Make Gibbons Laugh #35
Back in January, after I wrote about a surfing lesson, I got lots of very kind and supportive feedback, encouraging me to keep wading into literal open waters as well as into other, more figurative, existential open waters: way to go! Keep taking lessons! You should get a wetsuit! What’s next?! Conquering HEIGHTS with your Vertigo?!?!
Instead of scaling the Sears Tower, I decided to get a wetsuit.
Last week, I put on said wetsuit, for the third time, and moseyed down to the beach— not far at all actually from that lesson in January, where I’d scampered around, undies falling out of my hands onto the seagull-poopy ground, not knowing what to wear before or during or after the lesson, frantically looking for my teacher, at the wrong place, Santa Monica Pier, one of the more viscerally-overwhelming places in California to get lost, no less, before driving to the right place, windshield wipers wiping the thick frosting of seagull poop that had formed during my 15-minute fever dream around the Pier, before getting to the right place, before wading into the very real, very scary water.
This time, there was no cold sweat. There was no seagull poop—on my shoes, undies, or windshield. And there was no borrowed wetsuit. No, I was the cool cat who had my OWN wetsuit, who put it on IN my apartment (like a more eager Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate putting on the scuba gear inside), BEFORE walking to my car, waving to my neighbors like a grinning lunatic Jim Carrey from The Truman Show who’d gone off the deep-end, so to speak (Is that how he dresses for Trader Joe’s now?), BEFORE driving to the beach. The water? Never not scary! My newfound Sartorial Surf And Swim Swagger? Very real and very undeserved!
I walked out of the parking lot, onto the sand, heading towards the water when I heard the most mellow voice speaking incredibly loudly. I couldn’t quite make out what this mellow dude was shouting—it was coming somewhere from the parking lot—but it sounded awfully like, “your SUUUUUUUIT is on backwards, BROOOO.” I knew this couldn’t possibly be directed at me. Because I had long graduated to professional wetsuit status, from all my years as a surf bum. So I kept walking.
I heard the same voice again. This time, it was perfectly clear: “yooooo, DUUUUUUDE. Your SUUUUUUUUIT is on BAAAACKwards, mannnnnnnn.”
Again: zero chance he was shouting at me. Proper wetsuit alignment is kiddie crap for seasoned ocean-dwellers. EVERYONE knows you step into the legs, pull the arms around and up, then zip up the BACK. You’d have to be an IDIOT to zip up from the front and—well, it appeared the zipper was in the front.
I then had a choice to make: I could acknowledge this helpful, loud man. Nod. Wave. Smile. Say thanks from afar. Keep walking. I could change on the spot, safely, with a bathing suit underneath on an empty beach. Or, like a coward, I could pretend I didn’t hear him altogether.
I chose option D: NONE OF THE ABOVE.
I looked up, towards the voice, and saw a massive mammal—a Kirkland-brand Jason Momoa—staring back. This time, he just said, “BACKWARDS” and mimed a zip. And then, inexplicably, I looked around to see if he was talking to SOMEONE ELSE, the likely scenario that someone else, in my 10-foot radius, on an EMPTY beach, was also wearing a wetsuit and also had it on backwards. I scanned my immediate surroundings. No human beings were there. Let alone wearing a wetsuit. Let alone wearing a wetsuit backwards. I looked back down at my zipper. I looked back at the man. And then—and this is true—I pointed at myself and asked, “me?” He nodded. I took a beat. Then I kept walking into the ocean.
When I was in preschool, I’d wear the same pair of rainbow-colored velcro shoes every day for years. And whenever I put the shoes on the wrong feet, which was often, people would look concerned and say, “Will, your shoes are on backwards. They’re on the wrong feet.” And I’d think, but they’re MY feet. But it’s MY suit.
When I told my mom the wetsuit story, she said, “that sounds like a Tim Robinson character.” She’s not wrong: the seemingly well-adjusted, reasonable dude who commits a small social faux-pas or experiences a blip of embarrassment then doubles, triples, quadruples-down to belabor the point that, no, YOU, Voice Of Reason over there, are actually the crazy one who did the embarrassing thing! It’s a pull door not a push!
I rarely get visits from shame (fear and doubt, though—they pay rent!), but there was a dollop of shame there, I think. Maybe one serving of Macho Dudes Perennially Flustering Me. Another serving of Doing Dumb Bits As A Default, Protective Mechanism When Feeling Flustered. Throw that in the blender, and you get whatever THAT interaction was ^^^.
Three days later, a few blocks from the Zipper Zituation, I pulled to the side of a narrow street, cars wedged in on both sides. I put Phyllis The Passat in reverse and started backing up to park. A huge camper van, in the opposite lane, was also backing up, its butt edging well into my lane—maybe 15 feet in front of me. I braced myself for the same High-Tide Hulk to appear and tell me my brain and/or car was also on backwards. I backed up to give the van a smidge more room, but there was definitely NOT enough room between us for a car to drive through.
That is, until a car drove through three seconds later.
A Tesla whipped into the tightest possible corner between the back of the van and the front of Phyllis. The car stopped. I looked at the driver. And this was the face that was looking back:
A shaggy golden retriever with a California license, giggling, giddy, window down. He was looking at me, laughing. I looked at him and started laughing—partly in shock, partly to dilute any tension from an almost-accident, partly because laughing is contagious like yawning, partly because the boldness of it all was funny. Then he peeled out, into the oncoming lane, slicing between the van and Phyllis, ripping back into his lane, beaming the entire time. Then he was off.
At no point was I upset that this goober almost whacked my headlights and scraped the side of my car. Yes, part of that has to do with how bizarre and surreal celebrity sightings are: feeling like you’re on a safari, in awe that you’re seeing a lion you’ve only ever seen before with David Attenborugh narrating. As gross as that sounds, it’s emotionally accurate from my time in LaLa Land.
And at no point—until a week later—did it dawn on me: he played an anthropomorphic car in a movie where he famously says, “speed. I am speed,” and that there was a 54% chance he thought he was still on the set of Cars.
Mostly though, I was drawn to his disarming ease. A playful aura. A shit-eating grin when, for me personally, if I were steering that Tesla, I would clench the wheel—and my jaw—and profusely apologize for almost causing an accident. Or profusely apologize for not almost causing an accident. Or apologize for apologizing.
He was just giggling. An easy laugh. An easy laugh that caused a fellow easy-laugher to start laughing.
It made me think of a Pete Holmes gem about Easy Laughs:
“I’m an easy laugh. I don’t know why people always make fun of people that are easy laughs. They’re like, ‘look at the fuckin’ idiot, walking around, CHUCKLING and feeling joy and silliness through all of his days. What a fuckin’ moron. Worse than that, people are PROUD of being hard laughs. Hard laughs! They go around, like, ‘yeah, I laughed at that movie. And it’s hard to make me laugh.’ Yeah. WORK ON THAT. I stretch that shit out every day. All week, I’ve been laughing just remembering that Lenny Kravitz—his name is LEONARD Kravitz. The coolest man in the world. That is a nerd name. Has the word ‘nerd” in it. LeoNERRRRRRD.”
It hit me: was the Tesla driver laughing because of the precarious road situation? Was it correlation or causation? Had he already installed his own Leonard Kravitz gag to unlock his Joy Noise? Or was he just cruising around all morning, sipping on Ayahuasca tea?
I pictured Hansel from Zoolander, in the Tesla, en route to the same spot on the beach, grabbing his surfboard, wading into the Pacific, a wetsuit on backwards, oblivious of the zipper’s placement, unworried about the zipper’s placement.
I pictured the same imposing Rubber-Suited Rambo informing Hansel that his suit was, in fact, on backwards.
I pictured Hansel considering whether to double, triple, quadruple-down on the suit’s correct fit.
Then I pictured Hansel, instead, simply noting the only three prayers you’ll ever need, according to Anne Lamott: “HELP [with the zipper, if you wouldn't mind there, my friend], THANKS [for noticing and zipping], and….