Aging Skater

It wasn’t quite nude in public, but the feeling must’ve be akin to that—exposed, vulnerable to opinions both pleasant and otherwise, the eyes of strangers hurling judgments your way—shame threatening like a contagion, like pathogens no less real for being invisible. No one said anything; in fact, it was doubtful that more than seven people even saw, unless there were some huddling in the darkness behind living room windows, the abstracted reflections of lawn and street concealing their faces (you tried to look into those same windows without appearing to be looking, because it was enough to be a middle-aged man on a skateboard, you didn’t need to also come across as a window-peeping pervert).

               Nothing about skateboarding, or at least about the physical activity itself, need be confined to youth; this had been your opinion since age nineteen. Was it so much different than anything else people did for exercise? But for reasons illogical, the culture around skating was largely adolescent. No one thought twice about a junior high or high school student pushing a deck around town; no one really considered a young adult—say, early twenties—abnormal for doing so, either. Yet if felt like you were crossing an invisible line of propriety this afternoon each time you pushed past a lady walking her dog, or a couple jogging in matching tracksuits (the real ridiculousness, you thought), or a man mowing a yard. You wondered if they saw what you were doing, assessed your approximate age, and then ruled you out as a legitimate member of society based on that combination of factors. You felt downright subversive.

               It had been about a month since the general practitioner scolded you for weight gain and an admitted lack of exercise, and it had been about two weeks since the follow-up appointment, scheduled after your bloodwork returned with a high number in the bad cholesterol column, after which that same doctor threatened you with medicine, unless you managed to lower that bad number through your own efforts. In six months, there would be more bloodwork.

               Exercise for the sake of exercise was never your thing, though—there had to be an element of pleasure. This had manifested in a handful of ways over the years: skateboarding, obviously; basketball with friends; hiking; golf, if opting to walk rather than ride. In your thirties, an interest in longboarding had launched a fruitful period of activity, lasting several months. It had felt like a return to yourself. You lived in town, only had one child, and your brother-in-law was usually with you, taking the edge off those already-budding anxieties about skateboarding as an adult. But that was a decade ago. Now there were three times as many children, and the consequences of an injury were far greater; time was doing its work of brittling bones and softening muscles, bringing soreness with much less effort than before, the trend of bodily degradation already underway, and nowhere near old age.

               Years ago, on a walk in Centennial Park, you spotted an older skater. He seemed older than you—bald and a little crazy in the eyes, dressed in a basketball jersey and shorts and wearing a headband. The man skated with zeal, weaving along the car path, as unself-conscious as a department store mannequin. You envied him. The current urge to ride might be traced in part to the recollection of that man, but truthfully, it’s an urge that’s been there since skateboarding became a cool thing in the sixth grade. Damn, that was a long time ago.

               Then there was another memory, more recent. Driving through a residential neighborhood near your house, you and your wife saw a young guy riding a longboard up out of a cul-de-sac. He was clearly a high-schooler—perhaps college-age (they do look younger these days). And your wife said, “Maybe you could ride with him.” She was being funny—a good-natured joke at her husband’s expense, the kind you always trade with one another. What was implied, of course, was that it would be ridiculous for you to ride a skateboard with that kid. What an embarrassment, at your age. It would be unnatural; it would be no better than those thirtysomething-year-old guys who go to clubs and drink and dance with college kids and try to go home with girls who are barely old enough to consent. It would be like you were announcing to all who might see that here was a man who refused to grow up. “I refuse to grow up!” Shout it as you ride; have it printed on a tee shirt—a tee shirt revealing your middle-age softness in the mounds and folds one just doesn’t see on the young, a ruff of chest hair peeking from your sweat-stretched collar.

               A battle was going on. Two ends of a continuum vied for your loyalty: the end that didn’t care what anyone else thought versus the one that did. As much as you wanted to believe that no one else’s opinion mattered, you couldn’t overcome a suspicion that the image others have of a person determines so much, that the quality of life lies in some measure inside the hands of others. You could tolerate being disliked by a few, but what you could not tolerate from anyone was being thought ridiculous, and ridiculousness was exactly what you risked incurring should you pursue the wrong public activity. You knew this, because you’d ridiculed your own share of people doing things that were somehow socially unacceptable.

               Yet you were convinced of the joy of a gentle downhill grade on a miniature surfboard-shaped plank of seven-ply maple, its polyurethane wheels sustaining their smooth pavement roar—a roar like thousands of layered whispers, a massive choir holding in perfect pitch one impossible, street-long note; the wind in your not-quite-thinning hair, and a happy inertia in your core. You imagine that the side-to-side carving feels like surfing, though this is only speculation. You would take that gentle hill with earbuds in-place, listening to either Sebadoh or Les Savy Fav, and in your mind, you’re alone—just you, the street, the sky, and your board. All else is a blur of green.

               The days grow longer and warmer, but not hot. You’ve been feeling a pull into the outdoors. You need exercise, but it must be fun, and there’s one activity you’ve loved longer than any other. It appears that side of the continuum that doesn’t care what others think has won today’s battle, and what a way to mark the first day of spring. You fool.