It was a beautiful land, full of Beaches and Boards and Bronzed Boys. (Bronzed, of course, not in the literal sense. This is all sounding rather fairy-tale-like and I do want to make sure you don't get the wrong idea about them. They were definitely flesh and bone.)
But before we got to Surf Camp, we had to ride a long, long way on Rickety Bus with Driver Dan. Driver Dan was a very nice man who let us play Grease and Shrek and Mamma Mia all in one trip and never once complained, not even when he couldn't see the road through Someone's long wavy hair that was having trouble getting Shrek in properly. Just the sort of man you want in a bus driver, really.
Six Teachers of English rode, then, quite merrily up to Surf Camp together, and what fun we had! We played all sorts of fun games. I liked the Dance to the Music!! game the best, but the others liked the Quiet Game, even though I won it, too! Kimmy is very, very good at all games, even the Quiet Game!
When we got to Surf Camp, we we tuckered little travelers. We couldn't find our cabins or beds or blankets or anything, but we were so sleepy we handed over $5 for blankets without so much as blinking. Or rather, it was more of one long blink.
We woke up under our blankets in bunk beds and found out we were all sharing a great big room of bunk beds with one Very Nasty Bathroom With No Lock and a Suspect Door. We were good little troupers, though, and kept a very watchful Guard for each other. We are friendly like that.
There wasn't so much to eat for breakfast, unless you really like sour milk and bread. Thankfully they were kind enough to leave us a bit of peanut butter.
After breakfast we got to experience the magical verb "to surf"!!
Despite what some people think, to surf does not happen in the water. No, no. To surf happens on the sand! In a circle! On Big Bad Board! It is very exciting!!
Helpful Outstanding Teacher Joel was our Helpful Outstanding Teacher. He taught us everything we needed to know about surfing on dry land and how to get Style. He said we could have whatever Style we wanted. His was Cool, but mine was Chicken Dance! It was very, very fun!
Then though we got a bit bored with the dry land business, fun as it was, so Helpful Outstanding Teacher finally let us try our Style in the Ocean! I was so excited! I love Ocean!
I went running into Ocean and forgot almost everything Helpful Oustanding Teacher Joel had said and just tried to stand up! First Big Bad Board decided to nosedive (just like Helpful Outstanding Teacher Joel had said he would!), but then he let me stand up! I was so excited I did Chicken Dance!
The whole first day went on in such a fashion, with Triple B sometimes nosediving and sometimes letting me surf, but both of us having fun, fun, fun in Ocean and neither of us thinking one iota about Hot, Hot Sun. Or if one of us did he certainly didn't mention it.
And it was evening, and it was morning, the second day.
Now Ocean is my friend. Ocean was very playful on day two, more playful than usual, but I did not mind because I love Ocean and he was only being playful. Big Bad Board on the other hand was downright trying.
In theory I like Big Bad Board, but in practice I could not believe how very mean he was. For instance, I did not see why it was necessary to jerk my ankle so aggressively or why it was occasionally so much fun to wallop me in the head. Doesn't everyone's mother tell them that no matter where else you hurt someone, you're not allowed to hurt them in the head? Evidently Big Bad Board's mother forgot that part.
She also seemed to have forgotten the part about not-driving-your-wings-into-other-people's-backsides-because-you-might-leave-nasty-bruises and the part about knocking-the-wind-out-of-people's-stomachs-isn't-very-gentlemanly and the leaving-horrific-scrapes-on-people's-sunburns-is-downright-nasty. I'm sure other than that she was a good mother, though.
Perhaps a more generous person would call him high-spirited, but I also found Triple B a very slippery creature. Not exactly in the realm of friction, but more in terms of attachment to his supposedly beloved Surfer. He seemed to see himself more as an extraneous ex-boyfriend trying desperately to increase the distance between us, where I had the idea that, despite the abuse, we should keep trying to make the relationship work. We both played our roles beautifully, with him ever-slipping out of my grasp, and me ever-so-tragically getting very beat up.
It's not that I didn't like Big Bad Board when we were in the shallow water. There he was quite docile and floated about precisely how he was supposed to and even let me sit down on him. (He seemed to forget that, actually, the whole idea was to stand up.) He was rather fond of pretending to be a boogie board, too, and had no qualms about dragging me by the desperately clutching hands all the way back to the shallows. Didn't he realize he was supposed to be a SurfBoard? Personally, I thought he was having a bit of an identity crisis, but was of course much too polite to suggest he see a professional. We had, after all, only just met.
If I buy a SurfBoard, though, I will most definitely a buy a Girl Board. I'm sure they'd be much more stable in a psychological sense.
Even though he was mean, I carried Triple B back and forth from Rickety Bus Number Two every day, although I am ashamed to admit I lost my cool the last day and told him I thought he needed to lose several pounds before I would have much more to do with him. He was so ashamed he let Sweet Surfer Helper Girl carry him back instead. I was okay with that.
And then it was time to go. I did a quick Chicken Dance!! of victory, waved goodbye to my good friend Ocean and new friend Helpful Outstanding Teacher Joel (though I couldn't find him, so I'm not sure he saw), hopped on Rickety Bus with my Teachers of English Friends and we all lived happily ever after. Even Triple B.
The end.
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