Surfin' Nerd

The athletes at the U.S. Open of Surfing weren’t happy. The swells at Huntington Beach were insufficiently high last week. The waves would only occasionally surpass eight feet.

I already learned the hard way that surfing is too difficult for me and that it really smarts when you fall into those hard boards. So I was messing around on a boogie board in shoulder-deep surf a few hundred yards away from the competition. Every once in a while I’d catch a wave that would propel me to shore. It was great, dumb fun- until one of those rare, giant walls of water hit me.

It almost killed me. Rather than pushing me to shore, the wave flipped me over and pounded my skull into the ocean floor. I lost consciousness for a few seconds. When I came to, I was doing involuntary underwater somersaults like the victim of a Spongebob Squarepants pratfall.

My neck still aches and sand continues to trickle out of every orifice. But I’m alive.