There are many perks to being a professional writer. Namely, whenever you are at a swanky cocktail party and you tell people what you do for a living, they will smile and reply by giving you their drink order.

But sometimes as a writer, you actually get to do exciting things that other citizens never get the opportunity to do. Cleaning public toilets is only one example.

Another example would be piloting a gondola down the Canale Orfanello in Venice. Which I did.

Matteo was my gondolier today. He was a youngish middle-aged guy, fit, wearing a navy-and-white striped shirt and tennis shoes. He has been operating a gondola in Venice for 22 years.

He stood at the stern of his boat, constantly pumping an oar in the blue-green water of the canal, and he asked what I did for a living.

So I told him. Then I asked how he came to his current profession.

“It was my uncle who first suggest me to try this job,” said Matteo in broken English. “I was 17 when I first try to use the oar, and I think to myself, ‘How hard can it really be?’”

The answer was: hard. For many reasons.

First off, the Gondola is a temperamental, flat-bottomed boat whose design took 800 years to perfect. It is a giant asymmetrical banana, which makes it responsive, quick, and the boat is as sensitive as a gassy toddler.

The slightest movement aboard a gondola affects the whole ship. If you clear your throat on a gondola, everyone onboard feels it.

Secondly, the single oar that propels the boat, in a sculling manner, also serves as a rudder. Sort of like a fish flapping its tail. Learning to use the oar takes some a lifetime. Many never get it and abandon their apprenticeship.

“It take me seven years just to learn to use this oar. It never just ‘clicks’ in your brain, you just improve gradually, a tiny little every day, until one day, you are a gondolier. It is by far the hardest thing I have ever done.”

A gondolier, I discover, is not merely a boatsman. He is a dancer. He steers his ship around impossibly tight corners, keeping his gunwales only millimeters from scraping the canal walls. He does this while maintaining a ballerina’s balance.

Moreover, a gondolier has to memorize all 150 Venetian canals, which tangle themselves like a Maxwell House can full of bait worms.

A gondolier has to constantly be aware of weather conditions, windspeeds, currents, motorboats, obstacles beneath the surface, and seasick tourists. And he does it all while making conversation with passengers in five or six different languages.

In short, to be a gondolier is to be part artist, athlete, performer, and one-person welcome committee. Which is why it’s usually a family tradition.

“There are seven gondoliers in my family,” says Matteo. “It is a trade that is passed down from fathers to sons.”

And yet the gondolier is a dying breed. At one time, there were 8,000 gondolas in Venice. Today, there are 433 licensed gondoliers.

Not all are like Matteo, who owns his own boat, and works only for himself. Which is why he could get away with asking me to drive.

Midway through our ride, Matteo asked whether I wanted to pilot a gondola.

“We gondoliers never do this,” he tells me. “It is a great honor to drive a gondola. But I would be honored for you to try.”

I am humbled that he would even suggest such a thing. So I make my way to the stern of the boat and nearly tip us all into the canal.

Matteo laughs. He hands me the oar. He says, “You are maybe my first writer.”

What a coincidence, Matteo. You are my first gondolier.