Fish Out of Water — by Kasaan Hammon

Mar 1

Mar 1 Fish Out of Water

Published as a 3-part series in the Malibu Times, Summer 2008

A one-day trip field trip to Malibu turned into a summer-long adventure and the chance of a lifetime for Darreyon Johnson, a 12-year-old from South Central who spent the summer surfing with the help of a volunteer mentor and Malibu’s West Coast Riders.

PART I – Far From Shore

Darreyon Johnson was a surfer without a beach. It took a day at surf camp to see that, though. Darreyon could do a back flip over one seat into another on a moving school bus like nobody else. His small, light frame balanced easily on the top of the seats, and he could masterfully twist most of his body out of the window to yell at passing cars before you even noticed him up again. In a school bus, this made him look like a week’s suspension. But in the ocean, these natural skills made him look like a surfer. Seeing Darreyon on a surf board that first day felt like someone finally gave me the right prescription for my glasses.

I was working for a non-profit foundation that works with kids in Los Angeles’ inner city. We took fifty kids from Compton and Watts on field trips every month to expose them to things outside of their everyday lives—the LA Opera, museums, television studio sets, Beverly Hills restaurants.

Darreyon was one of the “bad” kids. Bad by twelve-year-old standards, that is. He didn’t listen to directions; he didn’t pay attention in classes; he didn’t do his homework; he talked back to teachers and everyone else; he yelled at the other kids and screamed when he felt like it; and he just would not sit down in his seat on the bus. Darreyon was the kid I caught in the lounge at the opera house trying to get two other boys to paper the men’s bathroom with him during the second act. Maybe the opera was just a little too much sitting around for Darreyon. But I decided he should be kicked out of the program, and soon, if he didn’t shape up. I didn’t want him taking down some of our good kids with him.

That was until the day we took the kids to Malibu for a surfing lesson. Most of the kids had never even been to the beach. It is hard to imagine this when you live in a city where the beach is only a few miles away. But if you don’t have a way to get somewhere, then it is a long way away, no matter how close it is. To these kids, we might as well have gone to another planet. I cannot describe the looks on their faces that day—awkwardly squeezing into their wetsuits like space travelers, dipping their toes hesitantly into the water, clutching onto their boards with shaking hands. Two hours later, we couldn’t get them out of the water. The smiles on their faces radiated a mile down the beach. After all, these were twelve-year-olds. These are not faces you think carry the weight of the world in their eyes, until you see it lifted.

It is easy to forget these are just kids when you start to get a glimpse of their lives. Innocence is long lost in days that regularly witness violence, death, poverty, hunger and hopelessness. These are words I used to think were an exaggeration, trumped up for special news reports and speeches at fundraisers. But unfortunately, these things are real and happening nearby. Eighty percent of the kids that go to Darreyon’s school are living below the poverty line. His principal told me once that when he moved to Los Angeles and started working at the school, he had never seen kids so consistently eat every bite of their food at lunch. Not a bite was wasted. It took him several weeks to learn that, for many of the kids, this was the only real meal they would get that day.

We did an essay contest at the foundation that asked middle school kids to write about their experiences with violence, and we were shocked to read that almost half of the five hundred kids who wrote essays had witnessed a shooting or death. I was surprised by this because I lived in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, and I had never actually witnessed a shooting. The kids weren’t surprised at all. Working with them, I saw quickly how much tougher their skin was than mine.

But then a simple field trip reminded me that theirs is false skin—hard but thin— protecting a tender and curious soul who still needs help putting sunscreen on his nose, who wonders what coral eats, and who has never seen a beach. Watching Darreyon in the waves that day, I realized I had never really seen him.

PART II – Getting to the Beach

The moment that changed my summer plans entirely was when Darreyon stood shivering beside me on the beach, chewing his towel, just staring at the water with a look of stunned disbelief, and saying over and over, “Did you see how far out I went? I didn’t know I could go out that far. I didn’t know I could go OUT that far!” He wasn’t even talking to me, but to himself—stuck in delirious repetition.

And then he was running right back out into the water. He was amazing on the waves. All the kids were having fun trying to surf, but Darreyon was up on his feet the first time out of the gate, riding in wave after wave like a natural. More than that, there was a distinctly new look on his face. A look that said he knew he was good at something. I knew in that moment, one way or another, I had to get him back to the beach. Paying for surf camp in Malibu for the summer was beyond my means, so I enlisted the support of Brendon O’Neal, the camp leader. When he heard about what I wanted to do, he agreed to host two kids at no charge for the whole summer. All I had to do was get them there.

Surfing days meant driving for six hours between my home in the Valley, the kids’ homes in South Central and Malibu. But those hours spent talking with the kids were almost as fun as the surfing. You can learn a lot from twelve-year-olds. I thought I was going to teach Darreyon something, but he didn’t need any help from me. By the second week, sitting in the car on the way home and looking out at the Malibu coastline, he remarked simply, “If I lived here, my life would be totally different.” It was just that obvious. We sat in silence and enjoyed the clean air for as long as we could.

I asked Darreyon in the car one morning why he often acted so badly. I told him that I was beginning to think it was all an act because the Darreyon I knew wasn’t really that bad at all. The most mischievous grin spread across his little face, and he just shrugged and rolled his eyes, “You gotta act crazy, Miss Kasaan, if you want the bad kids to leave you alone.” It was so sad and frustrating to see that his suffering grades and corrupted behavior in school might just be the casualties of his instinct to survive—a product of fear. How could I tell him that this was wrong and show him that he was hurting himself in the long run when I couldn’t possibly see what he sees? Perhaps he knew more than I did about what would keep him safe and alive in that environment. Maybe all I could do was give him the chance to experience another environment—give him a chance to see what else he is capable of being, out of context.

PART III – Bringing the Beach Inside

“Why are you black?” That is the question I heard coming from a four-year-old resident of Malibu when he walked up to Darreyon Johnson and the rest of the kids we brought from South Central to the beach for a day of surfing. It wasn’t an aggressive question or an accusation. I think he was just wondering about something he hadn’t seen before. As a group leader, I was at a loss for words. Thankfully, one of the teachers in our group quickly rushed over when she saw the jaws drop open on several of the twelve-year-old girls being asked the question. “Kids come in all different colors,” she said. “Oh, cool,” said the four-year-old. That was it. He went back to his bucket and shovel.

This was the first of many days I spent at the beach with Darreyon last summer. It was not the only time I wondered how the other kids at surf camp would respond to him. The other kids were almost exclusively Malibu residents who live literally footsteps from the beach. I worried that Darreyon’s aggressive behavior would not go over as well with kids who weren’t used to it. I wondered if he would be able to let his guard down in the limited time we had each week. But that was adult thinking. Kids adapt so easily. Darreyon had a great summer surfing, and it didn’t take long for him to start making friends. He was practically a celebrity on the days he came to camp.

One day I had lunch with a much-respected colleague who does a lot of mentoring for youth. I was excited to share with him my summer experience and my ideas to expand my efforts—perhaps find ways for kids to go to school all year in another part of the city. Or find host families for them like study-abroad programs have traditionally done for wealthier kids. My colleague said that he had thought of this idea, too, but he had always been met with the same response: “What good is taking kids out of a bad environment if you’re just going to send them right back?”

I thought, “That is like saying, ‘Why go on vacation if you are just going to have to go back to work afterward?’” It’s about upping your happiness-to-stress ratio. Letting go for a while and hoping some of that good feeling will stick. When you expose children to something new, a lot of them will go right back to seeing the world the way they are used to seeing it. We adults are the same way—people see and do what they know. But sometimes a good feeling—an inspiration, an idea, a motivation—resonates with something deep inside a person and brings it closer to the surface. Once you break down a barrier and show a child how “far out they can go,” you can’t take that memory away.

On the last day of surf camp, I took Darreyon to the Santa Monica pier for a sort-of “graduation” celebration. True to form, he got expelled from a ride because he would not sit down in his seat while flying back and forth on a gigantic swinging ship thirty feet above the ground. It wasn’t funny, and my stomach was in my throat just watching him, but I have to admit, inside I was smiling a little. Because while everyone else in line saw some punk kid misbehaving on a ride, I saw a surfer riding his last wave of the summer—flying high, happy, self-assured, and feeling no fear.

When school started again, Darreyon stuck with the non-profit program’s monthly field trips and started to bring up his grades. His mother was able to move the kids to a new school where Darreyon is happy to tell me that he “gets more respect from the other kids.” Better still, this past spring his mother received a letter from the school recognizing him for setting a good example in class. I stayed busy with a new job and checked in on him occasionally. But as summer approached, I began to realize that consistency is probably one of the most valuable things you can offer a child. I made a call to Brendon O’Neal, and then I went by Darreyon’s house to ask if he’d like to go surfing again this summer.

The smile on his face in that moment is worth every minute we will spend baking in L.A. traffic. I also added the good news that this year his little brother is invited to come along, too. It’s funny what sticks in kids’ minds, what it is about places and experiences they hold on to. “Just wait ‘til you see it,” he said to his brother on our first morning drive, beaming. “It is so clean! It is the cleanest beach I have ever seen!”