How to: torture your wife!

Bringing surf dad mentality into the marital bed… 

The last few months I’ve been on a mission to teach my wife how to read the ocean. She’s a strong swimmer, talented free diver, but an utter coward if there’s a touch of swell or scrap of exposed reef. Which is a problem, since we regularly swim long distances to shoot fish, and you can’t always count on using an easy keyhole to exit the water. And you never really know in Hawaii, a storm or gnarly little wind swell can spring up out of nowhere. Safely dragging your carcass, plus a bunch of very expensive gear, up the rocks as you’re battered by the ocean takes some learning.

It’s a hard thing to explain to my wife, the need to become comfortable in the surf.

“I just won’t go out when there are waves.”

“But you can’t know exactly when a swell hits.”

“Just check the surf report.”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“Why not?”

“It just doesn’t. Look, you need to learn how to time waves. What if we get caught by a current and swept to a place where there’s no safe way out.”

“You shouldn’t be taking me somewhere like that.”

“Shits happens. You need to be ready.”

“No, if there’s a chance of that happening I just won’t go out.”

“Then you never can.”

It’s my fault, kinda. She said she wanted to surf a few years back, so I took her out on a small day at Laniakea. She got her ass handed to her.

To hear her tell the story, which I have, too many times, it was double overhead and I’m an irresponsible asshole for encouraging her to paddle out. It was chest high, max, and soft. Nothing dangerous , maybe a little too big to take out a green barney like her. But laying down and looking up throws off your perspective, and there’s no convincing her.

The million trips I’ve taken to the ER over the last fifteen years don’t help matters. She doesn’t trust me to keep her out of the danger I put myself in.

To hear her tell the story, which I have, too many times, it was double overhead and I’m an irresponsible asshole for encouraging her to paddle out. It was chest high, max, and soft. Nothing dangerous , maybe a little too big to take out a green barney like her. But laying down and looking up throws off your perspective, and there’s no convincing her.

So she hates surfing now. I’m more than fine with that. If she’d embraced the sport I’d be stuck ferrying her to shit surf, rather than having fun on my own. And some of the stuff she wanted me to do, like paddle her board out through the waves then hand it over once we’re outside… it’s just embarrassing. I’m married to an aspiring kook. It’s hard living with that knowledge.

Still, I’m going to beat this knowledge into her head if I have to use a stick to do it. She loves diving, and I’m a firm believer that you need to behave as though lifeguards don’t exist. Always be able to self rescue. Learn to use currents to your advantage, understand why, sometimes, the longest way in is the easiest. Sometimes you need to take a few beatings.

If you’re married, you probably already know, telling your wife anything works poorly.

So I let her make bad decisions. Yeah, I can see the current rampaging out through the channel, but when she insists that’s the best way to go I let her learn from her own mistakes. I kick over towards the reef and let a two foot swell push me in, then watch from shore as she grinds her way to exhaustion. Then I tease her for it. It’s a dick move, but I know what I’m doing and it frustrates me when someone who doesn’t second guesses me. And it’s not like she’s gonna leave me. No pre-nup, and my income is laughable.

That may be why I have such a love for playing in the ocean, the fact that knowledge goes so far to ameliorate danger. People can, and regularly do, die on days that are totally tame. They get swept into deep water, panic, drown. Number one cause of tourist death in Hawaii is snorkeling. It boggles the mind. It ain’t the ocean that’s killing them, water filled lungs notwithstanding. It’s fear and inexperience doing the deed.

Laughing and playing in water that will kill the typical landlubber is pure rapture. The culmination of decades of work. And that taste of terror and confidence on a big day, is there any better flavor?

Crazy how far it extends, that safety experience brings. I like to surf “big” waves, though whether they’re actually “big” is debatable, as the bar keeps hitting new heights. Let’s call it a sliding scale, it’s plenty large long before Dorian starts sweating.

It’s calculated risk, once you’ve got things dialed. Not foolhardy death wish territory. Yes, you can always die, but most likely you’ll just get hurt. Modern medicine is amazing. I’ve got a dead man’s ligament holding my arm together, and a nifty titanium gadget inside my head that lets me hear. A plastic surgeon kept me pretty after a freak accident fin to the face.

You’ve gotta have health insurance though, without it I’d be crippled. Both literally and financially.