On Love and Body Surfing: A Story with a Moral


This is a story about the evils of love. I write it as a warning particularly to you young ladies who let your minds wander into dangerous daydreams full of love and flirtatious men. However, if you are not one of these young ladies, then you must be a man, in which case I advise you to listen carefully and learn the vileness of your sex.

It was just last summer, but I remember it like yesterday:

Standing ankle deep in sea water, I positioned my body board and watched the rising swell rushing towards me.

“Ok, Mary! This is a good one,” my dad was yelling, “This time throw your board into it right when it’s on top of you!”

Life was fun and games in those days. I had no cares and no regrets. Everything was harmless and unimportant—why should this wave be any different?

The swell was turning into a fierce, black wave, rising higher above my head every moment. “Not yet . . . Not yet . . .,” my dad was shouting.

What the heck, I thought. I was going to go for it. After all, waves had never hurt me before.

“Now!” my dad shouted. But I only had time to look back into the wall of dark sea water before I was completely engulfed by it, thrashing about in the huge wave.

This wave must have been inexperienced in the game of human-beach-ball, for it soon lost control and slammed my entire face into the bottom of the sea. Seeing its horrible accident, it retreated in embarrassment as I staggered from the water. I was fascinated by the little birds flying about the edges of my vision, but slightly more fascinated by the numbness in my face. I knew I was hurt—what I didn’t know when I stepped out of the water was that I was stepping into one of life’s most important lessons: I was about to learn the lesson of love.

After four hours in the waiting room, I got a bed at the Kaiser ER in San Diego. A couple stitches and I would be out of there, I thought. Before long, a happy looking nurse came to check up on me. “Hello there,” said nurse Happy opening my mouth. As she did, her own mouth opened wider. “Oh my gosh! What happened to you?” she said, beckoning others to come and see the sight. “Dr. Brown, look at this!”

“What is it?” Dr. Brown asked looking at me. “Hello. Let’s see what we ha . . . Woah! Ok then . . . Dr. Schwartz, You might want to see this!”

“What is it? I’m busy,” Dr. Schwartz replied.

“Take a look.” urged Brown.

“What is this—what happened to her mouth—it’s all busted up. Someone get Head and Neck trauma down here! Hook her up to an IV—this will take a while.”

As I sat staring wide-eyed at this panicking group of seasoned ER staff, all of the misery of my situation flooded over me. I was shivering with cold, I couldn’t talk, there was sand in my matted hair, and I was spitting and sputtering blood. Could life get any worse?

The staff left me to find the Doctor that could handle my problems, and everyone else who had been distracted by the commotion went back to their pervious occupations. I had to get my mind off of my misery, so I started watching people through a crack in the curtain. A nurse in a blue uniform grabbed papers from a center desk and wheeled a patient to an empty bed. A white-haired doctor looked through files and chatted with a colleague. A lady checked in. A little boy checked out. A nurse took lunch. A doctor called to another nurse for assistance.

“Get me swabs,” he shouted. “Where’d you get your degree, the internet?”

The nurse’s voice came from out of sight. “Ya, I sent them my money, but I haven’t gotten my diploma yet . . . strange.”

I listened to the deep, manly voice of the nurse, following it by ear. “I don’t know how to get swabs—they never taught us that in school.”

It was coming closer and closer and then he walked to the middle of the room, into my line of sight, into my life, and into my heart forever.

Never since Hercules was there such a man of greatness, strength, and poise. His five feet and seven inches of manliness looked strong and imposing in his green nurse’s scrubs, enhancing his soft, brown complexion. And then he walked away. Where had he gone? Suddenly my misery was forgotten. I wasn’t aware of my swelling face, the crying kid in the next bed, the stretcher being rushed past the curtain, the doctor calling for a nurse, or any shred of reality. I was consumed with finding him.

And then he walked back through the room. I saw him once again and heard the mellow tone of his voice, and then he was gone. It was like watching the landscape in the midst of a lightening storm as it teases your senses with temporary illumination only to revoke it all in an instant.

I couldn’t see him now. Where was he? Who was he? They had called him Eric. That is all I knew about him. My mind wandered madly as my eyes darted about the sliver of space I could see through my curtain. My heart was growing sick and my head was spinning. Then, suddenly, “Hello.”

There he was! His large brown eyes melted my heart.

“Hi,” I sputtered.

“I’m Eric, your triage nurse. How are you feeling?”

“So wonderful,” I said.

“Great—well let me know if I can get you something, ok? Are you comfortable?”

It’s so rare to find a man that cares. So rare to find a man that will help you through difficult times, help you survive, and not only survive but overcome your hardships. So rare to find a man that will support you in sickness and in health. So rare to find a man with such cute hair . . .

“Um, ya, I’m fine,” I said.

“Ok, call if you need me.”

And he left . . . he left. I had let him go without even a goodbye. Would I ever see him again? Would he ever know how I felt about him? I knew I had made a mistake. Would I ever have a chance to make it right?

Well, it was fifteen minutes before I saw Eric again. Not only was he back in the room, but at the bed behind the curtain next to me. I knew I couldn’t wait; it was fate that had moved him so close to me. I knew that I couldn’t let him go for another 15 minutes without talking to him. I must say something—anything.

My thoughts were interrupted by the freezing sensation of IV liquid pumping through my veins and I suddenly knew what to say. “Eric” I said with a new confidence. “Could I get a blanket?”

“Sure,” he replied.

It had worked! He was back in my life, filling the empty place in my heart, the hole in my soul, and getting me a blanket. I watched his strong and sure form move with confidence to the linen closet and bring me back not one, but three blankets! How rare it is to find a man that cares about your desires and makes your dreams come true over and above all that you expected. How rare it is to find a provider that can provide thrice the amount necessary. How rare to find a man who actually knows where the linen closet is! Could life get any better?

Now I knew we were meant to be. I wrapped myself up in the blankets and felt a warm security. He was sitting by my bed. I thought of our relationship. Sure, we’d had our ups and downs, but I’d loved him faithfully through it all. Yes, this was right: him and me together forever.

He took my hand in his and for once, all the world was good. All the world was peace. All the world was . . . “Ouch!” My head whipped around to see Eric jabbing my arm with a needle the size of a straw. Out of the “needle” came a long tube attached to a bag of antibiotics. “Eric! What are you doing? What’s going on?” I wanted to ask, but before I knew it, he had taped the needle into my arm, and, with a sadistic grin, he left.

He was gone! “Oh Eric, Eric!” I wanted to shout. But my better judgment told me not to grovel. They will never come back if you grovel, I remembered people telling me. But would I ever see him again anyway? He was long gone by now . . . out of sight. I didn’t know where he had gone or how to find him. It was over. The happiest minutes of my life had vanished, never to be recovered.

Coldness filled the little room. The next minutes passed without my knowledge. A heartless doctor shot me up with more needles and gave me endless stitches. But this didn’t surprise me. Men are heartless, I thought.

I tried to understand, tried to figure out what had happened—what had gone wrong. I soon learned that regrets are useless and memory is empty. Eventually I found the strength to move on. I knew I must find some purpose even in this circumstance and that the knowledge I had now gained must not be wasted. So, on leaving the ER, I decided to record my experiences to warn others who are as young and naive as I once was.

If you learn nothing else, dear friends, remember this fact: Men are evil. Like Eric, they will lead you to believe they are the stuff your dreams are made of. Like Eric, they will hurt you unexpectedly and more deeply than you dared imagine. Then, like Eric, they will leave you suddenly and alone, dashing your once vibrant dreams upon their hearts of stone. If I may teach but one young heart this dire truth and therefore spare the pain that was so acutely mine, I have done my duty and may die in peace.