I’m too old for this

So I have to admit. I’m not a huge fan of surfing. Or skateboarding for that matter.
Okay, before you dude-bro me to death, let me clarify that statement by saying that my body just isn’t made to do those things anymore.
Tubes and rail slides? No thanks, I’d rather keep my ankles where they are. Floaters and kick flips, yeah…well, like I said, when I wake up my body feels mostly broken and it’s not a good idea to pretend I’m able to pull off those moves anymore.
Unfortunately, I’ve become an old guy.
I don’t know when it happened. I can only assume it happened somewhere between ceasing all aerobic activity after college and my grumpy hatred of cold water and horrifically folded ankles.
Wear a wetsuit you say? That sir is a lie. An outright lie to further the wetsuit industry. My marbles are still screaming at me through a neoprene prison, “Let me be free!” Which actually means they wanna hibernate somewhere south of the equator where the water keeps to itself and doesn’t feel the need to remind you who’s in charge.
I’ll admit that surfing is an amazing athletic and emotionally soothing means to an end, but I haven’t lugged a board to the beach in years. I live in an area that is teeming with professional surfers who spend their lives on a waxy piece of shaped fiberglass in locales that most of us spend a year saving our pennies just to experience for a few days.
And to be honest, I abandoned skateboarding around the same time that my Roskopp deck kept finding its way to my shins instead of the rubber diamonds on my old skool Vans.
The unfortunate part of this subculture is that the smarmy kids from Rancho Sante Fe find it more important to float on expensive boards that daddy bought and pretend like they’re grimy surf rats instead of facing the reality that they’re actually trust fund jerks who are looking to waste time before someone in their family buys them their college education and a pretend office job. And yet we venture on…
The truth is that I don’t surf anymore because I just don’t have the time nor the inclination to deal with people who have a frail sense of entitlement about the water they’ve forgotten they’re lucky enough to float on.
Honestly Skippy, if I knew I’d be facing a fistfight every time I paddled out, I would have just simply run you over when you stepped out of your mom’s Escalade.
The main focus of writing this is to share a little piece of reality with most of you: you’re going to get older. All of you.
When you look back at yourself in your mid thirties and wonder, “Was I ever that guy?”, I’m here to tell you, yeah, you were. We all were at some point.
We’ve all been that person. But that clueless 21-year-old dingleberry is why you’ve become who you are today. Change is a constant and the important part is accepting that it is inevitable and then deciding what path to take afterwards.
So the next time you see an older guy waxing his board at the beach or a feeble grey boarder weaving his way along the boardwalk, remember that we were you at one time. We had no cares for anything but ourselves and the freedom that board bought us.
Life changes faster than you can imagine.
See you around grommets…