The Wisdom in Water

Several months ago - perhaps even a year - Linda and I watched the movie Surfwise. "SURFWISE follows the odyssey of 85-year-old legendary surfer Dr. Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz, his wife Juliette, and their nine children—all of whom were home-schooled on the beaches of Southern California, Hawaii, Mexico and Israel; they surfed every day of their lives, and were forced to adhere to a strict diet and lifestyle by their passionate and demanding, health-conscious father."

Surfers and some fans of surfing know well the Paskowitz story, but beyond that cultural subset  few knew of Doc or his story.  But perhaps I should first begin with my surfing history - brief as it is.

Frequent Ring Writes readers know that it's only been in recent years that I've developed some coordinated control over my long limbs.  Not always gangly, but rarely nimble, I stuck to games that relied little on eye/hand coordination.  Year by year, sport by sport, I was weaned away from the more talented players.  Sports like soccer, basketball, baseball, and football (we had no program in our town) were played in gym and I was amongst the last player picked..  Hockey  - skating and holding a stick to hit a puck - represented something wholly unimaginable.  Other than a bicycle, things with wheels were downright laughable; I nearly killed myself in attempts at skateboarding, roller skating or blading.  I looked like Gerald Ford coming down a jetway.  I tried skiing and remarkably never busted a bone though I took falls a plenty from Aspen to the Alps.

I soon learned that sports with repetitive movements were something that, with much practice, I could manage.  Bicycling, and running were two simple ones - one foot after the other.  I could even play a bit of golf (though never a great handicap) by grooving a swing that was serviceable.  In college I found crew and rowing to be the perfect complement to my skill set.  I sat on a seat, strapped my feet to a board, and simply inserted an oar into the water and pulled.  Over four years I honed my stroke, eventually making the 1st boat and winning a New England gold medal in our class.  And rowing gets us closer to water and closer to surfing.

It was through rowing that I became acquainted with Phi Mu Delta (PMD).  I joined the novice crew team and soon learned that several of the male rowers on the varsity team were in a fraternity.  I'd never thought that I'd want to be in a fraternity and didn't give it much thought at first.  I just wanted to be on the team.  I was an eager rower, if but a weak novice one.  I was so dedicated to the idea of making a go of it, that I convinced my novice coach to let me sleep at his rooming house over winter break so I could participate in the workouts.  (Deep down I think I also knew there was not a chance I'd perform them as well at home over a month long holiday break).   Living at the house, I grew to know the other roomers.  I soon found out I was living in an alumni crew house.  A couple of the boarders, though much older than I were still finishing their undergraduate degrees, others were taking grad courses.  There were former rowers, both from the men's and women's teams.  Though I was just a few months into my rowing career, I quickly absorbed much about UMass Crew in those few weeks.

One evening, two of the house dwellers, Jill and Michele - who rowed together on the women's team, invited me to drive up to L.L.Bean in Freeport, ME with two friend of theirs, Larry and Josh.  It was late, but Bean is open 24 hours and no one had classes or had to work the next day.  Jill had a behemoth of a station wagon and the five of us piled in and drove through the dead of a cold winter night to Freeport.  We drank beer and laughed most of the way and arrived at L.L. Bean at 2am.  We wandered the empty aisles, sat in display canoes, and even bought a few things.  Jill said she had a friend in Portland on whose floor we could crash.  We took many turns that Jill was guessing at which led us to a house she said she thought  was her friend's.  I am about 6'3; Josh and Larry are both taller and more solid.  The five of us tiptoed loudly into the living room.  Giant Josh laid claim to the couch and the rest of us huddled on chairs and on the floor.

In the morning, I heard people whispering, people I didn't know.  "Who is this?" the voiced inquired.  In a hungover haze, I became aware that these people were stepping lightly through and around us.  I felt sure we were in some stranger's house.  Finally, a person said, "I think that's Jill."  Relieved but still disheveled and embarrassed we demurely left and returned to Amherst.  Jill piloted the big station wagon to the other side of campus from where I lived and pulled behind a large boarding house on N. Pleasant Street that had Greek letters on the front.  The house was neither impressive or inviting.  It looked simply like a beat up boarding house.  From the car, I could see thick plastic covering the windows to keep the January cold out.  We said our goodbyes and Jill, Michele, and I returned to coach's house.  On the way back, I asked what the house was.  Michele and Jill both knowingly chuckled and answered, "It's the Mu."

I didn't know that much about The Mu, but soon learned that my coach was a brother at Phi Mu Delta and so was the lightweight coach.  I learned that nearly a couple of dozen current and former rowers that I knew were Phi Mu Delta's, some proudly and others less overtly.  I also learned there were plenty who were not.  That spring semester, I returned to my dorm, regular classes and continued to train with the crew team.  I was buried somewhere in the 2nd or 3rd novice boat, but still saw Josh and Larry among the rest of our teammates in the gym.  It was not long into the semester that I got a call in my dorm room from Josh.  He wanted to know if I was "interested in coming by the house sometime and meeting the guys."  I declined, politely saying that I wasn't really interested in fraternities.  But Josh is charming and persistent.  And standing several inches taller and weighing many muscular pounds more than me, he's an effective salesman.

He and Larry both, along with a few other PMD rowers made other entreaties.  Finally Josh told me just to come by for "an Exchange."  He explained that it was a small party, usually on Thursday nights in which a different sorority or two came over and we drank beer.  Josh said, "You like girls and beer, don't you? Come on."  Not wanting to go alone I convinced my closest novice rower friend, Russell, to come with me.  The details of my Phi Mu Delta experience are too numerous and at times too embarrassing to delve into here.  The summary is that I pledged that fraternity (as did Russell) and ended up living in the house for the remainder of my three years in college, rowing for the crew team all the while.   But what about surfing?  What about the ocean?  Yes, yes.  I will come to that.

Growing up in landlocked Mansfield, Connecticut, over an hour's drive to the beach, it was a special occasion when we went.  We'd drive to Ocean Beach Park in New London or Rocky Neck in Niantic, but soon we drifted eastward until Watch Hill, Misquamicut, and East Beach became the favorites.  It was out in Rhode Island where you were more likely to find bigger waves.  Though I'd proven myself able to tread water, I wasn't a natural swimmer.  It also so happens that my mother has always been quite protective.  The rule was that I wasn't to go out in water above my armpits. I did some body surfing, jumped around a bit, but when the waves got big, I was relegated to the shallows or the beach.  Sure, I sometimes went out over my head, but I had taken enough underwater tumbles in the rolling surf to know that I wasn't going to tempt the wrath of Poseidon.

While we day tripped to RI from time to time, it was summers that we, along with the masses, drove to Cape Cod for extended vacations.  When I was little we went to Craigville, and even into my early teens we often spent a week or so there.  We also had friends in Eastham and as a preteen (was I ever a tween?) that was the first time I can recall being cognitively aware of the Lower Cape.  We spent many days along bayside sandy beaches.  On clear days you could see the relic that was the Target Ship and sometimes all the way up to the Monument in Provincetown.  Our friends would take us sailing, fishing, and clam-digging.  We boated out to islands that disappeared when the tide came up.  On the ocean side, the water was colder and often there was more surf.  We'd go to beaches up and down the National Seashore - From Nauset in Orleans, up to Nauset Light in Eastham, Marconi in Wellfleet - and every Hollow beach along Cape Cod's forearm from Wellfleet to Truro to P'town.  Our beach visits were so precious that I can remember my sister and I huddled under a blanket on a rainy day as our mom pointed to a light patch of sky saying hopefully, "I think it's clearing!"

In my youth, I might have seen a surfer or two from those beaches.  I now know for certain they were there. But surfing to me then - standing on an unstable board floating on fast flowing waves that were, by definition, going to break - was beyond my mind's projection.  Like skateboarding and the then unknown to me snowboarding, I didn't need any "sport" to challenge my ability to stay upright.  Still, I learned to love the water and as I grew older and into a more confident swimmer, I swam out over my head, let big waves lift me up, and survived the times heavy water pinned me below the surface so long that I wasn't sure which way was up.  When I got scared, I took a break but always braved the waves again.  But I never surfed, knew little of it beyond goofy surf movies or Beach Boys songs.

What I didn't know as a young boy on the Lower Cape in the 1970s was that in late 1980s I'd be living in a fraternity with several guys who spent their summers and between semesters living, working, and playing there.  Beginning the first summer after college, I would make regular trips to the Cape to visit my friends.  Wellfleet was where they went and often that's where I could be found.  My friends worked at the Beachcomber, for the town, at the general store, and for the trash company.  I heard many outrageous stories of parties, girls, fights, thefts, garbage finds, and bonfires.  From what I saw on my weekend visits, I had no reason to suspect any of it as hyperbole.   After college I continued to make trips to the Lower Cape. Sometimes I'd go with family, other times with, or to see friends.  Though up to that point I'd never spent any more than a couple of weeks there, I began to feel comfortable in Wellfleet.  I began to recognize the same people - friends of my friends, people who'd spent the entire summer of their lives there.  And through my friends, I made new friends.  And yet throughout that time I still never surfed.

Flash forward to the mid 1990's.  I'm halfway through my two year graduate degree at UMass - Amherst.  I have the summer off and Steve successfully pitches the idea of me working in Wellfleet for the summer and living with him in what we call the "Suck Shacks" behind our friend Luke's family restaurant in S. Wellfleet.  The Suck Shacks consisted of 5 small cottages.  Some had two bedrooms, others were studios. Each shack was tiny and featured two-burner stinkolaters (sink, stove, refrigerator units).  Having never lived in Wellfleet for a full summer I jumped at the chance.  Our stinkolater was named The Diavlo 5000.

I got two jobs - as a waiter at a pricey Wellfleet restaurant and as a beach officer for the town.  As a waiter, I had to be at work by late afternoon and was done around 12am.  I reported to the beach at 830am.  My job as the assistant manager was to help assign sticker checkers to beach and pond parking lots, give breaks to the staff, and then spend the rest of the time driving around Wellfleet, issuing tickets to illegally parked or unstickered cars.  I was deputized and carried a badge.  And it was during this summer, 1995, that I finally learned about surfing.

Steve was - and still is - an avid surfer.  Though he grew up in Boston, he discovered surfing on the Cape and like so many was immediately hooked.  Our friend Luke (went to UMass, was a PMD, and whose parents owned the Suck Shacks) spent most of the summers of his youth (and still does) in Wellfleet.  Though Luke spent the school year in Foxboro on his skateboard, he spent the summers on the Cape on his surfboard.  By the time I rolled into Wellfleet in 1995, Steve and Luke had both been surfing for years and had already begun their ongoing efforts to surf all over the world.  (Luke is also an accomplished photographer and much of his work features surfing:  www.lukesimpson.com).

Courtesy of lukesimpson.com

Between Luke and Steve there were surfboards all over and in the Suck Shacks.  They were piled on roof racks, hanging in the rafters, leaning against walls - both in and outside.  From them (and other surfer friends of theirs who became friends of mine) I learned about the different boards, what the shapes and sizes were good for.  For years prior Steve had drilled quotes from Endless Summer and Big Wednesday into my head.  But now I was watching obscure surf videos, in Luke's Suck Shack, drunk at 2am.  The next morning, bleary eyed, Luke and/or Steve would wake at dawn to check the surf, the wind.  Sometimes I'd go with them and survey the waves.  "Blown out." "Choppy." Nice lines."  Rippin'".  I began to absorb the language.  Slowly I was being drawn in.  What was it about surfing that could consume my friends so?  Sometimes they'd try to explain it to me, but were rendered speechless only saying that it was too hard to put into words.

Other than playing on a board in small "long board" waves, I had yet to try it myself until that summer.  Steve piled a few boards on top of his ancient station wagon and we drove to the beach.  The waves were small but ridable.  I pulled on a borrowed and very tight-fitting 3/2 wetsuit and Steve handed me an insanely heavy longboard.  It could have kept King Kong afloat.  It was a good board for me to learn on.  The waves weren't so big that I couldn't paddle past them, but big enough for me to paddle into them (a condition I later required for any surfing excursion).  Eventually, I worked my way through the progression of going from my chest to my knees to my feet and then even popping from chest to feet (I bet it didn't look like I popped up, but I felt like I did). After many tries, I finally managed to catch a long ride into the beach. It was fun, and thrilling and I felt a sense of pride in the accomplishment.  Many life-long surfers begin this same way - one ride.  I am not one of those people.

Encouraged by my modest success, I continued to tag along with the surfers from time to time. I held no allusion that I was a natural or that I could begin to even approximate their skill, but I enjoyed it just the same.  I borrowed a board and a suit and managed a couple of other small surfing successes.  But when the waves got big, I got pummeled.  The water rose so quickly and crashed with such ferocity that I spent as much time drinking water as I did paddling through it.  My efforts to stand resulted in swift and impromptu dismounts.  I hung nothing.

Though I'd occasionally try my hand, a serious surfer I would not be.  Still having tried it, having caught a few waves, I did have an inkling of how addictive it could be.  I sensed the oneness with the water that riding a wave offered.  I saw the beach from the water, from well past the area where waves began to crest.  And having watched all those surf movies and having looked through all the surf magazines around the Suck Shack, I began to absorb some of what surfing meant to my friends.  And while I didn't achieve their surfing proficiency, I did come to imbibe the purity which it represents.

So back to this movie, Surfwise, which we watched a while back, but upon which I still regularly reflect.  The story is about this successful doctor who grows so unhappy in his professional life that he decides to chuck it all and live life to its fullest - in his small camper with his wife, his 9 kids, and their surfboards. I won't attempt to sum up the experience - leave that to the documentarians - but certainly Doc developed a philosophy to which he both fiercely subscribed and one which he also enforced in his family - not always to their liking.  Through all Paskowitz's experiences, he honed a life philosophy, summed it up in five elements:  A balance of Diet, Exercise, Rest, Recreation, and Attitudes of Mind.

The Paskowitz Family

Unlike Doc and instead of being surrounded by beaches and waves, I am, these days, mostly surrounded by lush green fields and dense woods.  And yet, like Paskowitz, I, too, endeavor to find balance between diet, exercise, rest, recreation, and attitudes of mind.  And like Paskowitz being near and in the water helps.  In the 15 years since that first Suck Shack summer I've managed to sneak in a Wellfleet weekend or two most summers.  And because I've made many friends there, I still see familiar faces.  Steve still lives there and so does Luke.  There are still boards atop their cars.

Last weekend I spent three days in Wellfleet with my wife and my son, staying with friends.  And this time I went to a beach that I'd driven past for decades, but never been to.  It's Mayo Beach - just down the road from the Wellfleet Pier.  It's a bayside cove and the waves don't get very big - perfect for my toddler son.  He splashed in the water while I stared at the dunes.  Toddlers can be bears and devils.  "No" is Max's favorite word.  Life - with or without a toddler - can be busy, stressful, and frustrating.  Finding time for a balance between "diet, exercise, rest, recreation, and attitudes of mind. isn't a simple task.  Wellfleet helps, wherever your "Wellfleet" happens to be.

One day we were driving down a windy dirt and scrub pine road.  The side view mirror was clipping branches as we followed Jack and Inga's car down the a narrow and wooded fire road.  Further and further we drove.  Surely we were on private property, surely we were lost.  On a piece of land barely a few miles wide surely we would run out of road.  And we did.  Late, late in the afternoon, we arrived at a hidden dune cul-de-sac.  We couldn't see the beach from where we parked.  We couldn't even hear the waves beyond the dune and above the sound of the strong breeze.  We followed a steep path through the grassy dunes, passing a few people as they were leaving.  When after a few minutes, we finally crested the last hill, an empty expanse of beach revealed itself to us.  Here, in Wellfleet, in the middle of a hot and sunny August weekend was an empty beach, no one as far as we could see in either direction.  It was ours.  It was equal parts diet, exercise, rest, recreation and attitudes of mind.  I didn't surf, but I was riding the wave.

Surfwise Trailer

Still Running

About the furthest I'd ever run before going to college was 2 miles and I if you saw it, you'd probably not have called it running.  In high school gym class we had to do the Cooper Run, which at the time was a mile and half run  - 6 laps around the perimeter of a playing field. We were graded by how fast we ran.  I think I averaged a C+.  I wasn't much faster than the Future Farmers of America group who trudged around in the field in work boots and jeans.  (The web tells me that now the Cooper Run Test sees how far one can run in 12 minutes.)

I lacked the coordination to play competitive sports like basketball, baseball, or soccer.  As a result, I had stopped playing organized sports by the time I got to high school.  (The exception being the golf team for which I never played a single match.)  But when I went off to college I vowed to reinvent myself.  I exchanged my oft broken glasses for contact lenses and joined the crew team.  It was during my first week at UMass Amherst as I was walking near the student union that I saw the eight person crew shell staged as a recruiting tool.  They were looking for tall and athletic looking people to fill the novice ranks.  I wasn't athletic, but I was tall and thin and that was enough for them to ask me to come to an informational meeting.

There were at least a hundred young men who came to that first meeting.  I looked around the room and was convinced I was the weakest one in the room.  I was surrounded by high school varsity athletes who were a cut below collegiate skill levels in their respective sports.  Most of them had been playing organized sports for years.  The coaches outlined the program, the rigorous training schedule, and the early morning workouts.  The most important thing I heard was that there would be no cuts.   As long as I came to every practice and gave it my all, I'd be on the team (and hopefully racing in a shell one day).

When I went to my first crew practice, in the fall of 1987, there were already less young men than at the informational meeting.  My odds to make a boat had improved and all I'd done was shown up!  We were gathered in the large lobby area of Totman Gymnasium.  If I'd known that we were going to run four miles that day, I don't know that I would have shown up myself.  With little fanfare, the 60 or so of us rumbled out the lobby doors and and turned left up a steep hill leading past dormitories, the university horse barns and off campus.  By the time we reached the top of the hill, I was already toward the rear, firmly ensconced with the slower runners.  At the top of the hill we turned left again and it led down a straight, steady decline.  Far, far ahead, I could just barely see the front runners.  By the halfway point, I was just one of a half dozen runners within view. I had to frequently walk to catch my breath.  My chest burned and my legs felt like lead.  As I made the last turn back toward the gymnasium, I was ahead of just one other runner.  By the time I re-entered the gymnasium lobby, the entire team - long done with the run and soon headed to the showers - seemed to gawk at my belated appearance.

I spent much of that fall trying to catch up.  But I never stopped coming to practice and I never stopped trying.  Steadily, month by month, I grew more fit.  By late fall, I could run that four mile loop without stopping and by the following spring, I could run as much as six miles.  I never became fast, but I did become conditioned.  By my senior year, I was rowing in the first varsity boat.  We won the New England Rowing Championships and finished a heartbreaking fourth in our division's national final at the Dad Vail's.

New England MV8 Grand Final 1991

Order	Entry	Result
1	UMass-Amh	5:52.40
2	Wesleyan	5:56.76
3	USCGA	5:57.10
4	UNH	5:58.54
5	Conn Col	5:58.65
6	Holy Cross	6:05.67

I stopped rowing after college, but didn't want to forego fitness.  Running seemed the easiest way for me to stay healthy.  On and off for the next 13 years, I ran.  I'd run for several months, but then get lazy or injured and take as many months off.  During the time off I'd eat poorly, drink, and generally gain 10 or 15 pounds.  I am six foot three inches and slender enough that I can disguise a dozen pounds.  Or so I thought.  Whenever I began to run again and lose those pounds, I'd be surprised by comments from people who hadn't seen me recently.  "Have you lost some weight?" they'd inquire.  "I suppose," I'd demur.  This was the running pendulum as it swung in my life from the summer of 1991 until 2004.  I'd run for a season, stop, get lazy, put on a few pounds, get inspired to exercise and I'd repeat the cycle.  Fit, unfit.  Flabby, lean.  Able to run for miles, able to make a run to the pizza parlor.

Not long after Linda and I moved back to New England in 2004, I joined the North Shore Striders running club.  By then I was well acutely aware of my tendency to run in stints.   With high cholesterol and a directive to exercise regularly, I thought that joining a club would help get me on the roads and stay there.  I was nervous about joining a club of runners given that I wasn't in the best of shape.  The whole idea of ME joining a RUNNING club seemed daunting so before even daring to join the club on runs, I began to run on my own.  I signed up for a couple races and was just getting myself in decent enough shape to feel comfortable running with strangers (strange runners?).  But before I could, I strained my right Achilles tendon and didn't run for the next 6 months.  Several months after my tendon had healed, my laziness beginning to eat at my conscience, I joined the Striders for their regular Sunday run from the Anchor Restaurant in Beverly.

There were just a couple of people there that day, but each Sunday I returned and as the weeks passed, I began to meet more and more Striders.  Before long I was the guy greeting new club members.  I ran many races with the Striders in 2006 and into 2007 until Max arrived.  I wasn't prepared for how having baby would change my running habits and soon I was completely out of shape and paralyzingly afraid of the pain of getting back in shape.  My laziness festered for  almost the entire year.

I knew that I couldn't not exercise and I understood that realistically running was the only activity that was simple, straightforward, and easy enough for me to attempt.  Over a Christmas visit to my sister's in Texas, I went for a run.  I then went for couple more runs on that trip.  When we got back to Massachusetts, I began to run at three days a week.  I was heartened by the speed with which I was getting back into shape.  Make no mistake, I wasn't yet in shape.  I didn't run swiftly, but I was soon able to run continuously for 30 minutes.  Then 40 minutes.  Then an hour.  This was all well and good, but I knew that I needed a race to inspire me, to keep me running.

Through the North Shore Striders I learned about the United States Track and Field's New England Grand Prix, a series of 7 races beginning in February and finishing in October.  Perfect, I thought.  I decided to attempt to complete the series, to be what they call an Iron Runner.  This way, I thought, I'd be committed to running the whole year.  The first race was a 10 mile race in Amherst, MA.  Though I was not yet really in shape to race 10 miles, I went anyway, slogging my way through the cold, wet rain.
I huffed and puffed my way through the New Bedford Half Marathon in March. I felt stronger by the time I ran the Rotary 12K in New Hampshire in May.  By June when I ran the Rhody 5K I felt like I was in good shape.  I eased my way through the Ollie 5 Miler and the Lone Gull 10K in September.  The culmination of the series was the Baystate Marathon, about which I wrote in October.

Though I moved from the North Shore in September I still belong to my running club.  This past weekend I represented The North Shore Striders in the Mill Cities Relay, a 28 mile team race from Nashua, NH to Lawrence MA along the Merrimack River.  Later this month, the 27th, will mark one full year of regular running, the most consistent and productive year of running of my almost 40 years. And barring injury, I'll continue running.  The Striders have seen fit to award me one of the club's qualifying time exempt numbers for the 114th running of the Boston Marathon.

Below is a picture of me and fellow Strider, Annajean, sporting our Iron Runner jackets, which we were awarded after the Baystate Marathon for completing all 7 races in the series.

The Accidental Athlete

In 1981 The University of Connecticut Mens' Soccer Team won the National Championship.  Long before UConn football and basketball were household names, soccer was a national powerhouse.  Football and basketball were after thoughts.  I was 11 years old then and basically grew up on campus.  There were NO bigger heroes than the UConn mens' soccer team.  And if you were actually from Storrs and made the team, you were the best of both worlds, a local hero.  Even today, the town of Mansfield (Storrs is a village of Mansfield) runs a first rate recreation program that feeds athletes right up to the high school level and beyond.  I was not fed up the chain.  I was not to be one of those local heroes.

Like many boys and girls I joined town sports leagues.  They handed me a bat and a ball and a glove.  I knew what I was to do with each.  But when it came to doing any, let alone at the same time, I proved  - let's be kind - ineffective.  I swung wildly, early, late, high, low, erratically, and often.   I rarely made it to on base and if I did it was because I got beaned by someone who pitched worse than I.   On base, I'd try to run, but I was never sure what I was supposed to be paying attention to; my timing was, shall we say, off.  As a fielder, I remember distinctly catching a pop fly with my forehead. Playing defense required things like speed, agility, and something called arm strength.  Before long I was consistently playing right field.  As youth baseball coaches across the world know, right field is where you put your worst player.  There just aren't many power lefty tykes or kid righties hitting the opposite way.  I rarely saw a play.  I did though incur the ire of teammates and fans when a that was ball hit my way went unnoticed because I was looking for four leaf clovers.

Season by season I played every town sport.  I tied my legs in knots playing soccer, tripping on the ball, players, and my own two feet.  In basketball, the lay-up was a shot I'd make 1 in 10 times.  The further away from the basket, the more likely I'd miss the backboard, to say nothing of the rim or the bottom of the net.  The concept of dribbling, passing, shooting, and retaining possession of the ball was straightforward.  My execution was anything but.  There wasn't a player on either team who wanted me to have the ball.

I think the only reason I am probably still alive today is because our town was so small it didn't have a football team then.

If you wanted to win you DID NOT want me on your team.  I heard all the names and they were all pretty accurate.  Goof, Klutz, Spaz, Dork, Retard.  My eyeglasses (usually taped together) didn't help the 'more creative' name callers.  "Four-eyed Spaz Attack."  "Blind Retard Ring-a-Ling-a-Ding-Bat."  Ironically, my social life didn't suffer.  Indeed I was well-regarded and had many friends.  I was fun and best of all I was funny.  I might not have been an agile athlete, but my I had a quick wit.  Still it was not enough to keep these same friends from necessarily leaving me the last person standing when captains chose the teams.

As if it wasn't hard enough for me to control my appendages, puberty (coming seemingly years after all my friends) brought on a monster growth spurt.  I grew nearly a half a foot in three months. Even in that brief time, classmates who I saw in the summer didn't recognize me by fall.  My feet seemed miles from my hips and hands that rarely acted in concert were no longer even in the same time zone.  I tripped over my feet,  stumbling over curbs, rocks, and even the plain old flat floor.  And I would have been the first one to tell you how funny it was.  I played the goofball better than its inventor.  This all might sound like the laments of an unhappy childhood, it most surely is not.  There were painful times to be sure - several ball/foot/knee to the groin moments.  Believe me, I wanted to be more coordinated.  And to this day I wish my parents had passed down more athletic genes.   Luckily, they blessed me by giving me a terrific sense of humor.

It wasn't that I didn't want to play these sports, it was just that I wasn't really able to.  At least not at the same pace as my more agile peers.  They could control their bodies in ways that I had (have?) yet to discover.  I wasn't in aerobic shape to run, winded within a half-mile.  By the time I'd reached high school the town recreational mill had turn me into grist.  But I still wanted to play sports.

I realized that I needed a simpler sport or at least one with less variables.  I was on the golf team in high school.  There were no try-outs and there were no cuts.  I never played a single competitive match, but I got to play nine holes for free every day after school.  I had to run to keep up with my teammates as it took me usually twice as many strokes to play each hole.  Luckily hitting 80 shots over 9 holes allowed me to practice my stroke at double the rate of my fellow golfers.  I never got to be a good golfer, so I focused instead on having a good, if unathletic, time. Eventually the repetition improved my stroke, marginally.  At last, here was a sport I could almost play!  The ball sat still.  It wasn't being thrown or hit at me and there weren't other golfers trying to hit it at the same time.  It was a start.

In college I willed myself to become an oarsman.  Learning how to row - learning the stroke, getting in shape for the very first time of my life, and waking up that early in the morning  - was the most significant life change I'd ever made.  And again it was the repetitive nature of the stroke that allowed me to persist (and there were no cuts).  With the oar locked in position, my feet literally strapped in to a fixed footboard, and my butt planted it a rolling seat, I have few variables to consider.  These was a skill I could master.  But I was still weaker than to most of my teammates.  And that weakness resulted in me catching a boat stopping crab* at the Dad Vail National Championships in 1988, still the worst and most painful moment of my athletic career.  Getting in shape took me the better part of four years and by my senior year through (choose one) twists of fate, Providence, destiny, hard-work, good coaching, or coincidence,  I found myself sitting in 5-seat of the 1991 New England Heavyweight Mens' Championship boat, a boat that finished a heartbreaking 4th in our division's National Championship.

Since college and to this day, I have been a runner (another repetitive sport!).  There have been periods in my life when I've taken as much as years off from the sport, but it pulls me back.  And running consistently all these years has to a slight degree improved my overall agility.  Today, I can play a friendly game of volleyball, whiffle ball, or even basketball with little if any personal injuries sustained or inflicted.  But if it turns into a contest, you still don't want me on your team.  Unless you're 8.  If you're 8, I am going to be your second or third best player.





*Crab 

A rowing error where the rower is unable to timely remove or release the oar blade from the water and the oar blade acts as a brake on the boat until it is removed from the water. This results in slowing the boat down. A severe crab can even eject a rower out of the shell or make the boat capsize (unlikely except in small boats). Occasionally, in a severe crab, the oar handle will knock the rower flat and end up behind him/her, in which case it is referred to as an 'over-the-head crab.'