On those mornings when I wasn’t lying on the beach and when the sun was shining and when I wasn’t too wrecked still from the night before I engaged in the one physical endeavor of my life that might qualify as sport. Might is emphasized here. I water-skied.
At the time there was a triumvirate that was my real social circle, Don, Bill and me. Don had the boat and the skis and was my faux cousin. He was the grandson of one of my father’s best friends. Bill was my cousin but he was actually related to Don. Don and Bill if I remember my tables of consanguinity correctly were second cousins. These tables are important to a family from Kentucky. If you know them well you also know who you can sleep with at family reunions without going directly to hell.
If it was a calm morning wind and mental wise we would all jump into Don’s car and head over to his father’s place. There we would transfer cars and grab his Dad’s boat and set off for the Great Egg Harbor. The Great Egg Harbor lies between the mainland and the barrier island that is Ocean City. It amazes me that we didn’t just scrap this most days because of the time involved. But when you’re 19 time is forever and definitely relative.
The first time we headed out I didn’t realize what a bunch of fuckups I was throwing in with. I felt okay with the prospect of being in a boat because I was a decent swimmer; I had been swimming since I was five. Had I known that we were heading out with bogus equipment and two guys with a bit of a sado-masochistic attitude I might have hesitated.
If you have never water-skied I got to tell you there is a bit of a learning curve. On a normal pair of skis you kind of bob about in the water and get pulled along in a crouching position. Normal skis have a small fin on the bottom of them to help keep your feet aligned in a straight path. The crouching position brings with it a spray that aims directly at your anus. When skiing on the estuaries of an ocean this can best be described as a high pressure salt water enema, really.
Everyone who starts skiing has to endure to a greater or lesser degree this saline high colonic. However that assumes you are skiing on normal water skis. Banana skis are not conducive to getting upright on a 1st time out for the novice water skier. About 2 foot long and 1 ½ wide using banana skis is kind of like setting out with garbage can lids tied to your feet. Have you ever seen a Bendo® toy figure? Yeah my skinny legs were kind of like that all akimbo and twisted in the wrong direction as I tried to get up again and again. It took two or three days of saline colon washing before I got to actually to “ski”. But I did and I got better over time.
Maybe determination was something my move to beach world gave me. I wanted to be normal despite my myopia. I wanted to have fun behind the boat. My friends were willing to give me the chance. Despite the aquatic violation of my lower bowel system (really this was quite memorable it you haven’t figured that part out yet), my aching ankles and my wrenched forearms and wrist (sore from way too tight a grip on the rope and not anything else thank you) being part of the three loons or whatever we three tanned northern wahoos called ourselves was important to my growth.
What was really important was that Bill and Don were willing to invite me into this world. They didn’t really know me from Adam when I first got to Ocean City except that I came across as a snot who was out of his element. But Don who was so mellow back then, clearly had the patience to let me sort out how I fit into this whole picture. You know that the act of waiting for me to get ready, to start and to watch me fall 25 or 50 times could not have been fun except to a sadist. But for whatever reason they thought it would be fun to get me up onto skis. It was this and a hundred other acts of kindness that bonded me to them for life.
It can’t be said that waterskiing on the Great Egg Harbor didn’t have its downside especially for the normally sighted. People who voluntarily go to nudist camps are not people that I and most probably you would want to see naked. We are not talking super models there to remove tan lines. We are not talking Christian Bale and Jude Law engaged in a Women in Love wrestling match. What we are talking about is older people with names like Miriam and Floyd who while their naughty bits and pieces might be pleasing in the dark are downright scary in the light. In fact Floyd has a restraining order against a disabled guy with one leg goes by the name of Ahab and carries a harpoon. But these naked folks do have that certain lack of inhibition that lets them lay about on the dock out by the edge of open water ostensibly to soak up the rays while getting a cooling breeze off the water.
So there I would be on those full bananas tooling along the mainland side. I’d be jumping the wake, skiing sideways and trying all kind of goofy stuff. It was a blast. But routinely Bill and Don would take the boat a little too close to the sandbar. The problem with that side of the water was the shallow over near Camp Sunshine. As we whipped over by the shallow water the feel of the bay’s surface changes. I don’t know causes this, maybe it is because the water is so much shallower the drag on the skis is different. Every time I rode the skis over near the sandbar I would trip, stumble and go down. After I dropped the rope the guys in the boat would have to circle back slow to retrieve me.
Now a slow pass by Camp Sunshine didn’t mean shit to me. My vision is 20/50 with glasses and without them the world is a Monet painting. To the guys in the boat the situation was much different. As they would slow to almost a stop to make sure I got the rope and got ready to be pulled to upright all the naked folks over on the dock would stand up. Floyd, Miriam and three or four others would stand up and wave. When I say wave they would really wave using anything that would swing.
Sputtering profanity Bill and Don would threaten me with abandonment if I ever fell in front of the nudist colony again. Like I cared, but then again with my vision I don’t have to have the vision of naked Floyd surgically eradicated from my memory.
Don and Bill’s patience on those days we spent on the water was immense and gracious. Their efforts to help me get up onto the skis provide a good segue into Section 6 of On Caring. Repeatedly and with only good natured kidding they gave me chance after chance until I finally got up into a crouching position on the skis. My struggles to get up and actually ski probably cost them two or three mornings of their lives. But they were friends and they cared. I don’t know why they cared but they did. Maybe it was the brotherhood of the beach, or maybe they thought they were helping a fellow social cripple, a dorkus maximus.
Patience is the focus of Section 6. Patience means we give space to the other that person you wish to aid in growth. Impatience steals the time that is necessary for growth. Being patient is a necessary component of caring. Patience does not require action but it does require awareness. Patience is not passive; it is a state of watchfully allowing another to grow and develop. Patience is not just time focused but also context focused.
Allowing another to make the errors and take the wrong paths that lead to growth is a balancing act. Tolerance and knowledge are the watchwords. The tricky part in this balancing act is letting the other learn by trial and error but having the honesty to confront/approach the other when by making the wrong choice again and again nothing has been learned.
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