You want your kid to ride waves for money? Are you sure?
You got kids? If you do, you know what robust enjoyment they bring.
Mine are delicate-boned little things with guinea-pig faces and glossy hair and if I don’t see them I fall into a dreadful melancholia. Although I’m not one given to end-of-life feelings, any sort of separation sends me into an emotional paralysis.
(You think divorce is easy? Read this if you feel like you want to bust out of your gilded cage.)
One of my favourite things to do is to swim out with one of my kids when it’s a little bigger, hold his hand and, when a set comes, tell him we’ll dive to the bottom, open our eyes and dodge the pillars of foam together.
Anyway,
A few years back, I started dragging ’em out for surfs. Dads know the drill on this. You caddy ’em out onto a waist-deep bank on a foam board, find little corners and push ’em into runners. Because you are an expert your commands are endless and forceful: paddle like this, catch this, stand up now, turn your head, do this, do that.
And you think, what a gift I’m giving my kid. My dad never took me surfing. My dad never revealed the mysteries of the ocean to me.
If the kid isn’t totally repulsed by the learning process and he starts to improve a little the dad moves to the sand with his video camera, snatching precious vision for post-session analysis. I vacationed in Hossegor a few years ago and was astonished by the dad’s squatting under umbrellas while their kids shimmied to to the beach on their JS’s and DHD’s.
It really is a thing. A dad used to want his kid to be President. Or an architect. A doctor. Education used to be everything. Work hard. Get ahead. Make the world a better place.
Now it’s a pro surfer or, and I see it more in the skate parks, a pro skater.
Is it the illusion of cool?
Is it the failed ambition of daddy manifesting itself in his kids?
I wonder,
Why would you want your kid to be a pro surfer?
Why would you take something that has given you so much and turn it into an insecure, stress-ridden occupation with very little reward?
Bottom line: unless the kid is a masterpiece, an Eli Hanneman or Bronson Meidy, the best he can hope for is a few orbits of the qualifiers and, maybe, best scenario, a year in a WCT jersey.
Toast the bliss of childhood.
Surf with your kid but button your lips, let him (her) make their mistakes, catch the wrong waves, paddle like dumb-asses.
Let ’em enjoy surfing in all its futility and beauty.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BLC0VQvgYU4/?taken-by=beach_grit&hl=en
im teaching my children the fundamentals of traditional Christianity and nuclear family values. and also to unite against the evils of satan
C’mon now, Cmon now.
Marginally more acceptable than dealing drugs.
Where I live the single surf moms are the worst. Not only are they pushing their kids into surfing but they whore themselves out to any available guys in the local surfing scene. Shop owners, shapers, coaches, photographers and hot surfers from back in the day are all targets. They jump into a relationship as fast as possible and take as many resources as they can, sometimes working a main dude while hustling another on the side. It’s so skevy that I nearly gag when I see one.
They got them there too, huh?
Wonder who set that precedent?
Care to share the locale – I got some sausage to hide.
Myrtle Beach, the home break of Kenny Powers!
they are called pro hos
As long as they can Barrel
God Derek, I agree with you but `i can name half a dozen surf dads whose spawn now own beachside property and only a couple of their surf rats made the CT.
It’s a compelling dream in comparison to lugging bricks.
I got one that likes to hang from rocks and another whom I heard rustling around at 5:30am heading out to taste the ocean. I always have told them, “I don’t care about sticker’s, I just want you both to be able paddle out and hold your own in any line up..”
Is Chas teaching his girl to surf?
If I do, it’ll be because I want someone cool to surf with, not some future mealy-mouthed shredder who can’t pronounce “tartar sauce.” (I see you, Surf Splenda…)
Without misguided fathers giving their children the statistically unlikely dreams of glory and riches that tend to result in disappointment and poor education, rich toffs in beach towns would lack the domestics, groundsmen, and waiters that make their lives so carefree and wonderful.
and surf journalists(?)
It’s the illusion of something more transcendental than success in capitalism. whilst mimicking the structure. I personally will endeavour to teach my children the dance of algorithms, negative gearing and the beauty of Microsoft Excel.
You sound like a shit load of fun … daddy
The thrill as they sort and filter their first data!