Canoeing, Communication, and Cooperation

Today my wife and I took advantage of the gorgeous weather and did something we have been wanting to try for quite a while now. We live next to a large man-made lake that provides most of the drinking water for the area, and it also offers canoe and flat-bottom boat rentals. We decided to try the canoe. Neither of us had ever canoed before so we thought it would be a fun little adventure. Well, it was an adventure but it didn't start out too fun. As we pulled away from the pier, we barely got past the edge when our paddling started spinning us in circles. Somehow we got clear of the pier, but continued paddling in broad circles and going nowhere. At first it was a good laugh, but I could feel annoyance slowly creeping up on me. Fortunately, we decided to switch our places so that I was in the back, and we quickly got the hang of it from there on out. Throughout the rest of our peaceful canoe ride, we discussed the effectiveness of canoeing as part of a pre-marital counseling program. It confronts the couple with two of the major issues in marriage: teamwork and communication. If you can't get those down, you'll just end up turning in circles and shouting at each other, while everyone else watches from the shore and gives a little bit of a pity laugh. However, after today, I can safely say that we passed the canoeing test and will definitely be doing it again.