Some Writing from the Past

The Preteen Surfer Dude Meets the Monster Wave

As is very often the case with other things, the best part of being an Army brat was also the worst part of being an Army brat.

Moving so often was a pain in my psyche but moving to Hawaii when I was a kid was a wonderful adventure... It was wonderful that is, after the locals stopped beating the bejesus out of me nearly everyday simply because I was pale with blonde, curly hair.

They didn't stop because they suddenly started liking me or because they became instantly enlightened with regard to their xenophobia. They stopped because, between jujitsu and karate lessons, I began winning more than I lost and it became too risky for them try. So, eventually, some of them, they, the others, those people - whatever - did become fast friends and the same group began my indoctrination into the life of a native kid in a place where the weather is always good enough.

It started with swimming at Kidde Beach, a small private patch of sand nestled in a breach of a large and Lengthy lava reef that stretched almost uninterrupted, from Nanakuli to Makaha Beach. Our house was built on that reef in the Makaha mailing zone but the Nanakuli school district. Mr. Kidde was half Japanese and Half Haoli and he was old; too old, in fact, to even hear the neighborhood gang claiming his beach, let alone do anything to stop us. It was at Kidde Beach that I learned to snorkel and to use a skimboard with as much skill as those who had been skimming since they could walk.

Most skimboards were homemade things, fashioned from 3/4" plywood cut in a circle and waxed and waxed with surf board wax on one, the bottom, side. During a reasonable tide, we would wait for the wave to recede on the beach them run and throw the board so it skimmed across the receding wave and then we would jump on the board and ride it until one edge lodged in the sand and threw us off. Skim boards were the precursors to real surf boards. I still tell people today that it is easier to retain balance on a surf board than it is on a skim board.

When the time came to graduate to a real surf board, my mother simply said no and my father didn't try to convince her, when I asked for my own board as an early birthday present. What they both meant was they didn't want me surfing because they deemed it dangerous but that's not what they said. I learned to surf on borrowed boards, first in the confines of Kidde Beach but then to the long wave runs of Makaha. The goal, however, was to surf the most dangerous beach on Oahu... Sunset Beach... On the North Shore.

When I lived in Hawaii, Sunset Beach was off-limits to all military personnel. Although I knew there was an implied "and their dependents..." On the sign located at the entrance to the beach, but I pretended not to when I was invited by Vincent Akelani's parents on a picnic to the North Shore. I didn't mention the surfing thing to my mother...

I don't remember how long Vincent's board was but it seemed huge. When I saw the waves at Sunset up close and personal I remember thinking it wasn't big enough. I was 11 years-old and scared to death. I was also 11 years-old and way too proud to admit it or to refuse to enter that angry surf once my friend Vincent had ridden a huge wave from way out, all the way to the sand.

I paddled out beyond the break and waited for a swell I thought would be reasonable.

I didn't know it then, but Sunset Beach is famous because the waves are so unpredictable. There is never a break pattern but once your wave begins to break, if you're in the right place, you can ride it with relative smoothness all the way to the beach. The wave I chose seemed nice enough in the beginning but once it noticed I was there, it got really, really pissed off and determined to do its best to kill me.

I stood up but not for more than a few seconds when I was blown off life a dry leave in an Oklahoma windstorm and then, out of nowhere, the wave broke over me. I was taken down and twisted, turned and churned. I didn't know up from sideways so I couldn't swim for the surface and my lungs weren't going to hold my last breath as long as I needed them to.

Just before I drowned, I became very calm. It was odd.

I remember clearly thinking that I was going to die and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. I wasn't fitfully sad about it but I thought it would be chicken of me not to try once more. I thrust out my arms in front of me and sprained my wrist on the beach. I had almost given up the ghost in about 4 inches of water.

When I got my bearings I saw the entire Akelani family cracking up and pointing at me. My trunks had slipped down a little and I was cracking a vertical smile.

I never told Vincent nor anyone else for years that I had almost drowned. That day I did manage to ride two waves all the way in even though I was dumped several more times but never so severely as the first from the wave that tried to kill me. On the other hand, I never returned to Sunset Beach.

When Vincent would invite me, I would always make sure I had other plans and after awhile, Vincent figured out that I was a pansy when it came to Sunset Beach.

The last time I visited Hawaii was in 1981. I drove to Sunset Beach and all the fears I had felt as a kid came flooding back. Just writing about it does the same thing. To overcome this panic, I remember that at about the same time, I was swimming on the Sharks Swim Team at Schofield Barracks and I took a dare to dive from the 10m platform.

The pool rules read that there was only one way down from the platforms and climbing down wasn't it. So I climbed and discovered that 10 meters looking down is more frightening than 10 meters looking up but I "dived" nonetheless. It was an ugly dive and a little painful, but I did it again and again until I had no fear of that platform again. Perhaps if I had returned to Sunset Beach again and again, I would have conquered that fear as well. It's just as likely, though, I would have just drowned.