Through my years of skateboarding, I managed to make friends that also skated, as we’d form our own little group. I am sure you know the deal.. The people you get ahold of everyday with a “Hey, let’s go skate”. You chill every day, and you watch each other progress…
I dunno about you, but in my “group” there was this one kid who just couldn’t skate good.. As we all progressed over time, it looked like this guy couldn’t get better for the life of him. He watched the rest of the group learn kickflips, to varial flips, to 360 flips, and all the other tricks you could think of. He watched the rest of the group progress to a point of being able to skate pretty damn good, if I do say so myself. And while he watched us do all that, we watched him struggling to learn kickflips and other basic tricks. His skill seemed to remain in one spot… For years.
I couldn’t tell you if this bothered my friend or not… Though I can tell you I didn’t mind it personally. Sure, sometimes we’d play S.K.A.T.E and he’d join in.. And I would think “What for?”, since he was certain to always be the first guy out.. And he came along with us to spots that he couldn’t even skate, willing to continue his long battle with basic tricks on the flat pavement while we threw ourselves down gaps, constantly trying to one-up each other.. But it didn’t seem to bother my friend. Though he seemed like a person that just didn’t mix well with skating, he stuck with the rest of the group on one thing.. He, like we all did, enjoyed the living hell out of it. Like myself, and the rest of the group, if you asked him what his main hobby was, he’d tell you skateboarding.
But I have to admit something.. I didn’t quite understand it at the time. I, in a way, questioned if he could really be enjoying it that much, considering he couldn’t really do any tricks.
But now I must warn you, this story will change. I know you can think of somebody similar to my friend.. The skater that just can’t ever “get good”.. The situation is about to become a bit more unique.
It was a summer day… A day that seemed to be like any other day. I woke up and called my group to determine where we would meet to begin our skate session.. But that day, there was one less person in the group.. I was informed that my not-so-good-at-skating friend’s mother passed away the night before. Totally a shock, as she was in good health, and the whole thing was a freak accident. And I remember thinking “Fuck, she was all he had. That was his only remaining immediate family member.” And I remember thinking how strong of a relationship he had with her.
This dark event sparked a new sort of time period for our skate group. We’d soon become familiar with the group being “one man down”. My friend shut us out, and pushed us away.. Something he did to everybody, it seemed. And he did a good damn job, I gotta say. He made sure he was alone, no matter how hard anybody tried to be there for him.. And that scared the shit out of me.. I can’t imagine what was going on in that kid’s head, but I was certainly worried that something bad might happen…
This remained the way it was for a few months.. We just never seen the guy anymore. For all I knew, he sat in his room all day every day. When we did catch a glimpse of him out, he wasn’t on his board. I, along with the rest of the group, figured he had just quit skating… He was fed up with the trivial day to day task of fucking up kickflips and pop shoves.. Because it just wasn’t enough anymore… And that might make sense, right?
But one day my friends and I were to be taken by surprise. Our friend came back. He got his board and met us for another all day session.. Not something we expected at the time.. But we soon came to find an even bigger surprise. When he joined us, he seemed to be a whole different skater. I mean.. This kid wasn’t fucking up the easy tricks anymore! I was shocked to see him skate… Putting on a modest show of frontside flips, switch 360 flips, nollie hardflips, and impossibles.. The guy seemed to have shrugged off the learning barrier with skateboarding he had, and gone pro over night or something’!
We asked him what happened, and he just shrugged it off as “I dunno, I just learned it…” and left it at that.. But eventually came one of those “dead days”. You know, where everybody in the group was busy with shit, and couldn’t get out to skate.. Except for my said friend, of course.. So it looked like the session would just be made of us two..
It went like you could expect.. We just skated for a while and shit.. But I decided I wanted to go to this spot that’s about a 20 minute walk away (at the time, none of us could drive), and he was down.. But along the way, he wanted to take a different route to the spot.. I figured whatever, and said sure, while being a bit confused. And as we took this different route, he stopped by a cemetery and went into it.. Being a fucking idiot, I was confused and asked what we were doing.. To which he replied “I’m gonna go see my mom”.. And that we did.
It was weird.. I sat in silence on my board, looking at my friend crouched before a headstone for a while.. Eventually he broke the silence with “Shit, my bad to take your time dude, let’s go skate.” And we left, continuing to the spot.. But shortly after we started walking again, my friend told me he was sorry for not skating with us for a while.. I told him it was alright, a bit unsure what to say.
He went on to tell me that he had just wanted to skate alone during that time.. I was surprised, and said “I didn’t know you were skating”. Which is understandable, since he told me he never left the road beside his house. He told me about how he skated all day everyday.. And then at night when he was asleep, he’d have dreams about his mom and would wake up upset.. Which he cured by going outside and skating. It was weird, because I never really imagined somebody would skate all day, go to sleep only to wake up around 2 a.m. and then go back outside to skate alone until sunrise.
But hey, sorry about this. I am sure only a small portion of you guys even read this, rather than just closing it because it was so long… But I think this is a story that must be shared, because it has taught me something about skateboarding.
When I think back on it all, and remember my friend not being able to do any tricks… I don’t really think of him as a bad skateboarder anymore.. Sure, he didn’t have tricks.. But skateboarding isn’t about the tricks. Skateboarding is about enjoyment. Having fun.. And the fun is there whether you’re fucking up pop shoves or you’re grinding down handrails.. And I’ve always known skateboarding had therapeutic value. It sort of pulls your thoughts away from everything else for a while.. But I didn’t think it could be used to the extent that my friend used it for… And fuck, as cheesy as it sounds, I thought that as my friends and I got better, we constantly were pushing skateboarding to the next level, in ways.. But I think that my friend using skateboarding the way he did pushed it to a new level that many people wouldn’t even consider as possible.
And THAT’S what it is to be a good skater.. Really.. I learned that skating really isn’t about the tricks, but it’s just about the fun and personal development involved.. And hey, you might already know that.. Or, y’know, you might just be one of those people that think the point of skateboarding is to learn the next trick, or hit the next gap.. But don’t worry, you’re not alone with that idea…
A skateboarder… HAS to appreciate it. They just have to. Otherwise, you’re just out there kicking a piece of wood around the road. I now believe the best way to view somebody’s progression as a skateboarder is to view their progression of appreciation. To see how they understand what exactly skateboarding can be, and that they know it’s worth it. Because that’s the best way to do it (though it may be impossible to gauge for anybody aside from yourself)… And I think that anybody that would want to argue that.. Well.. They haven’t quite began to understand the true beauty of skateboarding.
Too bad, yo.
