Whippershappers

I'm pretty good at being an old man. Maybe better than being a young one, some would say. What I mean is, things like getting going slow, waking up early, enjoying a scotch on the rocks and watching The Andy Griffith Show come naturally to me.  They always have. I used to love piddling around with my Grandfather, lazily going to lunch or shopping for cars (which he would take months to purchase, to the chagrin of the salesmen he made sure to spend lots of time talking to). Those were great relationship-building days, by the way, which I think a slower life lends itself well to.

The thing is, though, I'm not really old. I'm only 32. But since moving to a big city, and experiencing a different slice of life out here, I am finding new ways to feel old. Things move faster here, which is a given -- I can deal with that. I still drive slow and consider it my mission to slow this city down. People are more career-focused -- I've been there and can relate. They often choose work over family or rest -- to each his own I suppose, though I have some harsher feelings about that. But one thing that has been a little harder to deal with is what I encounter at the local parks, the haven for my children. We visit a park nearly every day, and I love living close enough to walk to them, but they aren't always kid-friendly, which has been a difficult transition for me.

Taken before going to lunch at Ryan's, my grandfather's favorite buffet.

First off, the parks where I live are dirty. You can feel it in the sand. There is trash everywhere. I usually pick up some trash when I'm there, but it keeps coming. The thing is that it is usually snack food waste, which means some punk kids (there's the old man in me) are eating their Takis and then tossing the bag on the ground. What the heck?! Didn't someone tell them not to do that? It's everywhere though, and a standard of inner city life.

The second thing I noticed is that more teenagers hang out at the local parks. What prompted this blog post is a recent trip when I took the girls to a park before lunch, mid-morning. A group of high school kids were just hanging at the park (at 10AM?!). Of course they were cussing and saying lots of derogatory things about each other that I didn't want the girls to hear. (An aside: I'm pretty sensitive to the negativity amongst kids towards each other, and the youth pastor in me just wants to jump in and tell them to stop! Be nice to each other. Encourage each other. There is enough negativity in this world, don't add to it to make yourself feel better!) And then they were smoking weed, which brought the whole thing to a head.

Why aren't these kids in school, I thought in my old man sort of way. Damn whippersnappers... I wasn't really sure what to do. Would asking them to stop help anything? My kids are going to be exposed to this stuff inevitably, when is the appropriate age for it to happen? Should I have called the cops, or would that just make things worse? Again, the youth pastor in me wanted to befriend them and show how following Jesus brings a healing and helping that all this weed and negativity can never do, but am I even the person to show them that?

I ended up just leaving, feeling a bit sheepish for not making some sort of comment, but again, I was at a loss. The next day I returned and the park was silent, peaceful even. We played a little bit, which is when I found cat poop in the sandbox. Great, I thought, Another reason to not come to this park. But shouldn't I be more comfortable handling this city-life? One reason we came here was to give the girls a more exposed life, interacting with people who didn't look or sound like them. This is just part of that, right?

But as the days wear on, I find myself gravitating to the parks about seven miles up the highway in the nice part of town. They are clean, shady with big trees (my main reason for going, actually). The people there are nice and don't smoke weed or cuss. High schoolers don't loiter on equipment designed for kids, because they are probably doing their homework or volunteering somewhere. (Right?) Is it wrong to want to go to these parks, where it is clean and safe?

You're probably saying to yourself, "Of course, Rick! You're doing the right thing. Keep your kids safe and tell those pot-heads where to go if you ever stoop to the low of the local park again." I probably should have said something to those kids, you're right. But again, if we are in this neighborhood, I want to be a part of it, and that means taking it for all its good and bad parts. That is what Jesus did, right? Met people where they were at, hanging out with the lowly and marginalized. I don't know where Jesus would live if he were in Los Angeles, but I doubt it would be in the nice parts of town, where everyone has it all "figured out." And I don't think he would be afraid to take kids to a shady area every now and then, if not for the locals, for their own sakes.

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Old

I wrote recently about my struggles as an aging skateboarder. Tonight I went out for my first session since the one that inspired that post, and was dismayed to find a new thing to feel old about...

There is always a certain hesitation when approaching a new skatepark -- Is it built well? What kind of skaters frequent it? Are they nice? Will I be disturbing the homeless man living behind the quarter pipe if I skate too early? Tonight I tried Hazard Skatepark in east Los Angeles, and felt that familiar anxiety as I walked up. It was moderately populated, and had a very unique layout. But I immediately felt different in a few ways, all leading up to one blaring observation -- I'm kind of old.

I wear a helmet most of the time now, mostly because I have two kids and my wife reminds me that I need to be a good example for them (as well as keep my brain intact). This headpiece right away sets me apart from about 99% of skaters at the typical skatepark in Los Angeles, because most of them don't require pads. Combine this with my high socks (to protect my shins) and Avett Brothers t-shirt, not to mention the color of my skin (or lack thereof), and I stick out like a sore thumb. But whatever...I can deal. I've been skating a long time and can hold my own against most kids.

The whole time I never felt quite comfortable, though. I am kind of used to this feeling, being a 32-year old skateboarder, but tonight felt exaggerated. And that's when the "cool kids" showed up, and this level of nervousness accelerated. Listen, I know this is all dumb. These were a bunch of high school kids rolling up in a little posse that resembled Lords of Dogtown, smelling like weed with the sassy looking "skater chick" girlfriends in tow. But something about them just made me feel like I had to prove myself. I found myself in high school all over again...

Speaking of high school...this is from a 2002 skate competition I did not do well in.

Of course it only took about ten minutes before I almost ran into one of them, crossing the park going for an awkwardly placed arched quarter pipe while he was heading for the fun box. I apologized and went out of my way to hand him his board, but he hardly said anything, seemingly having an adolescent heart attack as he described the near-death experience to his friends. So then I felt like all eyes were on me, the weird old white guy with the helmet. Eventually the kid I almost sent to the hospital set up a barrier sign off of a kicker for people to jump. My feeble knees weren't feeling the rails and ledges I was working, so I decided to join them. This was my chance: kids were struggling to get over the sign, but I knew I could jump it easily (sometimes experience has its advantages over a youthful physique) -- and I did. Then I kickflipped it before anyone else, and after that backside 180'd over it. And though I may have shamed the other kid who was also trying to kickflip the sign, I felt a little redeemed, like I can still keep up.

The reason I am writing all of this is because the whole experience just felt really ridiculous to me, but also somewhat relevant. I am pretty old to be skateboarding still -- that goes without saying -- but with that age comes the golden ability to not care what others think of you. I remember my mom telling me years ago that age brings a wisdom to acknowledge that it doesn't really matter what anyone thinks of you, and with that comes freedom to be who you want to be. It is a shame that for most people this takes about forty years to come to fruition (if not longer), and I am certainly no exception. I have come a long way in this regards, particularly compared to the peak of my skating career, where I would just shut down and stop skating if a few really good kids showed up. Now I typically don't let it bother me.

But tonight showed me a new layer to this journey: In my younger years, ability dominated my thoughts. As an adult, I learned to not care. Now, as a skateboard-geriatric, I am realizing my age and therefore my difference from everyone else...and it has become distracting. So is that what it all boils down to: not wanting to be different? We all desire belonging -- I know I always wanted to fit in within the skateboarding world, though I never quite did -- but shouldn't it not be important now? Or is this all just the desperate meanderings of a man who can't quite let go?

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Surfing Will Show You

I used to write about surfing often, because I think there are so many life lessons buried within the sport. The ocean is so big and you are just a small speck, trying to enjoy and appreciate its bounty -- it's ripe for existential thought. (I'm actually writing a book on it. If you'd like to take a look at the current draft, let me know.) But sometimes these lessons are things you may rather not know about yourself. They say marriage is a mirror, revealing both the good and the bad, and even a choppy ocean can reflect just as well sometimes.

Since moving back to California, my surf days have increased four-fold, and on a recent trip to a Malibu break, I was having a pretty decent day with a couple friends. The waves were 4-6 feet, but the swell was weak, and so the waves were only mediocre. I had caught a few, and a little set was rolling in. As the wall built and darkened, it looked to me like a closeout. "Take it, Mitchell," I told my friend, in what could have been a gesture of generosity. He went for it and it was a dump I think, or maybe he caught it, I don't remember. But after that moment, it hit me that I "gave him" a crappy wave. If that one had been better formed, or I was in the right position, I doubt the words, "Take it," would have left my lips -- I would have been paddling for it right alongside him. And with my history of surfing with friends, I would have probably snaked (stolen) the wave. What a jerk! Why is anyone still friends with me?!

Sometimes the wave can look like a serrated knife: cutting, revealing...

And that's what surfing will show you sometimes: the worst of yourself. Your selfish desires will float to the surface like the foam whitewash after a crashed wave, and you are left accepting your defeat as a cemented-in character flaw, or repenting and praying to God for a change of heart. When it hit me, I felt shameful, and apologized to Mitchell, who probably didn't care and certainly didn't notice. Still, I was embarrassed at my selfishness on the water, which may just be a microcosm of my whole life.

--

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:1-2)

--
The bible says the Holy Spirit of God hovered over the waters before the earth was formed. So it is no wonder that realizations and convictions like this can happen exactly there: on the water. Jesus said, "It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you. And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment" (John 16:7b-8). The Helper is the Holy Spirit, and this verse reveals the conviction I experienced that day on the water. 

And so the big lesson to me is (outside of "don't be a jerk"), will you let the Holy Spirit shape you? Will you listen to those nudges of conviction, the revelation of sin and character flaws, the push towards healing? Or maybe you aren't hearing any of this, and struggle with the idea of listening to God or conscious or karma at all. In that case, I would say...go surfing. Haha! But really, if you can help it, get out on the water. You'll hear or experience something, if only the quiet of sitting in the water, staring at the horizon. And life will slowly start to make more sense.

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Skating on Borrowed Time...

Sometimes I feel like I'm skating on borrowed time. I am 32 (and a half) now, and it is beginning to feel a little too old to skate. But how could this be?! Skateboarding has been such a huge part of my life, and still brings me so much joy; but there is this one thing that has been just getting to me lately about the sport...I keep getting hurt!

Three years ago I made a pretty good skate video that I'm still proud of. I pushed myself and learned a lot of new tricks. I was progressing at a sport most kids drop after high school...into my thirties! Even after the movie was finished, I kept skating and shooting, preparing for the next video. Then we moved, and my recreational life slowed down. I started working a lot, skating when I could, usually at the school I grew up skating, piddling around on ledges and manual pads. But then I broke my arm -- my first broken bone after fifteen years of skateboarding!

The recovery was speedy thanks to some faith-filled prayer, and I was back on the board not too long later. But this fear filled me -- mostly because the broken bone was expensive and we couldn't afford another one! I took it easy, but still wanted to do another Skater Dad movie. Eventually I did, but the progression was slowed, and I found myself not as proud of this second series. And then I kept getting hurt! I busted my knee at the local skatepark, and thought I broke my knee cap. (More prayer.) I kept falling on my previously hurt arm. I scraped a third of my thumbnail off riding a park in the dark (my fault). And then there was this last weekend...

I went skating at a little set of stairs I have been driving by lately. It's nothing special, but sparks some creativity in me for new skateboard tricks. I jumped the stairs a little, tried a couple tricks, but just wasn't feeling the spot, the run-up, the proximity to a major street. And so I tried a little nose stall on the upper two-set, slid my foot underneath the deck and flipped the board into a casper, then tried to get out. It was a slick little trick, but felt like a bit of a concession -- my dreams were big tricks down the stairs or over a planter gap on the ledge. Was this where my skating was headed? Freestyle tricks on street spots? I guess that's not so bad -- my friend Kyle does it well and with great style and charisma. I went with it, trying to video the trick. But after ten minutes or so, the board flew up and hit the inside of my knee and I dropped to the ground. The pain leveled me, and though nothing was seriously hurt and I was able to skate home, I quit early. I had barely broken a sweat! (I'm pretty careful with my knees though, mostly because my dad has had tons of problems with his.) On the whole, though, this entire session was really...deflating.

My closest attempt.

It all makes me wonder how much longer I can keep doing this. I still love skating so much, and really enjoy it most of the time. I had a session a few weeks prior on a mini-ramp where I enjoyed myself, progressed and didn't get hurt -- and it was great! But these injury sessions are becoming more and more prevalent, and that is a problem.

I guess this is just part of getting older. As I reflected on it, a couple things occurred to me. First, I'm pretty blessed to have been skating even this long. I remember reading years ago that a lot of pros take a huge hit in their skating around age 24. Their situation is a little different of course, because they were chucking themselves down huge sets of stairs for a decade or so, but for me to still be skating at a fairly competent level, and even progressing in some ways, at 32 is pretty good.

Second, I think losing your ability to skate is more difficult than it may look like to an outsider. Imagine something you love taken from you -- your favorite car totaled or your favorite band disbanding. You typically have no choice in the matter; I mean, no one drives their car into an intersection hoping to get smashed. But with skateboarding, a hobby I have loved for over half my life, it's not just suddenly gone -- the decline is slow. It's a microcosm of aging I guess, and eventually you just hit a point where you can't do it anymore, or the lack of progress is so great that you just don't want to do it anymore.

A friend's mentor once explained this concept with a chart: as men grow in age, their abilities decline (think of this chart as starting around late-teens). There is a moment in middle age where the age arrow keeps pointing up and then intersects with the abilities arrow, which is still going down. The age keeps climbing but the abilities lessen -- this is middle age, and this is one reason so many men freak out at this point. I'm not quite at middle age yet, but in the world of skateboarding, I'm a dinosaur. So maybe this is all good. I am learning to deal with aging before all my friends, so I can help all us wandering millennials through every man's hardest season. But maybe that all depends on what attitude I can keep as all this shakes out...

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Nice Things

I resigned the notion of owning nice things a while ago...kids just destroy stuff. They can't help it. Not that I am just letting them galavant around the house with tennis racquets in their hands while I listlessly watch on. But something in their nature is destructive. Maybe it is the fact that they don't understand monetary value, or perhaps they just don't have full control of their bodies yet. I don't fault them for it, but I try hard to pad the damage as much as I can.

Here is a good example: Today we were walking to a park and Waverly stepped on my sandal. It broke. It was just an accident and may have broken tomorrow with someone else, but for some reason it broke when she stepped on it. Yeah, my sandals are a few years old and maybe this was just coincidental, but have you ever known anyone in life that this kind of thing just happens to? Like they throw a rock and it breaks a window, even if the nearest window is in the opposite direction? I have, and I'm not saying my kids share that curse, but I think all children have this problem for at least a few years, if not a dozen or so.

I hot glued this back in. We'll see if it works.

I am not immune. One time, in my teens, I was getting something in my garage and I knocked a ladder over that happened to fall on my dad's Mustang GT convertible, piercing the top like it was made of paper. It certainly wasn't on purpose, but it happened. Wasn't the first thing I broke either, and certainly not the last (just ask my parents).

So our solution is to just not have nice things. Not like super cheap stuff, but not really nice either. We got our last two couches from the clearance section of Wayfair.com, and you know what? It only took about a day or two for our kids to wipe snot or drool or grease on them. If we had paid a couple thousand dollars for those couches, you can imagine how upset I might have been at this. But we didn't invest much into them, and so it took all that pressure off of both us and our kids to keep them nice.

Again, not that we buy crap and then destroy it -- we keep things clean and try to buy durable stuff that lasts. But can you imagine the constant tension I would feel with my kids running around expensive tables and chairs, or riding their tricycles around a Tesla in our driveway? No thanks.

This is one of the nice things we have. It was a gift, and has swiftly been damaged multiple times.

I guess I'm writing this to share something we do that I think works, and also to give you encouragement if you do the same thing. I haven't always been proud of our living room sets (though right now I really like it), and sometimes our furniture doesn't match. But my mind is at ease when things go wrong, and that is worth more than any custom made solid wood coffee table.

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