Idiots. They snake waves and then they bungle the rides because they don’t know what to do with them. On the wave, they don’t know how to slalom around others, and paddling back out after a ride, they look like a deer in headlights and we all know what happens next. They bail their boards, man do they ever bail their boards—the cardinal sin of surfing. One should never ever chuck his board aside so he can duck for cover.

Last summer, I was surfing a wave when some seasonal kook got in my way. I carved around him but he still panicked as I passed him and threw his board towards me as he dove under the wave. His heavy nine-foot-plus board gouged my thigh (and since I was in the middle of surfing, my knee was bent and quadriceps flexed.) I had to get my femur x-rayed and was out of the water for three weeks. The guy didn’t even say he was sorry (the other cardinal sin of surfing).

Then there was the summer before that. I paddled out on a brand spanking new shortboard for its virginal consummation with the waves. My shaper friend just dropped it off an hour earlier. As I paddled out with still dry hair, some kook on a wave saw me and panicked. He pulled back, then pushed ahead, then stalled. He couldn’t make up his freaking mind. Then he decided that charging right for me was the best idea.

Now, etiquette says that the surfer on the wave has the right of way so it was my job to move, but when the rider stops and starts and screams, all bets are off. I turned turtle—something one never does on a shortboard—because under my board was the safest place I could think to be. At this point, he decided to ride right over me. His fin sawed my board all the way to the stringer!

My brand f**kin new board, he sawed in half. 

He said, “Sorry,” and then paddled away. Summertime surfers, listen up: Don’t ever just paddle away after you’ve done damage to somebody’s board. Ever! (You get out with them and trade info, because buddy, you’re going halfsies.)

Now you might be thinking, ‘But beginning surfers could make these same mistakes.’ And you’re right. They do. But I gotta tell you, it takes a heartless bastard to yell at some chick trying to learn to surf on overhead waves in 55 degree water because she just can’t possibly wait until summer to start surfing.

The ultimate problem with people in the summer is they just don’t care. They don’t respect the ocean, they don’t respect the sport, they don’t respect the other surfers. Hell, they probably tell off their own mothers. They’re nothing but human rubble, as in the Rubbles’ from the Flintstones cartoon: Betty and Barney. That’s what we call the girls and boys who are out there for all the eye-rolling reasons.

Betty sits on her long-ass surfboard that she can’t turn, let alone ride, and flits her hair while constantly adjusting her bikini. Every once in a while, she looks out at the horizon, but she’s just offering her profile to any real surfer who might fancy her. (God bless them, some of them do.) The Barneys don only board shorts because they want to show off their pasty thick chests while tsking at leashes, because they think they have more control than the ocean. They also consume alcoholic beverages before they surf, and really a mean part of us thinks, ‘I ain’t saving the drunk bastard if he drowns.’

Now, if I still haven’t fully explained our ill humor with the warm water wannabes, let me try an analogy. You know those Christians who only go to church on Easter, the ones who buy the pretty dresses or shine their shoes and trot in like they go every week? Meanwhile the dedicated worshippers look heavenward and think, ‘You know I’m here every week, right Lord?’

Well, we surfers look to the horizon and say “Mother Ocean, even when you freeze up and get angry, I’ll be here to love you,…and if you could knock that guy off his board so he has to paddle all the way to shore to get it, I’d sure appreciate it.”

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Elisabeth Gause is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to Vyuz.