Skateboards

Upon recent reflection I have realized that I will never be a professional skateboarder. At least there is still hope for a career in stunt car driving. My troubles with skateboards started at a young age. As a child I had the tendency to do things that usually resulted in getting injured in some way. At some point I think my mom possibly quit worrying about me.

I'm almost certain that watching Back to the Future had a lot to do with me thinking that skateboards were the coolest thing since grilled cheese sandwiches. And lets be honest, grilled cheese sandwiches are pretty god-damned nifty. Luckily we just so happened to have a skateboard laying around the place.

How hard could skateboarding be? Certainly it couldn't be near as challenging as a bike or roller skates? Wrong. Right as I was getting ready to jump on the skateboard and start having the time of my life the lamest possible thing happened. I stepped on the end of it and it came flying up towards me and hit me right in the forehead. Naturally I started wailing in pain. My brother was there and he went running in to tell my mom that I had an awful goose egg. Remember what I said about my mom being desensitized to my injuries? At first she said "oh she'll be fine" thinking it was a little scrape. What she didn't realize was that there was a protruding mass of pain forming on my forehead.

I came in and my mom saw my impressive goose egg and made me feel all better and happy again. You would think that the mass of purple situated on my face would have taught me the proper way to get on a skateboard or maybe just to avoid them all together...

Not ten minutes after getting hit in the face I went out and did the same exact thing, with the same exact result. Fifteen years or so later I seem to have forgotten this experience. Mary and I had recently acquired the raddest skateboard imaginable.

Its name is Christine and features a dueling dragon and white tiger. Can you think of a more bad ass way to commute? I think not. Mary, Holly, Chris and I decided it would be a great idea to take Christine over to the skate park across the street one night. Earlier Chris and I were having a wine sodden Will and Grace marathon so maybe the timing wasn't particularly great. At first I was sensible and went down the ramps sitting on Christine.

This went down smoothly but I was really pushing my luck. All I was going to do was try one of the small inclines, I was even going to push myself up the ramp to be extra safe. About half way up Christine when shooting backwards and I went slapping onto the cement ramp. This knocked the wind out of me and landing on my elbows and knees caused me to hobble around for the next two weeks. At least I was smart enough this time to not try going up the ramp again...