i'm getting a river board?

I made a new friend on Saturday. This in and of itself isn't unusual; I’m always making new friends. I’m good at it. It’s kind of a strange talent I realize, not exactly something that can be put on the resume. Well, I suppose you could list people skills on there somewhere. I think the key is that I really like people (just not the boring ones) and I always assume they’re going to like me back (there’s always a cosmic shock when someone doesn’t). But now that I think about it, I wonder how many of my friends are actually aware that we’re friends…

Back to my new friend. I returned from an almost life ending surf sesh mid afternoon (I’m going to start practicing my underwater breathing skills in the bathtub each evening) and was standing on my apartment building’s front porch talking to one of my neighbors while holding my surfboard under my arm. Two middle aged men who were definitely a little off (they didn’t quite look homeless but they also didn’t quite not look homeless) stopped in front of our porch. The one asked if he could ask me something (I always wonder why people waste a question even asking this but then I go and do the same thing.). I said sure, positive this was going to be entertaining. I could tell my neighbor thought the same thing since he gave me the “oh, who’s Amanda going to talk to now” look and stopped talking himself.

The man said, “Have you ever seen one of those (he pointed to my surfboard) that’s a bit smaller with these things you can strap your feet into?” The way he was gesturing made me think he was talking about a snowboard so I said, “A snowboard?” He said, “No. It goes on a river.” I said, “Are you talking about a wakeboard? Like you ride on behind a boat?” He said, “No. My friend has one and you just wear it in a river.” I just shook my head and said I had no idea what he was talking about since I had no idea what he was talking about (and still don’t). He said, “I’ll have to bring one by.” At this point I was trying to figure out how to dissuade him from doing so since he still seemed to be a bit off and wasn’t sure us having the kind of friendship that involved me inviting him in for an alcoholic beverage (or even milk) was in my best interest. So I said, “Oh, you don’t have to do that.” He said, “No. I’m going to bring it over and you can have it.” Now he was offering to give me the river board. There was no other response to give other than, “Okay. Thanks.” Plus I am curious to find out what a river board is.


Might be able to surf the river on this... if there's a wake.