Do Stupid Things Because You Can

Hi: I'm not sure if anyone will even read this, but it's part of a book-in-progress about life lessons at the ocean's edge. If you do happen across this, thanks so much for reading.

Sincerely, Ken


When I was nineteen my friend Dennis and I drove to the Outer Banks of North Carolina for Thanksgiving. We were in college at the University of Virginia. We had a few days off from school. We drove past gray cities, then slow moving towns, and finally farms, ice-glazed and still. We drove across the wind-whipped Pamlico Sound. It leapt and churned, the water the color of chocolate milk.

We spent our first hour on the Outer Banks looking for the cheapest motel we could find. We found it in Nags Head. We stood at the front counter. The desk clerk looked out the frosted windows to where snow flurries now danced. His eyes took in our car.

“I hope you have the right gear,” he said.

“We do,” I said, and it was only half a lie.

“If you don’t, you’d be stupid to go,” he said.

We paid with a fistful of wrinkled bills. We had a little left for gas, a little for beer, and a little less for food. Food didn’t matter. We had a whole cooked turkey in the cooler we brought into the room. Dennis had cooked the turkey back at the house we shared with two other friends. Dennis loved to cook and he was good at it. Mostly he improvised. He would rummage through the cabinets, using whatever ingredients struck his fancy, making things up as he went along. He combined ingredients that would raise the hairs on the back of a real chef’s neck. He would shake in a little of this and a lot of that. If he used a cookbook I never saw it. I don’t know what he used to season this particular turkey, but whatever it was it was just right; the entire drive down, otherworldly smells tormented us.

The minute we got in the room, we opened the cooler and pulled out the turkey. Honeymooners don’t get down to business faster. Dennis had remembered to bring a platter for the turkey, but I had forgotten the silverware. It didn’t matter. Dennis had outdone himself. In short order everything, including us, smelled of turkey. Outside the wind roared and the snow moved in circles. Inside the heater clattered, and drafts pushed through the walls.

The motel was on the beach. Our room faced east. Over the tops of the dunes we could see the white-capped ocean.

Dennis rarely hesitated. He didn’t hesitate now.

“Let’s go,” he said.

We pulled on our wetsuits. Outside, the snow bit at our faces. It took us longer than it should have to get the surfboards off the car racks. Our fingers were already half frozen.

A small boardwalk crossed the dunes. The snow made a light dusting on the wood. Dennis walked in front of me. To this day I can still see the enormous prints of his bare feet. My own feet ached as much as my hands. Plenty of people surf in the winter but they are generally prepared, covered from head to toe – neoprene hood for the head, neoprene boots and gloves for the feet and hands - in wetsuit. I had lied to the desk clerk. We had brought what we had.

By the time we stepped on to the frozen beach everything ached, but I didn’t feel right about whining. I had no hood, boots or gloves, but at least my wetsuit extended all the way to my ankles. Dennis’s wetsuit reached only to his knees. His calves were turning a curious red.

Snow had gathered in Dennis’s hair. I knew what he would look like when he got old.

On the exposed beach the wind roared even louder. Brown gobbets of foam quivered on the sand.

Dennis stopped. He looked at the ocean, gray and heaving and then he looked to me because there was no one else to consult.

“What’s the water temperature?” he asked.

“Forty-six.”

“Are we stupid?”

“Yes,” I said.

Dennis watched me for another long moment.

“I hope we have enough turkey,” he said, and then he walked into the ocean.

I can’t recall how long we stayed in the water, but it probably wasn’t more than ten minutes. The waves were angry and roared in from every direction, clobbering us and punching the breath from our lungs and spinning us underwater in an oddly quiet brownish-blackness. But we were nineteen, and Dennis was an All-American swimmer with lungs like a Hoover vacuum and we were both so in love with the thrill of riding a wave that all the clobbering was worth it. You see, I had only half lied to the desk clerk. The right gear isn’t just something you buy.

I don’t remember how many waves we caught, but it was certainly less than we could count on one hand, and then we were running up the beach, half laughing and half weeping, partly because we were deathly cold, partly because Dennis jolted up the beach like a man on stilts, his legs now a nauseating shade of purple. Everything burned, and we were alive.

We surfed again the next day.

As I write this it seems like yesterday, but it isn’t. My friend Dennis died yesterday. His lungs killed him. That’s where the cancer started.

It’s stupid not to do the things you can.