Monograph - 6
The Walk:
ESCAPE-BOARDING
Interestingly, skateboarding did not become a big part of my life until after I had a car. When I was much younger, around age 12, I do remember trying to skateboard but it wasn't anything like what happened in my first year of college.
I remember the nervousness that came over me on the first day of school. We had to park in an area that was at least a half-mile away from the classrooms. I looked down the long path to the campus as I got butterflies in my stomach and felt the muscles in my body tighten up. I really didn't like walking in public for a certain reason. A couple of years ago, someone commented on the way I walked and I took it very personally. I tried desperately to see why this person thought I walked 'funny'. I would walk up to mirrors and glass doors to examine my stride. As far as I could see, it looked normal. However, since that person, a couple of years ago, said I walked like a homosexual; something didn't sit right with me when I was walking in public. I became fearful that people might be looking at me in some sort of a sexual way. The more I worried about it, the more irregular my walk became. As far as I could tell, people in public were no longer thinking I walked in some sort of sexual way, but they were saying out loud, "What's wrong with that guy?"
I could feel there was definitely something wrong with me. Since my muscles were so tight from my nervousness, I felt like I couldn't swing my arms when I was walking. When in public, I would hear an utterance in my head, even when nobody was within range of hearing, that said I was, "...walking sexually", "...walking queer", or I might get the feeling people were saying, "What's wrong with him?"
The situation at the college was a mess because we had to do so much walking back and forth to class. To this day, I do not know if all those people were actually talking about the way I walked or I was paranoid out of my mind and ready to snap. It's impossible to say what the real problem was but I knew I had to do something about it. I tried new shoes, padding in my shoes, knee braces, suspenders instead of a belt, walking with my hands in my pockets, walking with ear phones while listening to music, more new shoes, copying other people's gait, and sneaking around the back way to my classes. At one point, I think I had a different walk every day of the week, which definitely made me even more noticeable than ever. I felt like an outcast and really didn't have any friends at school to walk around with, so I seemed to turn to alcohol and marijuana to ease my mind and my walk. The alcohol did relax my walk for a while but the marijuana made it ten times more tense and paranoid looking. An alcohol hangover made also made the walk much worse. Drugs were a temporary and dangerous solution to a long-term problem. Just when I thought there was no way out of this predicament, I found that I could transcend the entire situation. I went to one of the few stores that sold skateboards at the time, and I bought one of those wooden-boards-with-wheels-attached-to-the-bottom.
It was a tedious task at first. I not only had to re-learn how to ride a skateboard, but I also had to become proficient enough to make it a feasible way to transport myself from the parking lot, down the long walkway, up the hill, and to the classroom building. Some people say you never forget how to ride a bicycle or a skateboard once you learn. Well, I must have never truly learned six or seven years ago because this felt like something entirely new. I went through many hours of private practice before I finally got up the courage to ride to class.
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It not only ended up being the ultimate solution to my walking problem but also gave me some sort of an unexpected identity on the campus. I researched skateboarding in the library and it seems to have come and gone in trends since the 1950s. When I was learning to skateboard, it was not something that was very popular. Some people made the comment that they hadn't seen a skateboard in years. I knew I was the only one riding a board on the half-mile journey to the campus. Other students thought it was a great idea simply because it was a solution to the long distance walk from the parking lot to the classroom but nobody else seemed to have the motivation to do it. Some of the older professors told me stories about how it was so popular in the past, they had to make rules regarding skateboarding in the campus parking lot. But at that particular point in time, I was the only one riding a wheeled-board in the parking lot, and I was content with it being that way.
Fascinating things came out of my skateboarding experience. I seemed to become automatically categorized into a subculture famous for it's individuality, creativity, freedom, rebellion, and relaxed lifestyle. My style of clothes changed, and my attitudes changed. I felt the freedom to experiment with different or odd hairstyles, hats, shoes, pants, and shirts. The bottom line was, I could do whatever I wanted without hearing a word about it from anyone else or from my own paranoia. The wheels on the skateboard made a noise that canceled out all voices, and the rhythmic vibrations I felt from skating across the pavement put my mind and body into a meditation-like state. It was truly a healthy escape. When riding a skateboard, I was also about four inches taller so I felt I was somewhat above the average guy in more ways than one. On top of that, I was never late to class because my commute time from the parking lot to the classroom dropped from 11 minutes to about three minutes or less.
I had never written a poem or an article before unless it was an assignment from a school-teacher but something inside my head changed all of a sudden. I think the physical action of skateboarding developed the right-hand side of my brain, which stoked my creativity, visualization of structure, and awareness of form. I found I could write both poems and prose like never before. I met other skateboarders that claimed to have the same thing happen, except they said it expressed itself as new- found musical capability. Since I also noticed I developed an ability for public speaking, some of my skateboarding poetry was very oratorical. But some of the poetry had a vague yet surprisingly post-apocalyptic theme, which startles me to this day because I can't figure out exactly what would motivate me to write such things. Out of curiosity, I asked a licensed psychotherapist analyze the following poem. Interestingly, he told me he thought it meant I felt I was isolated from society, and I had a subconscious urge to act out on it. I converted the original poem into 'prosetry' for a more realistic appearance.
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Section - 6a
"TWO THOUSAND SK8"
Prepare for change when the last riot has ended; when the world is all over but still can be mended. Everyone got their last say until the last day. Everyone killed each other and all got their way. Men killed all men as they killed for domain. Mostly women and children in shelters remain. But skaters were smart and stayed out from the start. "Shhh... there's a riot, let's watch, and not be a part."
If they bother us, we'll fire, or use the board as a weapon. A crack to the skull will send the dumb ass to heaven. It's not really a surprise but just expectation; we come up from the basements to claim the whole nation. With all of our effort and ramp building skills, we rebuild all the cities and nobody kills.
We know everyone's name and everyone's face. We all live along... Long live the skateboarder race! We shall survive and out live the rest of them. Accept each other and be the best of the men.
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