Why Not to Show Off

Being embarrassed in front of your family is one of the hardest things to deal with. I moved here to San Diego last fall, and picked up surfing as a new sport. Since then, I have been telling my mom about how much fun it is, and how much I have progressed since I started. She has always told me how worried she is that I will get hurt or drown, and I have always replied as if there is not a chance than anything could ever go wrong in the water, and of course nothing did until the first time she got a chance to watch me surf.
When my family told me that they were coming to San Diego on vacation I was really excited. I couldn't wait to show them around the city, show them how I live my life, and mostly that I had learned how to surf. My mom told me that everyone would be staying at a condo in Oceanside, about two weeks before they were coming. In those two weeks, I went in the water every day trying to improve as much as I could to show them how good I had gotten at surfing.
By the time they all arrived, I was very confident with my surfing abilities. I drove up to their condo in Oceanside, and checked out where the best place to surf was. I had never been surfing up there before, so I had no idea where to go. I found what I thought would be the best place to catch some decent sized waves, and decided that my friend and I would come back up there the following day to surf.
By the time we got up there, the sun was almost down, and the waves were pretty big. We started paddling out on the south side of the jetty no knowing that the current was flowing north. When we got out just about as far as the end of the jetty, a current much stronger than anything I have ever felt started pulling me toward the rocks. I tried to paddle out far enough to make it around the jetty, but the breaking waves kept pulling me closer and closer. I eventually got to the point when I realized that there was no way to paddle out of it. I was only ten feet from the rocks when a shoulder high wave crashed right on top of me. I let go of my board knowing that my best chance of getting out of the water unharmed would be without it attached to my ankle. That was the worst idea I have come up with in a long time. My board caught into the next wave, and pulled me to a part of the jetty that was too steep to climb up. At that point I began to panic. Not only were the rocks too steep to clime, but they were also covered in razor sharp mussels that sliced my hands and feet open as I tried to climb them. There was nothing I could do as the waves continued to slam me into the rocks, and because I had panicked, I had forgotten to unstrap my leash. Finally there was a long enough break in the sets that were rolling in for me to get up onto the jetty. When I got up high enough to be safe, I became so dizzy that I almost passed out. I sat down and coughed up all of the water I had inhaled in the struggle. That's when the pain hit.
The adrenaline rush that I got from panicking had hidden the pain that was coming from my head, hands, and feet. My head was pounding worse than I have ever experienced, and my hands and feet were covered in blood from the cuts that the mussels had given me. I finally came back to my senses and looked around, only to see my mom back at the beach with a video camera.
When my head stopped hurting enough for me to walk back to the beach, I was so embarrassed. I couldn't believe that the first time I tried to show m mom that surfing was safe, and that I was good at it, happened to be the only time I have ever been scared in the water. I explained to my mom what had happened, and that I had been stupid for not watching the currents before paddling out. She agreed, and still to this day brings it up whenever I tell her I'm going surfing.