You’ve seen them. They’re the jerks who cut you off in traffic. They think rules are made for everybody else. You curse them as they speed away and then it’s over.

But in the water, it doesn’t quite end that way. That same selfish hotshot paddles back out and sits right next to you, waiting to snag another wave. Now, where I teach, we do not encourage aggressive behavior. However, in the real world, this pacifist is all for it. The quiet understanding in surfing is that you let someone steal your wave once, but only once. If they do it again, you paddle anyway and drop in on their cold-blooded ass.

As you might imagine, the snake doesn’t usually take too kindly to this sort of behavior and reactions vary. The nicest of responses is the whistle or the call of “Behind you!” Both of these are considered civilized, mostly because people accidentally drop in on other’s waves occasionally. When that happens, we try to be as pleasant as possible while implying "Get off my wave!" However, the snake probably knows you saw them and went anyway. If you’re lucky, they won’t say anything, but they’re a snake, so that’s not the most common reaction.

What you usually get is the deathglare, the "You can steal my first born, but don’t you dare take my wave" look that would make Medusa envious. Other times, they seek you out and hiss, “That was my wave.” The kinder, gentler surfer can then take the opportunity to use the always-satisfying line: “When you had to paddle around me to get the wave, that was a sign that it wasn’t your wave.”

Unfortunately, just as drivers sometimes face "road rage," surfers have to deal with "ride rage" or "wave rage." (We don’t really have a word for it.) The scariest thing I’ve seen was a snake yanking—and I mean yanking—another guy off a wave and his board and beating him in the water. No kidding. They were pounding each other and holding each other’s heads under water. (In the great spirit of vindication, the rager was quickly called out of the water by the lifeguard in a very public and humiliating way so that everybody knew he was a bad, bad boy.)

Personally, the worst that’s happened to me—keep in mind that girls have it easier—is when some guy tried to ram his board into mine. First off, that’s just an idiot maneuver. That’s like ramming your car into someone else’s for whatever stupid vengeful reason. Then, when I outmaneuvered the collision, he reached out to push me off the wave. I backed off in total shock. This 40-year-old snake paddled back out and started yelling at me about etiquette. I waited until he got all the way out to the lineup, and when everybody was paying attention I gave him my favorite line: “Is that the only way you can get a wave? Stealing it from a girl?” He pretty much slithered away after that.

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