I apologize for not having my sorta-promised SUNDAY Posting out in the void already. I was surfing. And, somewhere between my first and second session, a bit of lunch, heat, and a quick nap in between, I was MOM-SHAMED. That is, not to be in any way sexist, but I do believe some of the little children hanging around the Sprinter van I believed were (in the case of the children) and was (in the case of the particular Sprinter van) hers. AND, assuming most of us do or have had mothers, it was the kind of upbraiding a mother or pre-school teacher might have delivered when you hogged the big red ball on the playground, or, perhaps, got a bit too competitive at four-square or, later, dodgeball.

And, yes, I have, in my past, been guilty of those heinous crimes against humanity.

Then, at the tender, impressionable age of 13 I started board surfing, the etiquette of the time, as I recall, being that the best surfer gets the best and the most waves, and the gremmies and kooks and neophytes got the scraps… or surfed somewhere else by choice or by BANISHMENT. This ROUGH JUSTICE was enforced with threats and… yeah, mostly threats; oh, and SHAMING, one step from complete OSTRACIZATION from civil (surfing) society.

OKAY.

a woman shamed me for burning here, not once, not twice (as I admitted to, saying, “Yeah, but I gave you lots of room on the second one [third by her count], and I did yell, ‘Come on!'”), but, as just mentioned, three times.

“AND I made the waves!” This was pretty much a boast from her. “Yeah, so I left you a lot of room.”

PARAPHRASING here, the little lecture, with the woman surfer pulling her wetsuit’s hood back at the end and saying, “NOT COOL!” pretty much the coup de sand, included: “I’ve seen you here for ten years!” AND “You have this big big board (mine is 10″6″ and I weigh over 250, hers is 9’4′ and she weighs more than a hundred pounds less)!” AND “There are plenty of waves to go around (with the surfers-to-available-waves ratio, there really weren’t)!” AND, when she seemed to be waiting for some explanation or apology, and I offered only, “Well, I am old,” she said, “WELL, YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER!”

NOW, if I did have an argument, possibly including that paddling for a wave doesn’t guarantee someone will actually catch it; catching a wave doesn’t mean a surfer will make the drop, or the section, and that each of us judges others in the lineup before making a decision to challenge any specific surfer for a particular wave; and… NO, you don’t really want to hear any explanation that mitigates obviously bad behavior. 

SHE IS RIGHT. GUILTY AS CHARGED.

Borrowed from surfermoms.org

LEST YOU THINK I am, like, anti-women-in-the-water… no; absolutely not. It’s great.

It is almost, in my mind, more of a generational thing. If surfing never really was an activity practiced by rebellious loners, or Beach Blanket partiers, it might not now be a family friendly activity people take up in their twenties, or later, with the proper attire and equipment, surf lessons and surf camps and yoga sessions and physical therapy (“You are a wave! You are a dolphin! You glide through liquid!”) I am pretty much imagining some of these things- with an accumulation of anecdotal non-data, rather than having real, like, numbers, data to back up my assertions. Maybe it seems realistic, with a certain percentage of surf enthusiasts way more interested in saying they were out at this or that spot, with these or those people, and it was life affirming, possibly more interested in the cultural status, real or, again, imagined, that saying, “Yes, I surf” brings.

“Yeah, I surf.” Okay; it works, though, if I say it, the response is usually, “Really?”

While none of my surf friends will defend me as any less than a wave hogging throwback/neanderthal (and yet, they are still… friends), I am confessing here that, one, folks who surf by the forecast or because so-and-so and their kids are going, aren’t there when I most often surf, and two, because I was affected by the confrontation, I have considered what it would mean for me to would to willingly give up surfing, or give up on going to family/old person-friendly beaches with easy access and fun waves.

No; I’m not giving up… yet.”

MEANWHILE, if I am at a beach, “I”M HERE TO SURF!” I know. “NOT COOL!”

Never was.

NEW ART WORK to share ON WEDNESDAY.