I resolve this year to be awesome. Not just awesome, but really awesome. 80’s metal awesome. Big-Wheel awesome. Bill S. Preston Esquire and Ted Theodore Logan awesome. I’m talking ‘high-fiving, backboard-shattering, popping-wheelies awesome’.
When I was little, I bought my first skateboard from a garage sale with my own money after my parents refused to get me one (since they were dangerous and for hooligans). The big kids who lived next door to us had built a ramp out of plywood and old railroad ties and they were skating pell-mell down the street and doing radical things like ollies and kick flips. To my young eyes, they seemed to move in slow motion and to have achieved a level of awesome that existed only in movies.
In a moment of daring, I brought out my $5 neon colored skateboard and skated slowly on the sidewalk, to embarrassed to ask to join in. One of the older boys asked me if I wanted to go, and got all the others to stand back and cheer me on. I stood there in front of the ramp, one foot on the board the other on the hot pavement, as heat waves radiated up and clouded my vision. My heart started to hammer in my chest and the world seemed to slow down as I bent down, picked up my board, and walked inside the house. I didn't skate much after that. I missed that chance to be awesome, my fear won, it overpowered me.
Life has changed a lot for me. Gone are the neon colored skateboards, the older boys who engage in radical acts that cause spontaneous bursts of high-fiving to break out, and the goofy kid in the knee socks. But that fear is still there, lurking. And it can happen at any time, all of a sudden I'm standing on that board again, in the afternoon sun, staring at the spray painted plywood ramp. This time though, it's going to be awesome.
No comments:
Post a Comment