This ain’t me. Photo: Damian Fulton
I went surfing this morning, like I do most mornings. It wasn’t great, like most mornings around here: knee to waist high and a little onshore. But I’d rather sit on a surfboard than a couch, so I went anyway.
The spot I surfed is usually a long, sloping right hander that sits at the point of a cliff on the edge of the Pacific Coast Highway. It’s beautiful there. It always blows me away that just forty-five minutes north of Los Angeles proper’s hustle and bustle, there can be a place like the north county. Near-empty hills stretch to the east, and as one looks to the north, it looks like a vast expanse of nothingness, while to the south, Santa Monica’s skyline peeks out on clear days.
It’s a friendly group out there – mostly older guys on longboards and little to no competition for waves. Conversation seems almost as important as surfing. As it’s a relatively easy, uncrowded wave most of the time, it does attract its fair share of beginners. And I don’t mind that, usually. Getting dropped in on by someone can be sort of funny sometimes. There’s that moment when they look over their shoulder (if they’re standing) or over their arm (if they haven’t managed the standing up part) and realize that they have just snaked someone. Sometimes it’s sheer obliviousness. Sometimes it’s sheer panic.
This morning, it was the latter. I stood up on a waist high little runner, stayed up high on it, moved towards the nose, and enjoyed the view for a few brief moments. Paddling desperately in front of me, kicking like a mule and flailing his arms around with his head down, was a guy on a brand new fish-type of thing. I called him off as politely as I could, but he couldn’t hear me over his frantic splashing. Dropping a little lower on the wave, I put a hand on the nose of his board and moved it away from mine. Although he was now almost sideways, he kept paddling, and eventually rolled over, knocking us both off.
I came up a little peeved, but not that much. The wave wasn’t great, and there were plenty of them. He was clearly still learning. When he came up, however, he was not peeved. He was terrified.
“Oh my God,” he said, cowering slightly. “Dude, I am SO sorry.” He bowed at me a few times, like a monk, still apologizing. I told him that it wasn’t really a big deal, made sure he was ok, made sure my board was ok, and started to paddle back out to the point.
“I’m going in!” He called after me. “I’m such a dork!” Although calling yourself a dork is kind of dorky, it seemed excessive to paddle in for good, and I told him so. “We’re both ok,” I said over my shoulder. “There’s no reason to go in.” He looked so incredibly relieved. Too relieved for what had just transpired, which was essentially nothing. For the rest of the morning, he threw humble, stiff-fingered shakas at me in the nicest possible way, making me feel like I was a jerk by accident. I wondered why he felt the need to apologize so much.
It got me thinking about something. How much does it suck that he learned that surfers are assholes before he learned to surf? When I climbed the cliff to get back to the car, he was sitting in his driver’s seat. With another shaka and another bow, he drove off looking disgraced. I felt like a rock-throwing asshole that threatened to slash his tires and cut his leash if he ever showed his face at my break again, which was weird, because I didn’t do any of that. I didn’t like feeling like that.
So why was his reaction to a relatively easy mistake so amplified? I didn’t get a chance to ask him, but I assume he’s watched a lot of Hollywood surf films, where localism is glorified. Localism plays a much bigger role in society’s view of surfing than it actually does in surfing. Look at Hawaii, for instance, and Chas Smith’s book, Welcome to Paradise, Now Go To Hell. One of the most localized spots I’ve ever surfed is on Vancouver Island, and for most part, it’s not the really good surfers that are assholes, it’s the mediocre ones – the ones that are still influenced by the non-surfing public’s perception of how surfing is, and have progressed to a point of competency. I’ve been to Hawaii a few times, and not once have I had any problems. Of course, this might be because I know the basic etiquette, but I’ve made mistakes. I’ve taken off when I thought the guy wasn’t going to make that section. It happens sometimes, and like everything else, if you’re not a dick, you’re probably going to be just fine. There are way more examples of localism in portrayals of surfing than in the line up.
So, this is for the beginners: most people that surf aren’t assholes. Try your best, try not to drop in on someone, and smile every now and then. If you screw up, you apologize and don’t do it again, just like in real life. You’re just surfing, after all.
