I was trying to find an address in the North Beach area of Port Townsend, thought I’d recheck a shingle-sided house I had bleached and pressure-washed a few months back to get a better idea on what to propose for painting the trim.

There was a truck with a boat on a trailer and an SUV parked in front of the fence. WAIT, there’s a surfboard on the SUV; a flashy board (looking at it from the side- radically upswept nose, canted bonzer fins, two on each side, longer fin in the middle). Has to belong to a ripper. Radical. This was a couldn’t-pearl (even on a heavy pitcher), late-drop, free-fall, catch-and-climb, drive-and-swoop, pro-level unit.

NOW I had to find out who owned this board.

AND I DID. Ripper? Pro? Actually, no. In the question-and-answer, first-meeting-scenarios between (supposed, alleged, self-identified) surfers, where no one truly believes the other person is really a surfer (even if he or she fits perfectly into one’s image of one) unless he or she has personally witnessed him or her actually riding waves; I can tend to be a bit, um, aggressive.

And then throw in the sarcasm, sometimes-biting repartee I’ve learned and developed over many years; a trait (or skill) I’ve been trying to cut back on…and. when the owner of the board, the 40ish son of the owners of the house, said he wasn’t kidding (backed-up by his Mom) that he’d just started surfing, like, two weeks ago…

…and just when I was trying so hard to quit the sarcasm, to occasionally hold back on making the snarky observation, the possibly-rude assessment. “Two weeks, huh?  Well…”

OKAY, so here’s my latest drawing: Picture it on a t shirt.

What? What do you mean by that?