Heard this one when I was first learning to kayak. I took my spanking new boat to a very nice park in the area. Paddled around (helplessly trying to hold a straight line) until I got near a bank where a few people were fishing. One old guy there told this story to me because I was in a kayak. I’ve put it down as near as I remember it. Though, I’ve been listening to science podcasts and I’m a storyteller, so I’m admitting right now that due to the inexactitude of memory and my own tendency to punch things up, this isn’t word-for-word what the guy said, this is just what I came away with.
I would like to point out that “Skimo” was actually a term he DID use. And it’s a rotten, rude word to use, if I understand right. And if you’re firing up right now to explain a lot of anthropology and sociology to me and tell me that the native peoples around Greenland are not eskimos, or even Esquimeaux, then don’t bother. I’m just relating what the old navy dude said, and he said Eskimos. I wasn’t going to correct his story and make it all politically correct or anthropologically correct or anything else. Not the point.
The point is that he thought the damn boats rolled themselves over.
