As a youngster, I was frequently in trouble. The only reason I’m not still is that there is no one around to get angry at me really, I’ve put myself in social quarantine, and this seems to work best for humans everywhere. But when I was young, I had not the means to do this, and was, as I said, frequently in trouble. Often times, I was the victim of my own stupidity rather than being malicious or naughty. One weekend that comes to mind is when I had a friend stay a night or two with me at our family holiday house in Anglesea.
It was summer, I was maybe in late primary school or early high school, between the ages of 10 and 12 or something like that. His mother was friends with my mother, and his sister with my sister. They came to stay as well -why not? His dad wasn’t on the scene anymore and my dad had to go back to geelong to work, so it was the two girls, two boys and two mums.
During these holidays, I spent everyday at the Anglesea beach, swimming and mucking around in the waves. I’d be in there for 6 hours at a time, until I couldn’t feel my limbs and my eyes hurt from squinting. In the end, I was quite a strong swimmer, (I’d completed all the “levels” of swimming at school, and was quite an aquatic young man). My mother, realising this, specifically pointed out not to go in too deep with my friend as he was no where near as good a swimmer as me, probably not as into the whole “big wave” thing as me and also the beach had been quite rough of late.
So they arrived, and we went to the beach. It was a nice enough day, a few scattered clouds, but a warm breeze and the sun shone strong and bright. As we came to the top of the stairs which lead from the carpark to the beach, the scene unfolded before me. The beach was pumping, the swell was huge, especially when compared relatively to our pre-teen height. I couldn’t help it, as soon as I could I bounded into the surf, I plunged into waves and plowed my way right out to where I couldn’t stand up and the waves were as tall as two of me, glistening silently for a second at full height before exploding and ripping through everyone to die in the shallows. I’ve always loved that sort of fear- I get it on rides too- where you lose sense of direction, and your stomach flips around inside you and a shot of electricity goes up your spine. I never really feared the waves, I recklessly assumed I’d always come up, but it was certainly exciting. Anyway, today, like I said, I couldn’t help myself and I was out before anyone knew what was happening. I completely forgot about my mate.
He took a lot longer than I, but eventually was out there with me, bobbing around and then desperately clinging to the bottom as another green giant thundered in over and around us. After a while, when I turned around to see how he was doing, spray on my face, grinning, I discovered that he wasn’t there anymore. He surfaced a second or two later, with a panicked look on his face that I soon was wearing too. He waved to me, “Jon, I’m having an athsma attack!” Now, to be honest, he probably wasn’t having one, but he was probably terrified and exhausted and maybe was getting a bit of athsma. Anyway, he was getting the shit kicked out of him by the waves, relentlessly beating all before them into oblivion, and he was taking longer and longer to come up after each one. I caught a wave in to where he was, and grabbed him in the lifesaver grip I’d been taught- a special way of holding them which helps keep their head above water.
Being a strong swimmer when you’re a skinny, lightweight little boy is one thing. Playing lifesaver to another similar sized person in a rabid ocean is another. It took forever to drag him into an area in which we could both stand up. Every time a wave hit us, we’d be submerged for what seemed like hours before finally bursting up, lungs in pain, gasping in a quick, noisy breath, struggling forward another metre before the next wave started to pull us back, and then smashed us all over again. Finally we got to the shallow end, I let him go and we just drifted into shore weakly. Lying in the shallow end panting, blinking heavily, exhausted, I then remember that our mothers had seen the whole thing.
I couldn’t work out which mum was more angry with me. Punishment included not being allowed to swim again that day, silent treatment, furious stares of wrath and finally, setting the tone that I was in “trouble maker” mode for the rest of their stay, which resulted in another incident later that night.
More on that later.
-JC
