WHILE my friend Julia watched helplessly from a nearby canoe, I felt the swift current pulling me towards the rapids. "Keep your feet up! Stay upstream of the canoe!" I thought furiously. "Breathe! Breathe! Breathe!"

No, I didn't exactly plan it this way. I originally wanted to play squash. "Bo-ring," Julia said. "Let's go canoeing," she said. Her rationale: "It's a beautiful day, and this is New Jersey."

Before my mind could locate the most appropriate New Jersey joke for the moment, ("logically impossible" "is your nose clogged or something?") my memory flashed to my last canoeing experience, at summer camp 10 years ago.

I remembered three solid days of canoeing down the border of Canada and the United States, replete with beautiful scenery and nights around a campfire. I remembered our canoe flipping over two hours into the trip and the bread floating down the river. I remembered eating rolled sandwich meats for nine consecutive meals.

"How about squash?" I asked again, this time turning on all of my boyish charm.

TWO minutes later we were bound for the Delaware River. Our options: an eight-mile trip through "leisure water"--what the canoe people called "easy, easy canoeing for 65-year-olds with heart problems." Or, we could go for the more expensive 10-mile trek through white water rapids, designed for those human beings who want to "grab life by the antlers and suck out its marrow."

I am a sucker for mixed metaphors.

So here we were, merrily canoeing down the Delaware River. Well, Julia in the back was merrily canoeing. I was up front watching for rocks with an expression as tense as George Washington's. (But remember, he crossed the Delaware in "leisure water.")

I soon noticed that in all the other mixed-sex canoes, the male was in the back (doing the rowing and steering), and the female was in the front, lightly paddling when she chose. My tiny masculine ego crawled from its shell.

"Julia?" I asked timidly. "Can I try the back for a while?"

I paddled like a man for 10 whole minutes, and then got tired. The rest is history: a wave knocked the canoe over, we went flying into the water, and two guys paddled over to save us.

Actually, they paddled over to save one of us. Julia. They left me and my male ego (now in the negative regions) to "pull the canoe over to the side." Unfortunately the canoe weighed on the order of 200 pounds and was filled with another 500 pounds of water. Only the Incredible Hulk could have pulled that canoe to the side against the current.

I wanted to yell bravely to the two guys, "Who do you think I am, the Incredible Hulk?" Instead, I said, "Help!"

I spent the next five minutes of my life bobbing through the rapids, holding my feat up, and trying desperately to stay upstream of the canoe. And while I feared for my safety, Julia was asked out on a date.

SO what have I learned from this whole ordeal? That my male ego should be banished to the depths of my subconscious? Or that God never meant there to be beautiful days in New Jersey?

I learned that a little adventure can spice up your life, especially if you can spice up the adventure after the fact. At first I called the whole ordeal "a small scare." I later told my brother it was "very dangerous."

When my parents got on the phone, I told them I had stared death in the face.

And survived.