It was hard, but Brett and Dee stood there as Boone got up and fell, got up and fell, got up and fell-and paddled back out, and did it again and again until he got up and stayed up and rode that wave in while a whole beach full of people played it casual and pretended not to notice.

It was even harder when Boone got to that age, right about ten, when he wanted to go the beach with his buddies and didn't want Mom or Dad showing up to embarrass him. It was hard to let him go, and sit back and worry, but that was also a part of protecting their child, to protect him from perpetual childhood, to trust that they had done their job and taught him what he needed to know.

So by the time he was eleven, Boone was your classic gremmie.

A gremmie is nature's revenge.

A gremmie, aka “grom,” is a longhaired, sun-bleached, overtanned, preadolescent, water-borne, pain-in-the-ass little surfer. A gremmie is karmic payback for every annoying, obnoxious, shitty little thing you did when you were that age. A gremmie will hog your wave, ruin your session, jam up the snack bar, and talk like he knows what he's talking about. Worse, your gremmie runs in packs with his little gremmie buddies-in Boone's case, this had been little Johnny Banzai and a young Dave the yet-to-be Love God-all of them equally vile, disgusting, smart-mouthed, obscene, gross little bastards. When they're not surfing, they're skateboarding, and when they're not surfing or skateboarding, they're reading comics, trying to get their filthy little mitts on porn, trying (unsuccessfully) to pull real live girls, scheming to get adults to buy beer for them, or trying to score weed. The reason parents let their kids surf is that it's the least sketchy thing that the board monkeys get up to.

As a gremmie, Boone got his fair share of shit from the big guys, but he also got a little bit of a pass because he was Brett and Dee Daniels's kid, glossed “the Spawn of Mr. and Mrs. Satan” by a few of the crankier old guys.