On Skipping Stones and Getting Old
I just found this fine skipping stone on the beach, but I blew the throw, it only skipped five times.
MASSACHUSETTS, AUGUST 26, 2024. I’ve loved to throw since I was a kid. Baseballs (I pitched in Little League), footballs, snowballs, rocks. Especially rocks. If I found myself on a stony shore, I’d hurl rocks at a target, like a floating log or buoy, or just hurl them as far as I could. I’d also skip flat-bottomed stones across the water.
I was a cocky, competitive thrower. I liked challenging friends: Let’s see who can throw the farthest! I dug these contests, especially against my little brother Matt, who is even more competitive than I am, because I always won.
In the mid 1980s, I got into a skipping match in New York’s Central Park. I was hanging out on a pond near Strawberry Fields, grooving on the sparkly day, when a lanky kid, maybe 13 years old, started skipping stones near me, showing off for his companions. He was good. I asked if I could join him, he said sure.
We took turns skipping, and people around the pond started watching us. When one of us had a good throw, 20 or more skips, our audience clapped and cheered. [See Postscript.] When the kid left, we shook hands. One of my peak New York moments.
My arm held up fine for the next decade. Then in the winter of 1994 my wife, newborn son and I visited my wife’s brother and his wife and kid in Noroton, Connecticut. Although it was a cold, gray day, we took a walk and ended up on an inlet off the Long Island Sound.
Stones littered the beach. I skipped a few and then bet my companions that I could hit a distant buoy with a rock. They shrugged. The buoy was near my arm’s outer range, but I knew I’d hit it eventually.
I kept throwing and missing, throwing and missing, sometimes only by inches. My wife (now ex-wife) was mortified, she hated it when I showed off. She and the others told me they were going back to the house. I said I’d join them after I hit the buoy.
All alone now on that stony shore, I kept throwing and missing, throwing and missing. At some point my left shoulder popped (I’m a lefty), but I kept throwing and missing. I only quit when my throws started falling far short of the buoy.
By the time I joined the others back at the house, my shoulder was throbbing. I knew I’d irreparably damaged it. For some reason, I didn’t care. I even felt a grim satisfaction, enhanced by my wife’s coldness.
After that, I couldn’t throw hard anymore, with my whole arm, because my shoulder hurt too much. But I still skip stones when the opportunity arises. Right now, for example, I’m on vacation by the ocean, and when I stroll along the beach, I compulsively keep an eye out for stones with the right combination of breadth, width, flatness.
To spare my shoulder, I throw with flicks of my forearm and wrist. Skipping in the ocean is tricky, because of the waves. Some stones plop into a wave, others sink after a few wobbly hops. But now and then I get as many as 10 skips, which makes me happy, even if no one is watching. My old arm might feel sore later, but it’s worth it.
Why am I writing about rock-throwing? Well, these memories popped into my head as I jogged along the ocean this morning, and I decided to jot them down. I suppose this is my way of coming to terms with aging, the winding down of my body.
I can’t keep up with the young guys when I play hockey anymore, but I still have fun, I even score now and then. I can’t throw hard, like I did before I hurt my arm 30 years ago, but I still get a kick out of skipping. Just this morning I skipped a stone eleven times! Or maybe it was ten. My eyes aren’t what they were, counting skips is getting harder.
Postscript: I thought I was a good skipper when I was young because I could skip a stone over 20 times. Ha. The world record for rock-skips, held by a pony-tailed old guy named Kurt Steiner, is 88, according to this video.
Further Reading:
A Writer Reflects on Turning 71
Confessions of a Woke, Antiwar, Hockey-Playing Demonic Male
The Upside of Getting Old and Falling on Your Face
Why Time Flies When You’re Old
The Ocean Is Getting on My Nerves
Drawing a Pen with the Same Pen and Other Strange Loops