Friday, June 01, 2001
Body Whomping Baja; Euro 1974
Going through (and mostly disposing of) old clothes in the garage, I happened upon my old shirt with this image on the front:
When I was about thirteen, we took a little road trip to Cabo San Lucas, and along the way we camped out on this nice isolated stretch of beach, far off the road, no sign of other humans anywhere. Cynthia proudly caught a puffer fish which we almost cooked and ate if her boyfriend hadn't returned from his exploring in time to save us quick and certain death. And then there was that old rusty shipwreck that we climbed around and somehow didn't fall through.
The waves on this beach would come out of nowhere, jack up to over your head while you were standing in knee-high water, and leap to shore taking you with them. With a little jump and some coordination you could actually ride them ten or fifteen feet before they'd whomp you down on the sand, giggling or moaning or both. And then you'd walk back in up to your knees, turn around, and wait for the next one.
The waves were so steep that pretty much just your legs in the wave were enough to keep you flying forward, so the front half of your body just levitated midair and it looked quite amusing. Cynthia caught a few good shots of me doing this, and one came out good enough she made me a shirt of it and gave it to me for my birthday.
I wore it to gym class (9th grade), since it seemed a gym-class kind of shirt, and, as my life goes, I got no end of shit for it: "What are you doing wearing a body surfing shirt?" Of course you couldn't tell it was me in the picture, blown up from the size of a quarter and printed on cloth, so the other kids thought it was just hilarious that I would wear a sports shirt, as if I could ever do something like that! Hah!
Needless to say, innocently telling them "but... that's me" only made things worse (particularly because this putting your own picture on a shirt technology was pretty new and uncommon at the time...).
I guess I got an early start at not getting credit for my own achievements. (Must explain why I'm so good at it now. :)
Also just scanned my photo album from our trip to Europe in 1974. Since there were just two of us and I wasn't much of a photographer at 5, most of the shots are of me (mothers will do that). Here are a couple amusing ones, from Oslo and somewhere in Portugal:
