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Published: July 29th 2009
I'm not traveling this Summer, but have the urge to write. I'm volunteering some time to teach kids how to surf at the Westerly Surf School. Here are some stories from that experience.
This probably needs some revision and editing but I wanted to get it out there. I'll add some pictures too along the way.
I hope you enjoy reading the stories.
1. Then and Now
I got hooked on surfing when I was 13. One late afternoon in August, the lifeguard, Stu French offered to let me try his surfboard. "Don't get hurt" was his only advice. One ride was all it took and I was on a life long journey.
I bought my first surfboard the following Summer when. It cost 90 dollars. My dad loaned me the money and I paid him back ten dollars a week all summer. He didn't charge me interest. I made 14 dollars a week. The board was almost ten feet long and weighed about 40 pounds. I was just over 5 feet tall and weighed 115 pounds.
Our family car was a Volkswagon Karmen Ghia (two years later, PK wrote KARMA GURU on masking tape and stuck it on the car, thus renaming it). Anyway, transporting the board was difficult because there was no way my father was putting surf racks on the car. I persuaded Greg Provanzano to borrow the Pizza Lady Van from his Mom - the original Pizza Lady - and take me to the Dunes Beach. There I begged Mrs Liner to let me keep it under her trailer along with her son's boards and his friends. She agreed but explained, "If someone comes by and wants to rent it, I get to rent it and keep the money."
Nice lady.
Anyway, I agreed and committed to getting to the beach by 8:30 every morning figuring no one would be there that early to rent my board and I could surf all day. Hitchhiking was the only way to get to the beach. In my house, you could hitchhike alone when you were ten years old. Any younger than that was just too dangerous my Mother explained. Younger than ten and you had to hitch hike with someone who was at least ten years old. So, I would stand either on Elm St. or Main St. and hitchhike to the Dunes from my house, get my board from underneath Mrs. Liner's trailer, put a towel on my head and then balance the board on my head and walk the half mile down the beach to THE POLES, surf all day, walk back to Mrs. Liner's trailer, hitchhike home and then go to work delivering meals at the Elms Nursing Home where I made $1.25 an hour.
Last Saturday while teaching at the Westerly Surf School I asked my group of kids to pull the boards around into a semi circle. The other instructors had gotten up at six AM to load the boards and bring them to the beach for the kids. After pulling his free Westerly Surf School T-Shirt over his head, one of the kids said to me, "Why do you make us do all this hard work?"
You can teach surfing, but you can't teach passion.
2. MEET THE PARENTS
Westerly Surf School is open to kids ages 8 to 14. We originally opened it to ages 6 to 16, but the six year old's just built sand castles and the 16 year old's snarled at us and scared us. In any event, parents, grandparents, or guardians deliver the children so we get to meet and deal with them. Most of the parents are great. They thank us profusely for having the surf school, think it is a great idea, and praise us for doing what we are doing. Then there are the others........................
I think my personal least favorite are the ones who seem to have a limitless sense of entitlement. Typically, they are from out of town and 'Summer' in Watch Hill, Weekapaug, and Shelter Harbor. You can spot them as they approach because their sense of style has not changed in 100 years. They wear shirts with little alligators or men riding ponys swinging a mallet on them. Men often wear pink shorts and a belt that has whales on it (I'm not making this up). The women look like teenage boys - no boobs, flat ass, blonde bobbed hair and lots of gold jewelry. They are always in a hurry. There is tee time to meet; a tennis match to get to; a hairdresser appointment and so on. They greet you with a dismissive attitude that suggests they suspect you are a bit retarded. They speak slowly, enunciating carefully doing their best to help you understand when they direct you to put their daughter Buffy in the same class as her cousin Mitsey. When you explain that you have already assigned children to groups based on age and that the two girls are 4 years apart, they repeat themselves a bit more loudly and more slowly and this time with a bit of impatience at having to go over this again.
Mom sighs and says, "You don't seem to understand. Let me try to explain. The two girls want to be in the same class to support one another."
I say, " I do understand but they won't be in the same group because one is 8 and one is 12. We've arranged the groups based on age for safety and instructional purposes."
"Look" says Mom, "You are making the girls distraught. They and I have decided it would be best for them to be in the same class. I am directing you to put them in the same class. What is so difficult about this?"
I should point out here that it is 7:45 AM on a Saturday morning in July. I have only had one cup of coffee and I've left my girlfriend home alone in bed.
So, I say, "No. You look. Buffy is in the Blue Flag Class and Mitsey goes with the Red Flag group. They will be approximately twenty yards apart from one another. If this is too upsetting for them, perhaps they are not ready for Surf School."
Mom looks as if I've slapped her but only for a second. She gathers herself, leans forward and hisses, "Just who do you think you are?"
I smile, (no sneer really), pause and reply, "Lady, I'm the guy with the clipboard. So either take them to the assigned group or take them home. Next in line please."
My next least favorite are the intoxicated and drugged. I know, hard to believe but if you've partied hard enough I guess you can still be high at 8:00 AM in the morning. And I suppose cocaine holds its attraction regardless of the time of day.
Mom delivers the kid and she is sort of bobbing and weaving in the line as if she is being buffeted about by the wind. Except it is dead calm this morning. When she gets to the head of the registration line, she blurts out loudly, "MIKE RYAN!!!!!!!!!!! I KNOW YOU. YOU WERE AHEAD OF ME IN SCHOOL." She is wearing sunglasses, big ones, so I use that as an excuse to confess, "um.....you look familiar, but............" She pulls the glasses off and her pupils are bigger than my head and they are spinning in opposite directions. She smiles coyly, "NOW DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?" By now, everyone in line is watching us because she is so LOUD. She looks vaguely familiar but I don't recall her name. It doesn't really matter because by then she is on a cocaine rant about surfing, the past, some mutual acquaintance, and what she takes in her coffee. I can see she will talk as long as I let her, so I quickly move her son to his assigned group. I don't hear from her again, but Buck gets a call two hours after class is over from the father who still can't figure out how to get his son out of his wetsuit.
Finally, there is the perpetually confused and confusing parent.
The line of parents is out to the parking lot as they wait to check in and this parent begins, "Okay. I've registered late so you may not have my name down on your list, but I have a canceled check for three registrations, but their cousin is in town so I was hoping I could register him today. Can I pay cash for him? My car broke down and I couldn't get to the town hall to register the kids there. We brought our own surfboard but one fin is missing. Do you have an extra fin? This is joey, he is going to take Peggy's place. I registered her, but she broke her arm and can't go in the water, so I thought Joey could taker her place. This is great what you are doing here. John! Stop hitting your sister with the surfboard leash; and by mistake i put Susan down as 12 but she is really 13. Is that a problem?"
Again, I've had one cup of coffee and it is 7:45 AM on a Saturday in July.
3. THE BEST SURFER IN THE CLASS
Up until this year, I was the Surf School Administrator. My job was to greet parents, get kids to the correct group and generally see that things ran smoothly. Once that was done, I would wander up and down the beach helping out as I saw fit.
Last year, I saw this blond haired boy. He looked to be about nine years old, off by himself, sort of separated from his group. He was only riding in the white water but it was low tide and the waves were breaking a bit of shore so he was getting long rides with a sense of style and grace that reminded me of a young David Nuuhiwa (
). Totally relaxed, he had a slight bend to his knees, hands held low at his side, head held high looking out, and never losing his balance. He was the best rider I have ever seen in ten years of surf school.
On one wave he hopped and shuffled to the nose of the board. Having learned to surf when a nose ride was the ultimate goal, I know you walk by cross stepping to the nose; one simply does not hop to the nose. So, I walked closer to him and yelled 'hey!" He didn't respond, so I got closer and yelled louder. Again, no response so I walked even closer to him and shouted once more. Still no response. At this point I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned. It was a woman who said, "He's totally deaf." It was his mother. They live in Florida and were in Westerly visiting relatives. She explained that surfing is his passion and he loves to go, but she was worried he might get hurt so she wanted him to have lessons.
When I got his attention, I brought the board up on the beach and showed him how to walk on the board and that shuffling was not the correct way to do it. He watched me carefully and when I was done, he nodded that he understood. He took the board back into the water and on his first wave, he cross stepped gingerly to the nose of the board, rode it to the sand, hopped off and gave me a wave as he rushed back out for another ride.
I saw him and his mother again this summer at Seaside and she told me that Kelly Slater gave him one of his boards. I'm not making this up.
4. CONE ZONE
"Why are all these kids surfing? "
"What are they doing here?"
" There are hardly any spots to park in the lot. I had to park across the street."
"When will they be done? This is ridiculous, can't we just tell them to leave?"
These are a few of the remarks I've heard over the years from beach goers who arrive at 'their' Westerly Town Beach to see that it has been taken over by surfers on a Saturday Morning from 8:00 AM until 10:00 AM. When we started surf school, we thought it would give surfers a bit of legitimacy. We thought if we volunteered, it would shine a light on surfing and surfers and when we needed a lot open for parking or an extra hour during the day to surf, we would have some juice to help our argument. To some extant that has happened. We are now recognized as something beyond Spicolli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
But there are still those who resent us. We are different, loud, and brash. We take up their beach. We pose a threat with a surfboard that could injure them. I had written those folks off figuring we could never earn their respect and they would continue to harass us and make our lives difficult.
That has all changed with the introduction of the CONES. Nobody is bothered more by the naysayers than Buck. It drives him nuts that we are teaching town kids to surf and these folks are whining about us taking up room on the beach and the parking lot. This year he decided to do something about it by obtaining a half dozen large orange traffic cones. He gets to the beach before any of us and cordons off a premier section of the lot with the cones.
The effect these cones have on people is amazing. You would think volunteering your time to teach young kids would earn you some respect, but that is nothing compared to the respect people give to the cones. They won't even WALK in the Cone Zone. If you are standing in the Cone Zone, you can be dripping wet, no shirt on with sandy feet, but drivers look to you for direction and authority. They nod in deference when you direct them dismissively to keep driving and to not even think about parking in the Cone Zone. Last week after class, we deliberately left the cones up for an extra hour while traffic backed up in the lot. We each took turns standing in the Cone Zone waving cars on and laughing like crazy empowered despots who suddenly were given limitless power.
Finally, after all these years....respect as a surfer.....and all it took was an orange cone.
5. Everything comes to an end
I think Saturday may be the last session of the Westerly Surf School and I look forward to it with a range of emotions.
Certainly there is relief that I won't have to get up again on July Saturday mornings at 6:00 AM.
But there is also some regret too in that there won't be a scheduled time to get together with the guys who made this all happen. Of course I'll still see them all but it will be in a different role, in a different arena. It must be how stage actors feel when a performance is closing. Only those who were there can appreciate the smiles on the faces of those kids who learned to surf; can laugh about the crazy parents; can complain about how lazy some of the kids are.
There certainly is some pride we share amongst us in getting the thing started and having it last as long as it did. Pride in actually teaching someone to surf.
But there is also some doubt. I wonder if it really was a good thing. Should surfing be taught? Maybe it should be discovered by those who are meant to surf. Are we making it too crowded by encouraging kids to surf? I don't know.
Maybe like most things in life, there are some positive and negative aspects to it.
Nothing is ever perfect...especially a wave.
But that may be why we keep searching for it.
Enjoy the rest of the Summer
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Lisa T.
non-member comment
Mike, I so enjoy your stories. I'm transported to the beach, in the water or in the parking lot (OUTSIDE of the cone zone, of course) while reading them. What a wonderful way to spend the early summer mornings. Granted, you have to deal with unreasonable parents and an occasional lazy child, but what a joy to see the smiles on the kids who seem to love surfing and are truly appreciative of your efforts. I'm sure there are many and they will miss you and Buck and whoever else is giving them their first taste of surfing. Enjoy it while you can! Lisa