Coming home after Barcelona to a surf-less, club-less, Connecticut woodland where marijuana was illegal and dinner was served before 12:30 AM was followed by the bloom of my wisdom teeth. And holy shit did it hurt.
Well, the day came, and I had to be a man. Time to go under the knife and not cry about it. I don’t care how minor of a surgery this may be, getting put “under” and having another human cut into you is never a joyful thought. Lets skip forward; I was in a chair with a UFO spotlight bearing down on me. The doc told me, “I am going to count to ten, and you WILL be out cold.” That’s impossible, I thought. I was a five foot, seven inch cinderblock (as my friend used to say) that weighed two hundred pounds. It used to take me fifteen beers to even feel buzzed and now I was supposed to…
He was right. My eyes slowly fluttered open and my brother was staring at me from across the room. I was as confused as a I was sitting in 8th grade algebra 1. Just solve for X. I asked my bro if the doctor was going to come in and take my wisdom teeth out and he looked at me and shrugged. OK… Well, I guess I had to text him my question. He looked at his phone, and couldn’t make out the message that read, “akldjkjlka;kdnnjkdaj;klfjakl?” and just shrugged again. The doctor came in, said some stuff, and just like that I was on my couch at home with a computer on my lap and the Netflix tab open. I felt SO HIGH. I decided to just go with it and enjoy the ride as I was wrapped up like a juicy carne asada burrito in a warm and colorful Mexican blanket.
In my previous post I said I saw something that changed me. I was lying because this time I really felt something lifechanging. I think the doc had given me PCP just to take out my wisdom teeth because all of a sudden I was no longer in my living room. I was in an airplane sitting next to a kid with bleach blonde, perfectly slicked back hair, and we were both wearing suits. And oh yea, a third person was commentating on what we were doing. “On the plane heading for Africa, Robert wondered what would be in store for them, would they catch malaria, would they be speared by a native? He didn’t have any idea.”
Ok.. This had to be a dream? It didn’t matter if it was actually real life, a dream, or a freakish hallucination spurred on by considerable amounts of anesthetics, THIS WAS SICK! After months of searching we finally made it to the “perfect wave.” We had been searching far and wide, driven thousands of miles, and nearly been eaten by exotic animals, but there it was in all of its glory. We paddled out with a sense of pure happiness, and fulfilment. Sitting out there, seeing wave after perfect wave, I couldn’t help but reminisce on the journey that had brought me to this very moment. Suddenly, with an internal electric shock, setting my whole being ablaze, I was reminded that I don’t know how to surf. Like you may have imaged by now, I absolutely BLEW the wave, and immediately snapped back to my reality. Beads of sweat were dripping down my forehead onto my laptop, where the credits of the all-time great surfing masterpiece, The Endless Summer, were rolling. Yea, I will just keep that mental mishap to myself, I thought (until now). From that point on however, I was absolutely, undeniably, 100 percent hooked on this idea of surfing. I was all in.