Who Cares?
Posted August 6th, 2008 byCategories: Uncategorized
By Tim
Just yesterday my friend Neil from work and I went to the beach, sans surfboards. He just wanted to go swimming in the salty water to try and dry out the poison ivy rashes he got from when we did community service.
We had no bathing suits with us, so we thought about buying suits. Pretty dumb idea, since they run about 50 bucks, and I have 3 pairs sitting at my apartment. I realized however that we had our gym shorts, so I went with those.
Neil is very self conscious. He keeps saying how he thinks we would look stupid with our crappy gym shorts, but we go out anyway. After swimming around for awhile I decide that it would be really fun to rent a body board.
After I got into surfing I discovered professional body boarding, and how cool it looked. Body boarders wear flippers on their feet for speed and can do some crazy aerial tricks! I used to think they were only used by little kids and parents who refer to them as “boogie boards.” (It actually still is the case where I go)
So I get a board for only 7$ for the day, even though Neil tried to talk me out of it for fear of me looking stupid. I had a pretty good idea of how to ride it well from footage I’ve seen, so I caught on pretty quick. I ended up shredding some waves as good as I would on a surfboard!
All the good waves are generally in one area, which will be swamped with surfers. I wanted a piece of that pie, so I headed right on over. Of course, there were no body boarders, just sufers. So knowing this, I know I’ll probably get a couple of funny looks, but who cares! Well, one person did. Neil tried so hard to get me not to go over towards the surfers! It was too funny, he just sat on shore shaking his head at me while I had an awesome time.
Even when we have our boards, him and anyone else I am with is too afraid to go surfing near the better surfers. “What if I look stupid?” “What if I get in the way?” Well all the good surfers are generally near the big waves, and it makes you get better much faster practicing in the better waves, and just from seeing the more skilled surfers technique.
People have the same lame mentality about many situations. I can’t think of times I’ve gone out to do something and had a horribly bad time. Things don’t always go perfect, but nothing ever happens to give me reason to be sour or angry. At best I will get a good story if shit really hits the fan. I know people who won’t even leave home out of fear that they might not have a good time. As a result they get lonely, lazy, and their quality of life degrades. I believe this happens all the time with older people, but I am talking about people my age! I’m only 22, people my age should be doing all kinds of fun stuff.
A lot of these things that people say will make you look uncool, such as my makeshift bathing suit, probably do look uncool in most peoples eyes. But I really don’t care, especially when it is a zero social consequence event, like being at the beach. Unfortunately you kinda have to go with the flow in a work environment, which is one reason work sucks.
Obviously the point of this little story is that people get way to caught up in what people are going to think of them. I had a good time doing what I wanted to do, which I strive to always do. When I don’t do my own thing I usually end up regretting it.