It’s been a week since I started learning to skateboard – and it hurts to sit down.
I have a bruise on my right hip and thigh area that is so gargantuan that it looks like Hagrid tried to spank me and, instead of making contact with my bum, walloped my lower side. On my left thigh I have a baby bruise developing to match the mama bruise on my right. Three of my left toes and my left knee are scraped and bruised, my right arm hurts when I lift it and I’m pretty sure my face has made contact with the ground more in the last week than in the preceding 22 years. Every time I shower I discover another rogue bruise popping up from below my skin to say hello.
I am a disgusting mess, but I am proud of it all.
You see, I'm not a kinesthetically gifted person. Sports – or any physical activity that requires skill and coordination – do not come naturally to me. I quit karate before yellow-belt testing because I didn’t want to spar, I was a one-hit wonder (serving, obviously) during my single season of adolescent club volleyball and I spent every minute of P.E. wishing I was in the library instead.
So when I told my friends and family that my New Year’s resolution was to learn how to skateboard, I encountered more than a few expressions of surprise, confusion – even concern. I heard several variations of the phrase, “I never thought of you as the skateboarding type,” and “Ha! Imagine you on a skateboard.”
My father, convinced I would have some spectacular accident, actively discouraged me.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said. “You’ve come too far and invested too much in that brain for you to fall and crack your damn head open.”
Thanks, Dad.
I decided to channel the tao of a professional skater, to prove all the haters wrong. This timid bookworm could learn how to shred! Or, you know, at least be able to stay on a skateboard for more than 30 seconds without flamboyantly flapping my arms in a futile attempt to stay balanced and upright.
A week ago I began my crash course (pun always intended, and in this case, sadly prophetic) in learning how to skateboard.
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Like any journalist worth her salt, I begin my quest with a copious amount of research. I spend an inordinate amount of time watching skateboarding videos on YouTube, from useful how-to’s (bless you, Cameron Redwine) to toddlers doing tricks I will probably never be capable of. My trusty pal Wikipedia teaches me the difference between a kick flip and a shove-it, that skaters who put their right foot forward on the board are “goofy” while my fellow left-footers and I are deemed “regular” and that the United States Marine Corps once tested skateboards in an urban-combat exercise called Urban Warrior ’99.
I watch Tony Hawk’s episode of Cribs and some music videos (Lupe Fiasco’s “Kick Push” and Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi”, although her video should be called “Bicycling Boi” because there are more bikers than skaters in that production) for inspiration.
One can only research and delay action for so long, and I eventually buy a cheap Maple starter board at Target. I name him Jay, because the maple leaf on the deck reminds me of Jay Baruchel’s tattoo. At first I’m afraid to do more than stand on Jay for a few minutes at a time. I do this in my living room for a good 20 minutes before I feel guilty about the indents I’m creating in the carpet and get off. Going outside frightens me.
I realize that at this pace it will take me a decade to learn how to skateboard, so I call and arrange a free beginner’s lesson at Sk8 Asylum, an indoor skate park and board shop in Mesa.
The folks at Sk8 Asylum are welcoming and laidback, which only highlights the neurotic frenzy I have whipped myself into. Bryan Peterson, the owner, helps me suit up in knee pads, shoulder pads and a helmet, and supplies me with a training board, while Dustin, my encouraging instructor, is kind enough to lie to me and tell me I'm doing all right.
In fact, my performance is disastrous. I have zero skill, talent, intuition and athletic prowess, and find it difficult to translate his directions into action. I spend the bulk of the lesson quaking atop the board, trying to stay there. I fall too many times to count, and I seem to favor my right side (thus the birth of my grotesque bruise) as a landing point. Falling hurts less physically than it does psychologically – I am a perfectionist who hates failing, and my ego is taking a huge beating right now.
To top it off, I’m the oldest student there by 10 to 15 years and the wee ones are smoking me. I shake my head like an indignant old lady and vow not to give up. I try to accomplish each trick/skill that Dustin teaches me. It takes me what feels like a million attempts, but I am eventually able to skate and turn almost 360 degrees.
In the days after my lesson I practice on my own at home and with the boys I nanny. Tristan, 11, teaches me how to pump and the theory behind a tic-tac (my abysmal skills preclude my mastering it). Skateboarding in the real world, with its bumpy surfaces and stray rocks, is much more difficult than the smooth curves of the indoor skate park. I fall a lot more, especially on the day I decide to make skateboarding fit my lifestyle rather than the other way around and swap my Converse for my usual flats. My toes are still cursing me for that pompous decision.
I am a week into my journey to become a skateboarder. I have been injured and humbled by my own folly and lack of skill. It is tempting to quit, but I have resolved that I will not. It may take me all of 2012, but I will become a competent skater. My bruises and scrapes delight me and I show them off to whoever will look. They are my badges, my proof that I have done something – that I have traveled far outside my comfort zone to try something different.
Tristan believes in me.
“You can do it,” he says. “Just about anybody can learn how to skateboard at any age, unless you’re over 60. You just have to be healthy and under 60.”
His final piece of advice: “You really need to go to the Vans store and get the right shoes.”
Contact the reporter at llemoine@asu.edu
