Chicken Joe

My goal in life is to be like Chicken Joe. I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie “Surf’s Up,” but I just saw it recently, and it is pretty much great. I actually saw bits and pieces of it at work before I saw the movie the whole way through. I had popped it into the DVD player as an alternative to BET, and after ten minutes the two gangsta young men playing pool were staring at the TV in awe. One of them even asked me “Hey, what are you doing to us? Where did you get this movie from?” because they were so drawn to watch it (“I can’t help it…It’s so beautiful!”).

Chicken Joe is the air-headed, calm and collected, strangely talented best friend of the main character in Surf’s Up. He is the quintessential “surfer-dude,” riding the waves because he loves it, and not for fame or fortune. Some of his exploits during the movie include sticking his head over the blow-hole of a whale in order to get brain freeze, buying a coconut hat with matching ensemble, diving into the jungle to search for Cody, making friends with the local natives, and even learning a new language.

I think that real surf bums must be included with the groups of religions or sects that focus on finding peace, calm, and oneness with nature. A few weeks ago I took a day off from work and went to the beach. I walked up and down the beach taking pictures, and noticed the surfers as they approached the water. Each of them stretched facing the water, and as they finished stretching they stood up and just looked out over the waves, out as far as they could see. They had that look in their eyes that said they could see where the earth curves around towards the other side. You know they are real surf bums if they have that look in their eye. They don’t teach you that in surfing school.

My Uncle Ray was a surfer. He’s my uncle by marriage, but I always felt close to him because he was the one that taught me how to snorkel. And even though I didn’t surf like he did, he taught me how to look out at the ocean and realize the magnitude of everything that lies beneath its surface; taught me to realize how incredible it is, that there is so much beyond the horizon. Did you know that when a surfer passes away, after the funeral his friends gather at the beach and suit up to go out into the water? They each grab their surf board and wreaths of flowers and paddle out (That’s what it’s called—a paddle out), form a circle in the water, and toss the wreaths out into the water in memory of the person who has died. Isn’t that a really peaceful way to send someone off?

Yeah, I think I’d like to be like Chicken Joe someday. Just watching life float, like life should float, instead of worrying about paddling every second that I’m out in the water.