Introducing MeHab™!
I went surfing today for the first time in nine months, or actually the second time but that other first time some five weeks ago was really just paddling. Don’t let anyone trick you into thinking that the Bristow-Latarjet procedure is easy business. The doctors do this…
…essentially cutting off your bicep muscle and screwing it into your shoulder so it’ll stop popping out. My nine-month layoff may not have been helped by the fact that I skipped rehab entirely, opting instead for something I’m working on patenting called MeHab™. The theory is based around a 1972 MG Midget I owned just after college. It was a very wonderful car but would break all the time. The garage would replace the broken part with something new and fabulous which would stress the other parts, breaking one of them and I’d be back in the shop the next day ad infinitum. I should have replaced that first busted part with something equally shitty or just rubber banded it back together.
MeHab™ includes just doing normal easy stuff like typing, scrolling through ELo’s Instagram feed and drinking extra vodka sodas. Then, one day you feel good enough to go surfing.
Which was today, for me.
It was a gorgeous, peaky North County morning but I was gripped by anxiety that something would go wrong, had no quick twitch muscle reaction in the shoulder so it was difficult to pop to feet, etc. but the paddling felt good and I knew that I’d be back to my normal self after a few more weeks of surfing and drinking extra vodka sodas.
My normal self is not very great and people like to point that out from time to time, I assume to shame. Like Mr. Dingin a few hours ago who wrote, “The best part about all this is that after comparing Logan’s surfing and Chas’s hunchbacked poo stance from that wave pool clip, Logan surfs WAY better, even if it is on a SUP.
But it’s also not not very great and as I sat today, observing every surfer around me, I realized that I am the exact middle point of surf ability. The dead center between utter kook on one end and semi-professional on the other (professionals don’t count as they are bizarre mutants).
The perfect average.
No one is more average and I thought, “Well ain’t that something…” because it also means that I’m the bellwether. Now, forget, for a moment, that a “wether” is a castrated male sheep and concentrate on its cultural meaning, “an indicator or predictor of something.”
Being the dead center most average surfer on earth means that how I feel about surfing is the way it is going to be.
How you like them apples World Surf League?
Stay tuned for predictions you can take to the bank!
Commented on Disqus? Log out, tap the Disqus button, and your old name and comments come back. The box is ours.
Your comments are still here. Every one of them.
Twelve years of BeachGrit comments came across from Disqus. Connect and we will show you how many are yours. We get your username, nothing else.
Connect Disqus to reveal.
Chaz You are having way above average fun so by Elo’s Barney math ya fuckin’ shred. Keep having more fun and one day, who knows?
bet the wrong knee feels good though!
I have found that scene to be one of the most disturbing and horrifying in modern cinema and totally unlike the almost comic bloodbaths of Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill or Django Unchained .
Bellwether? Possibly. Bell end? Without question.
Just a knob.
Looking a little MR there Chas.
Well boys…pretty sure we have to wait until next month to win those sunnies.
Top dead centre. Thank you very much.
“Clowns to the left of me ,
Jokers to the right ,
Here I am , stuck in the middle/WoSuLe with you ?”
I feel like I’m below the average but still feel I belong to the line up, so I think you’re good to go!
I dunno, Chas.
I think WSL would like to put you in the castrated male sheep category rather than an indicator of the future.