Stand up paddling in Tumon Bay
Here I am, typing a blog post. It's just past noon on a sunny Friday in late June 2017. I could be out stand up paddling. As I type this I can see the sparkling blue ocean in the distance...
As a child I felt accident prone. I broke bones, needed stitches numerous times for cuts from falling, was hospitalized for asthma. I was an only child. If there were sport teams being picked I was most often in the back end of the draw. It felt like my quest for coordination and dexterity were more challenging compared to other kids. My parents divorced when I was around 7 years old. My father had issues with drinking and was absent for much of my childhood. I had a young mother who would occasionally work as a waitress in various restaurants around our small beach town. We lived walking distance from the beach in California during the early 80's and got by from her tips, welfare, and help from my grandparents. Public assistance subsidized our rent on one side of a tiny duplex.
My mom had a hippy free spirit attitude and she surfed. Her first boyfriend after my dad was a small time wheeler and dealer who dabbled in cocaine and the buying and selling of other stuff like cars and real estate. After him she got involved with a local surfer with a ripped bronze body bulging with muscles. He was a sometime waiter at a nice steak and seafood place down the street. He moved in with us and we lived a quintessential California beach lifestyle. Surfing everyday, taking road trips up and down the coast, camping, smoking pot and hanging with other surfers. Hedonism, we just did what felt good.
I had a tendency toward watching too much TV. We didn't have one at our house but when I would spend the night at my grandparents all I wanted to do would be to zone out and watch TV. When the first computer was introduced on my 3rd grade classroom, I was obsessed. That was a TRS-80. I would hang out at Radio Shack and then the Apple store, I would get computer catalogs and magazines and pine over the thought of one day having one of my own.
My mom on the other hand would demand that I do outside activities. Run in the field, explore around the creek, ride my bike, I was never grounded but sometimes she would push my out of the house if I was being too sulky and tell me to do something active in nature.
I didn't get into surfing right away. At first I rebelled against it. I saw the stoned out beach bums firsthand and didn't want to be around it, that's what my mom and her boyfriend were doing. The ocean had it's affect on me tho and at first it was SCUBA diving that I was fascinated with. I was too young to actually dive, but me and a buddy did put on our wetsuits, masks and snorkels and would snorkel around the cold murky beaches near my house. Eventually, reluctantly, I started riding waves. I was being dragged around to these different beaches while my mom and Louie would surf and so when I got bored climbing in the sand dunes and rocks I would put on my wetsuit and get tumbled by the waves.
As the 80's dragged on, cocaine seemed to come around more often, my mom and her boyfriend would disappear on all night binges then they would get into violent fights waking up the neighbors and attracting the police to come calm things down. It was stressful for a weekly insecure kid like me. Then I fell into a routine. The process of putting on my wetsuit at my house, grabbing my surfboard, walking down to the pier, having a surf session, walking home and showering gave me comfort in many ways mentally and physically. By going through this routine, I felt healthier.
Fast foreword to now, I'm still grappling with how to juggle my tendency to overindulge in digital screen time and my body's need for physical movement. Does anyone else out there think about this?
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