Flops and wobbles: How paddleboarding taught me to be a kid again

As a child, I was a slow learner when it came to physical skills. It took many flops and wobbles before I could comfortably ride a bike. When it came to swinging a bat, I had no problem with the swing, but locating a pitched ball in midair was another thing altogether. Learning to swim was my greatest challenge. As an 8-year-old attending a Y day camp, I looked on forlornly as the other boys in my group sailed off like schooners while I remained behind, clinging to the side of the pool.

Perhaps this is why I bridled when a friend suggested, in an offhand manner, that I try stand-up paddleboarding. My fear was that my ability to snap up a new physical skill had not improved with the passing decades.

In truth, stand-up paddleboarding had already caught my eye. During visits to Maine lakes, I had seen its practitioners float by like ethereal beings, statuesque, paddling languidly under a warm sun. It looked so easy, as the only thing it entailed was the ability to stand up, right?

In a burst of optimism, I bought an inflatable paddleboard and, with my friend Mike in tow, headed for a lake deep in the Maine woods, out of sight of potential critics. After inflating the craft and setting it on the water, athletic Mike generously offered to test it out. In one smooth bound he was atop the thing, paddling about with the confidence of the physically adept.

Then it was my turn. I began by kneeling upon the wobbly platform, looking as if I were making an offering to whatever celestial forces guided the efforts of would-be paddleboarders. Slowly, laboriously, I tried to stand – and immediately flew into the drink. I mounted it again, and again I flipped. 

They say that it is the sense of smell that most powerfully elicits distant memories. I disagree. It’s the act of falling that reminds one that learning is an energy-intensive endeavor: falling from my bike, falling after swinging a bat with all my might through empty air, and falling through – instead of floating on – the water at the Y. 

And yet I believe that the adult has an advantage over the child: New physical skills may seem to be more difficult to acquire later in life, but the effort – and the built-in understanding that falling is part of the process – is accompanied by faith born of experience. I did learn how to ride a bike, I did learn to swim, and, after a seemingly infinite number of practice swings, I did learn to, in my father’s words, “get that bat on the ball.”

And so, for the umpteenth time, I mounted the paddleboard, first slithering upon my belly, then up on my knees, and ending with the slow, unsteady ascent onto my feet until – yes! – I was standing upright. I even paddled four or five strokes before flipping into the water again. But I had never been so happy about the simple act of standing up.

When I got home later that day, I made a full report of my partial success to my 20-something son, who in return threw me a dubious look. After all, his efforts to learn to ride a bike, to swim, and to ride a skateboard were in more recent memory. He must have assumed that such potential sputtered out once one reached my age.

But it doesn’t matter. I’m not learning to paddleboard for him or for anyone else. I’m learning because it’s fun, because hope springs eternal, and because I, too, want to be one of those statuesque figures languidly plowing their way across a placid lake under a brilliant sky. And maybe someone on the shore will point at me and remark, “How does he do that?”

I already have my response: Practice may not always make perfect, but it certainly makes possible.