A lifetime ago, I spent a few months teaching kids how to surf in Southern California. It was a wonderful summer–you can read about it here, if you’re interested–full of burritos and new things and scaring myself with newness. In that surf camp, I met a kid whose name I can’t remember now. About 12-years-old, he was the sole kneeboarder in a camp full of surfers, and he owned it. I wrote about him a while ago in a piece about how George Greenough and Steve Lis, two kneeboarders, had a very big hand in shaping modern surfing. Here’s what I said:
“He had just entered that weird pre-teen stage that precedes the bumbling, voice-cracking, acne-filled awkward years of teenagerdom. He was some kind of national champion, if I remember correctly, which I usually don’t, and surfed so much better than every other kid in that camp. He also took way more shit than every other kid because of the fact that he didn’t quite stand up, but that little kid could absolutely rip. That was the first time I’d really seen a decent kneelo in person and, despite the fact that he was a far better surfer than anyone else in the camp, he basically ostracized by everyone except his little sister, which kind of made it worse.
Just like their prone brethren, bodyboarders, kneeboarders were a lot gnarlier than most surfers. There are a few reasons for this, I think, but the most obvious is simple: kneeboards and bodyboards are far more maneuverable than surfboards. Another vaguer reason is that those who are attracted to outlier facets of a sport already thought of as an outlier sport are more likely to do crazy shit. That little kid at the surf camp? He pulled into anything and everything with no hesitation. I saw him slam harder than every other kid in any surf camp I’ve ever been involved with. And always, without fail, he’d come up with a slightly crazed glint in his eye and a shit-eating grin plastered onto his face.”
That kid was awesome. He was awesome because he knew that what he was doing was outside the norm. He knew how the other kids felt about it–although they probably didn’t actually feel that way, they just thought they did–and he knew that he was going to take shit for it. He didn’t care at all. That was so much cooler than the other kids trying to be cool, and where ever that kid is now, I’ll bet he’s doing awesome shit all the damn time.
