Life is filled with different phases and transitions.
Currently, I’m enjoying my middle-aged man phase. It’s an interesting time filled with raising kids, pursuing personal growth and enduring occasional bouts of chronic under-employment.
It’s not a bad time, though.
I don’t think I’m going to have a mid-life crisis. But one can never be sure when the word crisis is involved.
There’s a different time that’s been on my mind lately.
It’s a special time that happens during the journey from being a kid to being a full-fledged teenager. It’s a time of great change and transition. It can be awkward and confusing.
It’s a time of new emotions, new feelings and new priorities. Many of which can be difficult to navigate and challenging to understand.
This time I speak of, is called skateboarding.
For me and my friends, up to that point our lives had revolved completely around baseball. If we weren’t at practice or up at the field playing a game, then we were outside in the street playing homerun derby or at the park playing cup-ball.
Cup-ball was a baseball-like game that we might have invented. I’m really not sure. I’ve never heard of other kids playing cup-ball, but if you’re out there and you played it let me know.
Cup-ball is played with no gloves, no bats and no ball.
You dig through the trash and find the waxy Coca-Cola cups that they serve drinks in at the concession stand. You wad one cup into a ball, stick it into another cup and wad that one over it. Repeat the process a few times and you’ve got yourself a genuine cup-ball.
You hit with your hand and you can get runners out by beaning them between bases. Other than that, the rules are pretty much the same as baseball.
When we got to high school, we met a bunch of new kids. Kids whose lives didn’t revolve completely around baseball.
They were into other stuff.
They were cool and had older brothers who would drive them around in their cars. They knew where the secret spots were. They knew where the other cool kids with older brothers hung out. And when we got to those secret hang out spots where all those cool kids and older brothers were, they were not playing cup-ball.
There was a kid named Herman who was the best skateboarder in the group. I remember the first time I saw him. He looked like a young Iggy Pop with no shirt on gliding effortlessly on his board across the smooth, level surface of an abandoned tennis court. He never even used his left leg to kick. He’d just do this little back and forth move with the nose of the board that would keep his forward momentum going.
There were cigarettes and beer which kinda freaked me out. But more importantly there was music playing. Music like I had never heard, from bands with the most wonderfully bizarre names you could possibly imagine.
Suicidal Tendencies
The Butthole Surfers
The Circle Jerks
The Flaming Lips
The Dead Kennedys
The Violent Femmes
My head exploded when I heard Blister in the Sun for the first time. Brain chunks. All over the place.
Plus, the logos and artwork that came from this huge new world of skateboarding and music was so different than anything I had ever seen. I was instantly fascinated by it and began doodling Black Flag logos and The Cramps album covers in my notebooks.
Everything changed when my friends and I got to skateboarding. Baseball was still a thing but only for practices and games. All our free time now went to skateboarding, which included the construction of an enormous half-pipe in my friend Tyler’s backyard.
I was always too chicken to drop in on the half-pipe. It’s a vertical trust fall that involves a few face-plants into the bottom of the bowl before you get the hang of it. I was never willing to take those face plants. I regret it to this day.
What I loved most was skating in the parking garages downtown.
You’d hitch a ride with one of the older brothers after dinner. We’d get downtown just as it was getting dark, and all the parking garages were emptied out for the night.
You’d park down the street and sneak past the security guards, clutching your board as you ran up the stairs to the highest level of the garage.
Once we got to the top, sometimes we’d just hang out and look out over the skyline. Sometimes we’d pop a few beers and have a few smokes. And sometimes we waited for the security guards to show up in their little golf carts to throw our asses out of there.
That’s when you hopped on your board, shot the rent-a-cops a double bird and headed for the ramps.
They’d chase you in their carts, screaming their heads off as you wound your way down the ramps gaining speed on every loop until finally reaching the ground floor and shooting out of the parking garage like a crazy cannonball; now screaming your own head off as the adrenaline coursing through your body and the wind whipping past the sweat on your arms and neck cooled you down and left you feeling like you’d just hit a grand slam home-run.
“I was in my room and I was just like, staring at the walls thinking about everything.
But then again, I was thinking about nothing.
And then my mom came in, and I didn't even know she was there.
She called my name and I didn't hear her.
And then she started screaming, "Mike! Mike!"
And I go, "What? What's the matter?"
She goes, "What's the matter with you?"
I go, "There's nothing wrong, mom."
She goes, "Don't tell me that, you're on drugs!"
I go, "No mom, I'm not on drugs, I'm okay. I'm just thinking, you know? Why don't you get me a Pepsi?"
She goes, "No, you're on drugs!"
I go, "Mom, I'm okay, I'm just thinking."
And she goes, "No, you're not thinking, you're on drugs!
Normal people don't act that way!"
I go, "Mom, just get me a Pepsi, please?
All I want's a Pepsi."
And she wouldn't give it to me!
All I wanted was a Pepsi!
Just one Pepsi!
And she wouldn't give it to me!”
Thanks for reading. I’ll see you again real soon.
Comments