This is a long story about how I felt like a complete skate-jock and why the brands we generally despise both exist and thrive.
When I first met my S/O years ago, I was skating a lot more and she thought it was cool. At 31, she had never stepped foot on a skateboard in her life. I decided I’d show her the basics at my local skatepark.
We show up and the park is empty. Me, being the horrible teacher that I am, assumed her saying “I’ve never stepped on skateboard” meant she could roll around on flat ground- I was wrong. I leave her to hold a fence to practice balancing. An hour goes by and I'm dusted from skating ledges the entire time. She’s a good sport but was yearning to learn more.
A few days later, I have to travel for work for about two weeks. This was before we lived together and she asked if she could borrow my skateboard to practice. I oblige, leave it at her apartment on the way to the airport and think nothing of it.
Two weeks pass and I arrive home, jet lagged but itching to release some stress by skating around my local. I pick her up, my spare skateboard in trunk and the one she's borrowing in her hand and we go to our local. I’m not paying attention and start warming my legs up with a few runs around the park.
After about 5 minutes, I realize I didn’t leave her on the fence and frantically search to see if she’s fallen. To my total surprise, she is rolling around, going up and down the banks and pushing (not mongo). Albeit it looks sloppy, this is someone who, 2 weeks prior, couldn’t even stand on a board. I’m blown away and impressed, with a hint of admiration as I remember being a chubby 8 year old taking weeks to learn how to stand and roll.
We leave the park and I’m singing her praises, giving verbal accolades about her progress. I innocently ask, “How did you learn so fast?”. Prior to receiving her answer that would turn my morals upside-down, I assumed she was either naturally talented or started banging a dude at the park in exchange for lessons. How wrong I was on all accounts.
Smiling from ear-to-ear, she pulls her phone out and opens the YouTube app. I’m sitting in the parking lot with her, sweat dried on my brow, patiently waiting to see what miraculous video she pulls up that showed her the basics of skateboarding. Was it from Tony Hawk or Eric Koston's trick tips? Possibly a lesser known e-learning channel from a dope company?
No. She pulls up Braille's youtube channel and starts scrolling through all the videos she was looking at- each one with a small red-line below the thumbnail, indicating she's ingested this content like a fiend demolishing a bag of dope. I can't wrap my head around this and am smiling on the outside but screaming on the inside:
"Why is this happening to me? How did I get here? Who is poisoning the well with this content being so easily accessible to the naive skateboarder in the early stages of their journey to Gnardom?"
After about 30 seconds of her scrolling through, my inner skate-jock erupts and I exclaim, "Those videos are so wack. You need to stop looking at them." A flood of emotion and memories took over- blips of flashbacks to conversations between friends, casually talking shit on anything that Thrasher or Transworld's website didn't display in the last decade. Aaron Kyro's bird-like nose poking into frame.
She's immediately crushed, followed by a wave of being upset with me for judging her - and rightfully so. I believe the first thing she said was, "Oh, I didn't realize you were the mayor of Cool's Ville and Braille is jean overalls". That immediately put me in check. Who was I to dictate what is or isn't cool? What gave me the impression that I was aware, at all, of what should be considered 'hip' or 'lame'? How did I get to the point from my humble beginnings in skateboarding, where I was the little kid being bullied by the older crew for my Wet Willy deck to being the kook who judged someone so quickly?
This was followed by one of our first and only fights in our years-long relationship. At the end of it, I submitted, admitted I was in the wrong and told her my opinion should not ruin the tools which helped her begin to skate. To this day though, every time a reference to anything Braille or Revive pops up, I instinctually clench my jaw and remember the day I was the skateboard jock.
Topic: real confessions (Read 1739760 times)