writer & storyteller
The Surf Lesson
After talking about it for years my friend Max and I booked a surf lesson at the Jersey shore. I had experience snowboarding and figured that was a start for keeping balance on a surfboard. My secret fantasy was that I’d become a real surfer – driving down at five a.m. on weekdays to “clear my head before work” – and have coconut-scented hair.
It was hot and blue out; bodies and boards cut the waves at the designated surf beach. We had time before the lesson and walked up the busy boardwalk. Max pointed out couples who were dressed alike. A teenager in a silly hat worked a batch of chocolate in a copper pot behind the fudge shop window.
Max got a hot slice of pizza on a paper plate. I had brought a peanut butter sandwich I was saving to eat on the beach.
In Northern Ireland they used to say you could tell someone’s religion by whether they had a framed picture of the Pope or the Queen hanging in their living room. I’d like to put up a picture of George Washington Carver. I eat so much peanut butter that I’ve created an innovative system for storage and use; I’ll tell you later if you want. My husband Jeff’s homemade bread made thick craggy slices for sandwiches. There’s nothing like ripping into a peanut butter sandwich while on a rock in the woods or sitting by the ocean. I was looking forward to it.
“You can’t eat on the beach,” Max said. “The seagulls will come after you.”
I told him I’d been eating on the beach my whole life and I was no fool. Of course I know seagulls are scavengers. Sure, I’ve been a victim. The most insulting was when a gull took my hot dog and left the bun. How dare you think you’re too good for my carbohydrates? Plus now I’m holding something that touched the seagull’s kisser. It was sadder to have the bun than to have nothing; after a breakup, I wanted an ex-boyfriend’s t-shirt out of the house as soon as possible.
I know the noon seagull is a different breed (figuratively; calm down) than the six a.m. seagull. The six a.m. seagull soars majestic over the beach, backlit by pink and pearl; I watch and revere from soft sand with hot coffee and cold toes, in communion with my beautiful bird friends. The six a.m. gull is on inspirational wooden beach-house decor and paintings in small lit galleries. It’s a mystical herald of a day by the ocean. Graceful; distinguished.
By noon – to remix Emily Dickinson – disgust is a thing with feathers. Disease-ridden; janky claws; they ignore conventions of personal space and act like they never learned a table manner. They’re dumpster-diving freegans that break rules of law and wrestle a burly man to nip a funnel cake. They make football plays and lay bets; swoop down, make their kill, then regroup like teenagers who shoplift at Hop Topic and meet behind the strip mall to compare their take. Everything is shared; the head gull tracks quotas and numbers. Except for Rob with the tattooed feather – Rob works alone, is all the head gull will tell you. Don’t ask any more questions.
So what? I’m supposed to give in? There is no greater eating experience than a picnic by the ocean. It’s my right as a human, and I won’t let them take it from me.
I explained to Max that I had a strategy. The gulls go for people who aren’t paying attention; you have to guard your food, take out a bit at a time and keep the rest secured in a heavy, impossible-to-grip tupperware. Hold your portion in both hands by your torso, lean slightly forward to block intruders while your head is dipped, take a good bite, hold the food in your lap and contort your elbows for coverage while you chew. I win.
Plus, “If you worry about things like that, that’s when they happen,” I said. “I don’t worry about it, and it doesn’t happen.”
He said it was the opposite and that I was an idiot and was making a huge mistake.
Giving each other a hard time was our favorite thing to do. We pushed back on the other’s take on something for the game of it. Even if we agreed, we’d criticize the other’s view of how the world works, just to get it going. We’d been friends since meeting in improv class over a decade ago and performed onstage together for years, which I guess explains our dynamic now that I think about it. By the way, if we can’t make fun of each other, it’s hard for me to be friends with you. I need that trust level, you know?
After the pizza he wanted a few bites of something cold and tried to negotiate for a small portion at Aloha Soft Serve, but the only Dole Whip serving size was huge and cost nine dollars. We walked back down the boardwalk and he complained.
“This is way too much. I want like half of this,” he said. He poked the whip with his plastic spoon. Then he saw the swirl was hollow in the middle.
“Think I can go back?” he said. “I want what I paid for.”
We passed the salt water taffy place and the hermit crab cages. I asked how the whip was. “Refreshing but too much,” he said. “And even though I don’t want all this, I’m gonna eat it and then I’m gonna throw up during the lesson.”
We walked and people watched. Max said he looked forward to the day when he was old enough to stop caring and wear ugly sandals. Suddenly he looked truly alarmed. He said, “I can’t have this whole thing or I’ll puke,” broke into a panicked run, and threw the whip into a trash can with resentment.
He asked again if I was going to eat on the beach and said it would be a disaster. I told him he was wrong.
We entered the surf shop through the open front under a yellow awning. Two teenagers at the counter had traveled through time and space from the 1960s West Coast stereotype pool of relaxed, life-loving beach bums. I wondered if they were actors. It seemed to me that once someone committed to surf culture, all stress and urgency removed itself from their existence. If this makes everybody so relaxed, why hasn’t some thought leader jumped on it with a podcast?
“All right,” said one of the happy kids. His unrushed words ambled across the counter. “Ethan’s gonna do your lesson. He’s out on the water right now, so you can just hang until he gets back.”
Ethan; a real surfer name. Ethan had immediate status in my mind as a mythical, important figure, which happens whenever somebody references someone else who isn’t there yet. I looked around the shop at the hoodies with hibiscus flowers, branded trucker hats and backpacks in baja stripes. If I had spent my high school years learning to surf, my whole life would be different by now. I could be living in a van in Santa Cruz and playing the handpan in a wedding band. Instead I spent summers combing the fringe out of rugs at my housecleaning job and worked in an office where I shredded documents for an engineer while he told me Vietnam war stories.
Max put on sunscreen by the counter and pointed to a sticker with a graphic of a noon gull eating from a spilled french fry cup. “See?” he said. “They know best here.” I ridiculed his streaky white lotion patches. The counter kid strolled over and said at half speed that we could get fitted for our wetsuits now, if we wanted.
He sized us up (it didn’t feel gross when he scanned my body, because I could be his grandmother) and handed over thick industrial marine blue wetsuits from the rack. I yanked up the long zipper pull. (Why can’t all formal dresses have this function? Just bedazzle the long pull thing. It’s not that complicated.) It was an uncool utility suit, not a real surfer outfit in fun pastel florals that contrast the badassery of staring a massive wave in the face. We looked goofy, like kids play-acting at surfing. (Don’t say it!)
“Here’s Ethan,” the boy said.
A youth with sandy feet and wet ringlets walked up. My instinct was to ask about summer reading assignments and his hopes and dreams for the future. How’s everything going today? Can I do anything for you? I reminded myself I was not the one in charge. This fifteen- (seventeen? eighteen? What’s the difference, really?) -year-old was in the position of authority. I was about to put my life in his hands and it was his job to put us at ease, not the reverse.
I did get chatty – Did you grow up in Ocean City? Did you learn to surf young? – but restrained myself from giving life advice. I needed to keep a reasonable level of cool, even though I wanted to say Young man, do your parents know where you are?
Ethan’s catchphrase was, “You’ll be good.” Casual, confident, superchill, smiley, nice ‘n’ easy, no spin-instructor life-coach cheerleader boom, no trying too hard with stale jokes. You’ll be good. I wondered if this should make me confident or scared. I needed more comfort than this teenage boy was going to give.
Still, it felt like we were in good hands. Ethan passed me a gigantic, heavy board twice my height and showed us the proper carry. We had to get the unwieldy boards from the boardwalk across the crowded beach to the water without making physical contact with any people or possessions.
It wasn’t far to get to the water, but it felt far. The board carried me across the sand; I was like a dog being walked. A rotation of five degrees could knock off the top of a sandcastle or the head of a small child. I strained my arm to keep a grip on the bottom. Walking with the boards felt ridiculous, like an earnest kid wearing his dad’s suit jacket.
“Look,” Max said, and pointed to the left. A seagull with the same chill level as the surf shop kids glided all casual through the air with a full slice of pizza clamped in its beak. “Ahahahaha! Told you!”
“Whosever that was, it’s their own fault,” I said, and had to stop walking. I could never keep myself from gesturing when I talked; as soon as I opened my mouth my hands automatically went up, and I couldn’t keep the board steady on one side if I was moving an arm around on the other. “They weren’t vigilant!” I yelled after Max. “They didn’t have the posture!”
At the water’s edge Ethan showed us how to lay down on the board and jump into a standing position. I felt like he should be checking in more on my feelings, but after just a few practices, he led us out. “You’ll be good,” he said.
The board banged into me when I tried to maneuver it along sideways, and Ethan coached us to go over a crashing wave with the board: just go over the top and hold on. It worked. I took a wrong position on one huge crasher, tumbled and inhaled a mess of saltwater and couldn’t get my breath. Ethan was chill.
Me and Max took turns. Ethan positioned the board and had me lay on it and look straight ahead at the beach and Ferris wheel that rose behind the castle turrets and flags of the old amusement park, and trust that he would tell me what to do and when. When it was a good wave, he angled the board in the right direction and said “Okay okay okay, this is the one, paddle paddle paddle!” Then he gave the board a push and said, from behind, “Stand up stand up stand up! Stand up stand up stand up!”
I fell off right away on the first couple tries, but on the next one I stood up with confidence, got my balance, and held on for a few seconds to ride the wave. I fell into the water and came up grinning. On the next few rides I was able to stand for a few seconds before falling off. I learned that if I lost confidence and got scared, I fell; if I stayed vigilant and decided I was going to go down swinging, I went further. Huh. I guess motivational quotes are a thing.
I took a wave where after a few seconds I was still standing, and I rode toward the beach with arms out. Whee! It was my best one yet. I had the balance, but I didn’t have control over the direction of the board; I could ride it but not turn it. The board decided to turn perpendicular and I found myself riding sideways toward a kid about eight years old who was also slowly riding his board in. We looked at each other.
Perhaps he was waiting for me, the adult and supposedly more competent person, to remedy the situation to avoid a collision. I didn’t want to run into him but I didn’t know how to turn my board. The only other option was to jump off, but this was my best wave; I wasn’t going to give it up.
I wound up with my board inches from his; we coasted forward half-facing each other for so long that it got to a point where somebody needed to speak or it was awkward.
The kid and I kept looking at each other. Usually facial expressions communicate something: panic, “whoops, haha!”, friendliness, aggression, frustration. I could feel that my face was communicating nothing, because I didn’t know what I wanted to communicate and because I was focused on maintaining my ride. I had no available brain power to say anything, because I needed it all to keep my balance. Plus, if I started talking, I’d start gesturing and completely throw everything off. Finally I muttered, “Sorry, sorry,” then quickly reclaimed the energy diverted to say the words and refocused it back on my stance.
I was a grown woman who had earned the money to pay for my surf lesson, booked it, organized the outing with a friend, drove over the bridge, and packed my lunch. The child couldn’t do decimals; he’d been driven to the beach; his mom had made his lunch, packed his swimsuit, and applied his sunscreen, and I was saying sorry to him in automatic deference. The boy said nothing. I rode all the way in until my board was skimming sand. I stepped off into shallow water, triumphant. “We call that a tea party,” Ethan said when I returned.
After the lesson Ethan said we were welcome to hold onto the boards and try to catch a few on our own. He said come back whenever you’re done, but we insisted on a time limit until finally he said an hour, but his tone had something in it that I couldn’t identify. Great. We’d get some reps in for an hour, then hit the beach. Ethan headed back to the shop.
It was impossible without him. We could barely maneuver the boards into position. Without Ethan to set us up, hold and angle the board, watch for the wave and direct when and how to paddle and stand, there was no way we would catch another wave. It had been like hitting a tennis ball while your instructor held the racket with you. He knew we wouldn’t last an hour.
“All right,” Max said. “But we have to stay out a few more minutes so he doesn’t see how fast we gave up.” We waited a little and then walked our boards back across the beach; we kept our heads down and looked at the sand so he wouldn’t see us, and so if he did, we wouldn’t see him seeing us. We walked slow; for all we knew, he could have stopped to chat with someone, and it would be humiliating if we beat him back to the shop.
We returned the boards and wetsuits and I thought about it while we browsed the merchandise again. Even though Ethan had done the heavy lifting, we still had to stand up and ride the wave, which is something. I was a little sad to know I would never be a real surfer and do those five a.m. drives. It’s not that I thought I would definitely do that, but I didn’t think I would definitely not do that. I bought a souvenir sticker with surfboards on it, and Max and I went down to the beach and spread out our towels. Elementary school kids on boards ripped and shredded in front of us. I felt humbled and proud at the same time. The ocean waves were green and blue and in charge and we were specks; molecules. We’d finally done it. I’d surfed.
“I can’t believe you still think you’re gonna be safe with that food,” Max said. He started to reapply sunscreen. “No way.”
“You’re wrong. I’m eating now,” I said, and pulled out my tupperware. The peanut butter had melted a little and drips of it spilled from the crusty edges of Jeff’s brown bread, which would only make the whole thing better: it was a thing of beauty. I opened the lid, pulled out the sandwich, hunched into position, and took a bite. Bliss. I held the sandwich low, maintained posture and chewed.
“Okayyyy, okayyyy, I give,” Max said. Now that the debate over whether I should do something had ended because I had carried out my commitment to doing it, the game was finished. “Okay, that was fun,” he said, waited a beat, and moved on to the next thing.
“All right,” he said, “so what’s your process for a peanut butter sandwich? Do you go creamy, chunky, jelly, what?”
Ooh. I love talking process. For example, next time you’re in a group, ask everyone what their step-by-step is when they dry off after a shower. You’d be amazed. I especially love describing my peanut butter process because I eat so much of it that I found a good hack, like I told you before. I use natural peanut butter, which is annoying with oil separation, so I dump two jars at a time into a big flat glass Pyrex, stir and keep it in the refrigerator to solidify so scooping it is a breeze.
I turned my head toward Max to explain. “So I use natural –” My body automatically went into a gesture. The hand holding my peanut butter sandwich lifted into the air. In half a second a seagull swooped down and plucked the sandwich out of my hand.
“AHAHAHAHA!” Max roared. “Ahahahahaha!”
The gull shot upward with the intact sandwich hanging from its beak, then had the gall to drift back down and land on a sand patch a few feet away from us.
“I never thought it would actually happen,” Max said, crying with laughter. “Oh man, that’s so good.”
“You made me lose my form!” I yelled. “You distracted me! It left me vulnerable!”
Now a group of other gulls had flown in and were fighting the first gull for my sandwich. They flapped and screeched and tore it into pieces with their ugly maws and scrabbly feet. It was horrifying.
“The peanut butter will probably cement their beaks together and they’ll die if that makes you feel better,” Max said.
We were both in the kind of laughing fit that absolutely destroys. I was streamed with maniacal tears. When we left the beach I bought two hot dogs on the boardwalk and ate them in about thirty seconds before the gulls could come back and get in my business.
The surf shop’s open year round. If you go, ask for Ethan. And as a general reminder, CVS sells dry shampoo that smells like coconut, so there’s that.