In Coronado, it doesn’t usually get very hot, but today it was so hot that they gave us a heat day. Naturally, due to the extreme weather, I decided to go to the beach with some friends. Unfortunately, the waves were so massive that, for our safety, the lifeguards asked us to stay knee deep in the water. According to them, there were 12 foot waves every 20 minutes, but what kind of a highschool boy in Coronado would go to the beach and not womp.

For those of you who don’t know, womping is a term used for the sport of going into the waves without a board, just you, your wetsuit, fins, hand plane, and if you're really serious, your gopro. Me, I have none of those things, I just go in empty handed and hope I don’t get hurt. The risk is half the fun.
Now I may not be very good at it, but I enjoy womping, so I went in with my friend Eric while the set was not so big. We caught a few waves but they started getting a lot bigger, so I told him we should start swimming in. Now, being the dumb teenage kid I was, I decided to go in without fins, which made it a lot harder to escape these insane waves. Eric, on the other hand, was smart and brought fins with him, but it was still a challenge to escape these enormous waves.
We began to swim back to get away from these waves, but I was terrified. The waves seemed to taunt us by growing larger and closer, leaving us with nothing to do but to hold our breaths and duck for cover. I was afraid that while coming up to grab some air, there’d be another wave to crush me like a bug and I’d be stuck. I didn’t know how much longer I could use my arms and legs to keep myself above water. As we were struggling in the water a lifeguard on a jetski came up to us. He said, “You boys are stuck in a rip current. Do you have fins?”
Now I didn’t want to look stupid, so I remained silent, but then Eric responded, “I have fins, but he doesn’t”
“Ok, try your best to swim in and if you need help I’ll come back.” So we did.
Now it was time for me to search for passage out of this mess. I found a wave that was catchable, but I was still scared. I didn’t want to catch it and realize halfway that it was too big. My biggest fear at this point was getting thrown into the sea floor and getting seriously hurt. I gathered my courage and caught the wave, which grew more as it grew closer, and I used the little skill I had to ride it. I had decided that I would just let it push me to shore because it was too big for me to ride but not big enough to throw me into the floor of the ocean. Although I couldn’t breathe for a while, I was safe at that point. Eric, on the other hand, was getting pulled further and further out, and the giant waves were sucking him in even faster, so the lifeguard rode back over there with his jet ski and rescued him. After that, we decided to go to the pool because we were burning but we didn’t want to risk getting caught in another rip current. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I was so lucky to have caught that wave because I got gloating rights for the rest of the day.