Punched In The Face
Four thirty in the morning is too early to roll out of bed, unless everyone at camp is also rising at that time, and you’re doing it to go surfing.
The main Amaru palapa is already abuzz with activity as I stalk, head down, through the airy room and down a dark hall where I know there’s coffee in a big urn next to the refrigerator with the yogurt and homemade honey.
I am not fit for human interaction before coffee.
After the requisite two cups, I can speak.
Beunas dias, says Victor. We drink coffee, we eat bananas, and then we ready for waves!
Victor’s either had his Joe or is one of those psychos who wake up stoked. As he heads out to the courtyard to load boards onto the truck, I decide on a third cup to get to his level of enthusiasm. Caffeine intake modulated, I start my little handheld vlogger camera and wander into the main palapa where Fred and Rob drink their coffees at a high-top table.
Wow, man, you really made that board look nice, Fred says to Rob. It looked like a piece of shit before, and now it looks nice.
Rob laughs ruefully.
Oh well, says Fred. Shit happens.
Rob answers with a yeah-it-does smile.
Wait, what shit?
Well, Rob begins, a surfboard fell victim to a truck accident. It got run over.
Oh shit, I say because I’m still hours away from any semblance of non-four-letter-word vocabulary.
Your surfboard?
It was almost my surfboard, he says, shaking his head slightly.
Rob has traveled two thousand miles, over two days, just to stand for a few fleeting seconds on a waxed plank aboard a hummock of heaving sea. And now, after having one surfboard denied passage by the airline and another one crushed, that singular experience seems in doubt.
In ice hockey we say, Everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the face. A quote stolen from Mike Tyson, the idea is that your public self says all the sensible things because it’s easy to be sensible when the world is rolling your way. But eat some knuckles and everything changes in a hot second, and your true self is revealed.
I’m about to ask Rob how he feels about the latest plot twist when Victor steps up.
What does the surfboard look like? Rob asks him.
Victor shrugs. Not so bad, he says. Somebody will repair it.
Victor puts his hand on Rob’s shoulder, leaning in as if to whisper a secret.
I have an extra plan, he says.
Rob raises an eyebrow.
We are passing by my house this morning, Victor continues, and I’ll grab one board for you. And maybe you like it?
Understanding that Victor is offering one of his personal boards, Rob smiles and pats Victor on the shoulder.
That’s cool, he says. Thank you.
We climb in through the back doors of the white Toyota High Ace and monkey-walk to our seats. Behind the driver and passenger seats, the van has two benches facing each other, like a troop truck from old movies. Victor and Fred are up front. Rob and I face each other.
Something strange happens when you capture life’s small moments with a camera. Ephemera becomes artifact; the little things you wouldn't ordinarily consider can become meaningful. You notice them in real life once, and then re-notice them again later.
Now, I know having your surfboard run over by a truck isn’t the same as getting punched in the face, but I also know most of us don't get more flexible and accepting with age. We get brittle, rigid, clinging to our narrow notion of how life must unspool. Things need to go our way or else. We know everything and lose our minds when life does not comport to our narrative. In response, we zoom in, narrowing our worlds to realms we can control. We seed, water, and trim our front lawn until it resembles a putting green, then raise the shotgun when the neighbor’s puppy pisses on the grass.
As we monkey out the back of the van, I’m thinking about the simple shit-happens moment that’s captured inside the camera and how it might fit into the rest of Rob’s narrative.
For most of his life, Rob was an attorney and a corporate executive, roles I’d not normally associate with souls known for gracefully accepting life’s vagaries. But somewhere along the line, things changed for Rob. Although he doesn’t explicitly call out the date, I will. I’m going to say it happened fourteen years ago, when, to celebrate his retirement, his release from a lifetime of risk mitigation and the structuring of wordy what-ifs, a childhood friend invited him to La Saladita, Mexico.
He had heard that I had become a surfer, Rob told me in an interview we’d had earlier. Which was totally false. I had taken a surf lesson on a family holiday to Hanalei back in 2009.
Rob’s friend had rented rooms in the home of a somewhat famous surfer named Corky Carroll who ran a boarding house for surfers.
He’d take you out surfing, remembers Rob, and regale you with stories of the old days.
As much as the stories were a hoot. There was no instruction, and Rob’s nascent surfing career didn’t exactly catch fire.
I spent a week and didn't catch a single wave, he said, smiling at the memory.
And now, fourteen years later, we’re standing on an empty beach in Central America. As Victor unloads the boards from the Hi Ace, permit me a few jump-cut consultations to consider Rob’s situation alongside others in our Amaru cast of characters.
So, he started surfing at '64, I say to Gerritt, the head honcho here. Have you heard that story a lot?
No way, he answers. Rob is first for me. I don't think anyone has ever started surfing at 64 and kept going.
And here’s Willow, the tour-giving yoga instructor who we met at arrival: I assumed that he surfed his whole life, and that he just loved it so much that he's just continuing the journey. Wow. I’ve never met anyone who started surfing at 64. He fooled me.
And here’s Sabrina from Switzerland who has quietly kept the intersecting cogs of the Amaru machine running for the past five years: Amazing! I would not have the courage to do it. I feel like maybe when I’m 50, I’ll stop surfing.
As Rob rubs a slab of wax over the board Victor picked up for him at his house, I’m thinking that it’s not about avoiding getting punched. Everybody gets punched. The question is: What do you do next?