and one of the most adventuresome people I’ve ever met, was
very excited to see us off. She got out her nautical maps to see how far a trip it would really be
“Three miles? You’re not really going to let them row that far, are you?” my dad asked
my mom.
She wasn’t worried at all. It was the kind of thing she did every summer when she was
young. “Just be sure to watch out. You know in a row boat you’ll have the right of way, but do
your best to be seen if someone with a motor is coming toward you.”
Timothy and I packed our cell phones in gallon sized Ziploc bags that we filled with air
before sealing. We even practiced floating them in the sink to make sure they’d be safe if they
fell overboard. We grabbed a few bottles of water, and after fighting over who got to row first
we headed out.
Timothy had won, and proudly took his seat in the bow of the little boat that the grade
school kids at my grandparents’ church had made. We had already tested it for leaks and tried
our hardest to tip it over. Those kids had made one solid boat. There wasn’t one speck of water
inside and the wide flat bottom made it impossible for us to flip.
The sun was high since it was just after lunch. Even though it was uncomfortably hot on
land, on the water a cool breeze blew over us. The gentle salty spray of an oar hitting a wave just
right was refreshing on my skin. Mixed with the smell of salt and water was the sticky-sweet
smell of freshly stained oars. The stain smell reminds me of the hard job of stripping wood being
finally over, and of a fresh adventure to come now that the wood has been protected from it. It’s
always been one of my favorite smells in the world.
Tim and I have always been pretty close friends, even if he is my little brother. I don’t
remember what we talked about as he rowed for hours and hours, but I know we talked and
laughed and joked together.
A few hours in, he had probably rowed one and a half miles already, and Timothy said a
little concerned, “Danielle, I’m not sure we’re still moving. I feel like Honey’s house has been
that far away for ages!”
“I can see from the other side that we’re getting closer though. Look now, and then look
again in a few minutes!” He turned around and his eyes got like saucers. Sure enough we were
coming up on the other side! Even though neither of us really doubted that we could do it, we
were both a little surprised too. It seemed like the impossible dream, even if we believed we
could do anything.
Timothy was starting to get blisters and the suntan lotion he had on was running with his
sweat right into the open sores. He winced in pain every stroke he took with the oars.
“Why don’t you let me row a while? I want a turn too!” I knew I sounded like a small
child asking for a turn even though I was 19, but I was jealous that he had rowed so long already!
“No, I want to row the whole way, you can row back.” And that was that. I knew, though
it went unspoken, he was thinking “I want to prove I can row the whole way. I know I’m strong
enough for it.” And he could. We were almost all the way to the point!
We only had about 10 more yards until we hit the shore, when something splashed me. It
was from the side of the boat that was down-wind, which surprised me, but then I saw it. We
were surrounded by skates! Timothy finally took a break from rowing just for a minute. “I’ve
never been this close to a skate before! They’re kind of creepy, aren’t they?”
Danielle White
Personal Narrative
We were in the middle of a pack of 4 skates, which really are cow-nosed rays. When they
swim they stick up their black side fins out of the water.“T, remember when we were little and
we thought they were little sharks?” We both laughed. The little black tips rising out of the
waves still did look like a shark fin, but we knew better.
“Well, only a little way more!” Timothy shouted and rowed his hardest the last little bit.
We climbed out of the boat and walked on the shore. It was an amazing feeling to have come that
far, and I hadn’t even done any work yet!
A quick phone call to Mom to let her know we were on our way back, and we were off
again, only this time I had the much coveted seat in the bow. Unfortunately for me, the wind was
much stronger on this side of the bay, and moving against me. I rowed with all the might I had.
Stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke. Pant, pant. Stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke. Pant, pant.
“How am I this tired already?” I thought to myself. “Timothy rowed that whole way! I
can do this!” And I rowed a little harder. The sun was moving down in the sky and made pretty
diamonds on the side of the waves I was watching. The little diamonds of sunlight glistened and
flashed as the waves rolled away from me. The waves bumped the boat, every one we went over.
Going the opposite direction of the waves makes for a very rough boat ride, but that was the way
home.
“Maybe you should try going at a little more of an angle to the left?” Timothy suggested.
“That way you’ll be going perpendicular to the waves. It might be a little easier than getting
pushed sideways.”
I figured it was worth a try and after taking two strokes with my right paddle, I was
turned the way Timothy recommended. That was when the blisters started. Every stroke I took
they seemed to get bigger. I was having a tough time getting leverage enough to pull the oars,
and my hands were starting to hurt from rowing. We were still only 40 yards from where we had
started.
Timothy suggested pushing our feet against each others. With him pushing against the
bottom of my feet I had a little more leverage. I was able to put more power into the oars, but the
blisters were only getting worse. We tried changing the trajectory of the boat again. We tried
putting a t-shirt between my hands and the oars to lessen the pain. Nothing made any difference.
I just wasn’t strong enough.
“Hey T, maybe you’d better take over again,” I said dejectedly. I hate being defeated,
especially by Timothy. When we had switched sides and propped our feet together again, I took
a look at my hands. The blisters were the size of silver dollars!
After he had rowed for another half an hour, we were no farther away from the point.
“Let’s just pull in,” Timothy said. “We can call Mom from the dock and have her bring the van
to get us.”
“Or we could call the Coast Guard!” It had always been a dream of ours, but we weren’t
really in trouble so we decided it wouldn’t have been right.
I was so upset pulling into the cove around the back of the point. I felt like it had been a
failure. Sure we had gotten there, but the trip back was my half of the battle, and I had let both of
us down. We rowed the boat up onto the ramp, but had to get out into the water to get it all the
way up. Even just the two steps on the wet, slimy wood were enough for me to know I didn’t
want to have to get behind and push the boat. The look of his face told me Timothy was thinking
the same thing.
“Rock, paper, scissors you for getting in and pushing,” he declared. I agreed, and beat
his rock with paper! Awesome!
Danielle White
Personal Narrative
I could hear the algae squelching under his feet as he climbed back into the water.
Luckily neither of us slipped on the wet wood coated in Bay ooze while we were carrying the
boat up the ramp. When we got to gravel, we set it down to wait and turned back to look at the
water that had defeated us while we called for Mom to rescue us.
Sitting on a bench on the point, we realized that the water that Timothy had just been in
was home to a large number of water snakes. None of the snakes in the bay are poisonous, we
knew from years of asking about them, but it still creeped us out even more than the skates had.
“You owe me Danielle! I was just in there! You’re lucky one didn’t come near me!” He still
gives me a hard time about it when he wants something from me.
We sat on that bench for half an hour until Mom showed up. I again don’t remember
what we talked about, but we weren’t bored. We shared the last bit of the water sitting there
talking about everything and nothing. We both had the giant blisters that hurt so much we had to
keep going to dip them in the cool salt water. We both had sunburn on our shoulders so bad that
we were filling up the water bottle so we could splash some water on our red skin while we sat
on the bench. We were caked in salt from the breeze blowing flecks of water at us. We were the
happiest we had been all summer.
It was just the cherry on the cake that when Mom finally came up she had Honey and
Dad in tow! Dad was supremely displeased that Mom had let us go: “What if something had
happened to them?” but Honey was beaming. She was so proud that we had taken the chance and
had responded well when it didn’t work out.
The littlest tiniest part of me was still disappointed that we hadn’t made it back by
ourselves. That all washed away when, after we had loaded the boat on the roof and tied it on
tight, Timothy whispered to me as we climbed in the car: “We’ll try again next year, and you can
row first shift.”