J$ Blog

The moment that changed my life.

I was around 10 years of age and on the metro Omaha swim team. Before the age of excessive acronyms that we live in today, it was called MOST, and it probably still is today. My mom took me to this sporting goods store to buy some new goggles and a new Speedo. ( Hell yes I wore a Speedo, and I was fast) This particular shop was also dabbling in skateboards at the time. It must have been 1985 and skateboarding was taking off again, according to my history. I had heard about the “big skateboards” that were being ridden at the time (as opposed to the banana boards we had seen thus far). My mom was paying for the grape smugglers and I happened to look down to the left of the counter. There, at my feet was a Madrid complete with tracker trucks and slimeball wheels. I had never seen anything so amazing in my life. I picked it up and looked at the bottom; it was white with purple slashes going across, black sandpaper covering the top, cut out in the center to display the Madrid logo. I felt something that at 10 years old should not enter my young mind, I needed this, and this was what I was about. I have never wanted something more in my life than that skateboard. It was my calling, my destiny, and my Mom would not let me have it. The funny thing was, I had never seen anyone riding a board like that, and I had no frame of reference as to what you could do on a skateboard. All I knew was, I had to have one.

            The next few months were excruciating, all I wanted to do was skateboard. The only problem was, I did not have one. I had repeatedly asked for a board and all I got was “wait till your birthday and then maybe you will get a skateboard”. Well the day of my 11^th birthday came and no board, I was crushed. I opened all of my presents that were laid out on the dining room table and did not see a skateboard. I could have cared less about the other things and apparently have forgotten them all together. The only thing that I wanted was a skateboard. Well, my parents came through, in the last small package was a note and it said “Skateboard”. I was ecstatic, my dad explained to me that they wanted me to get the one I wanted so we were going shopping that afternoon. So we packed into the K-car and headed out to find the perfect skateboard, or so I thought. As a kid you don’t have a concept of what things cost and as a kid you are blown in the direction of the trends of the day. We arrived at Action Sports in Omaha, a reported skateboard dealer, and walked up to the skateboard counter. There were a few people ahead of us and I got to look over the deck selection behind the counter. I saw then the board that would follow me through the next 20 years. It was brilliant, simple and yet harder than anything that I had ever seen in my life. It was the Powell-Peralta rat bones deck. I begged and begged for that board and my parents were not going to budge. In those days a high-end complete cost about 80 bucks and that was more than my folks wanted to spend. To their credit, they had no idea that at 32 I still would skate when I can, kids are fickle and so are the toys that they buy, used and forgotten.

            I did in fact, get a skateboard that day. An action sports model at a chain store. I was still stoked though; I was on wheels and shredding. I can remember the first ride I ever took on that life-changing day. It was about 4:30 or 5 and the Omaha evening had begun. It had rained earlier in the day and the Nebraska air was as thick as my grandmother’s drapes. The locusts were beginning to hum and the street was slowly drying in the last few hours of the setting sun. I climbed to the top of the hill and set the (recently liberated from packaging) board down at the crest. I had ridden the board around the driveway but nothing like this. In fairness the hill was not that steep and easily conquered on my Fonzie big wheel. But at the moment I put my foot on the front of that board and pushed off, my life came to mean something other than it had in the previous 11 years.  That moment, ending at the bottom of the hill, defined my life. It became part of my life and it will never leave. I can’t describe the feeling or what happened to me that day, but it is rare I think to find something that makes you… and know it.

P.S. A few years ago I turned thirty. About 6 months before that I decided to skate again after a long hiatus. I went to the skate shop and looked over the boards they had there. To my surprise they had a re-issued rat bones board on the rack. The same coveted board from my pre-teens. I left the shop, board in hand, and have never looked back. My bruises don’t heal like they used to and I do not feel the need to keep up with the latest tricks, but I still feel the same way I did at the bottom of the hill on Jaynes street that first moment I discovered a passion.

I was thinking today about the protests that took place yesterday. I commend all of the celebrities who took the time out of their day to become a “high profile” opposition to America. That is right, I said America. Your kids watch that, you watch that, you probably believe that these people are right. Thank GOD for the first amendment. I do not think these people are right.  

Red carpet, how appropriate. Do you honestly think that these people have one clue how it works in the real world. Have you ever taken a year off to lie around the pool and just collect your thoughts? So, why do these misinformed, semi-famous people get to have national attention? Tim Robbins, an obvious heavyweight in cinema today, (seriously how many Oscars has that guy won in the last few years, don’t get me started on that.) could not answer a simple question without getting nasty. I suppose that they feel they have a social responsibility to speak out against our government. Why do they think that being a celebrity makes them important in our lives? Seriously, if someone asked them a question concerning their beliefs, they look like a deer in the headlights, they had a script and that was not part of it.

 And, I believe they have the right to free speech, I would fight to the death for that right. However, they (hollywood) will not, how many high profile young men and women have volunteered?  You can make a case for Pat Tillman, a hero that hollywood can learn something from, he died for our country. That is it, he died for our country, he fought and died because he was a member of our military, how it happened none of us will ever understand. We are not there (war zone), most of us did not volunteer for the military. Most of you have never seen the inside of a mine and I would not expect you to understand what goes on there. And yet someone who makes 25 million dollars a year, (pretending to be someone else), says they understand the plight of our solders. I think not.

I have one more thing to add; yesterday the New York Post said “9/11 was not that bad”. Think about that.