February 26, 2023 | Read Online

Get wet.

That time I wanted to be a professional skateboarder.

Cole Schafer
February 26, 2023

The Previews...

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The Movies...

As a kid, I went through a phase that all severely lost and angsty teenage boys go through: I wanted desperately to be a skateboarder.

Despite having never so much as stepped foot on a skateboard, I pestered the hell out of my mother regarding this new found obsession of mine until she eventually caved, loaded me into the back of her Honda Odyssey and carted me down to a now defunct local skate shop in Evansville, Indiana called Get Wet.

Looking back now, the name Get Wet reads less like a skate shop and more like an adult toy store but that's neither here nor there. Located in a retro-looking strip mall right beside a kitchenware store that sold crock-pots big enough to slow cook entire ostriches, Get Wet was a wannabe skater's dream.

Skateboards in every shape, size and color hung from hundreds of pegs protruding from its four walls with the most dazzling and expensive boards hanging vertically––as if they belonged mounted somewhere in the MET––with their artful underbellies facing outward, spurring the store's preteen shoppers to convince their parents to spend a small fortune on an oblong piece of plywood.

My mother would be damned before she was going to drop a hundred bucks on a skateboard she knew I would never ride so I was forced to wait until Christmas.

Upon being informed of the court's decision, I remember watching in total disdain as an Etnie-wearing, beanie-touting, shaggy-haired fuck not much bigger than a garden gnome blew gum bubbles in cool nonchalance while a "board mechanic"––who looked like he gave away free popsicles out of a mini-van on the weekends––screwed a pair of cherry red wheels into a skateboard that depicted a Chinese River Dragon devouring a unicorn.

The months leading up to Christmas was a slow, arduous crawl. Having discovered my calling––becoming the world's next Tony Hawk––nothing else in my sad, meaningless, moody, pathetic life seemed to matter.

When Christmas day finally did arrive and I unearthed my skateboard from its wrapping paper, I was thrilled. I spent the entire day carrying my board around the house and, from time to time, stomping on its tail to make its nose ricochet up into my open hand like the pros would do on TV.

My grandfather––upon seeing how happy my new skateboard made me––decided that very day he was going to make me a ramp.

Keep in mind that, up to this point, I hadn't yet ridden the damn thing...

In the month that followed, I'd ride the bus to his house every day after school and the two of us would get to work designing and crafting this ramp (or "quarter pipe" to use proper skating vernacular).

The frigid winter transformed my grandfather's garage into an icebox and so to maintain the use of our hands and fingers, we ran a space heater the shape of a cannon that glowed as red as the gates of hell.

Apart from my own father, growing up my grandfather was the last person I ever wanted to disappoint and so with each passing day, as the ramp began looking more and more like a ramp, it became ever more impossible to tell him the truth.

The truth being that I no longer wanted to be a skateboarder.

Come Spring, when the ramp was finally assembled in my parent's drive-way, my grandfather watched me pussy-foot around it feinting interest like a tire kicking sonofabitch does a vehicle he knows he isn't going to buy.

After about fifteen minutes or so, I told him I would go down the ramp "tomorrow".

Tomorrow turned into never.

It sounds silly but one of the few regrets I have in my life is that I never found the courage to go down that ramp my grandfather worked so hard to build.

I didn't realize it until years later that for my grandfather, it was never really about the ramp. It was about having an excuse to spend a month's worth of afternoons with his grandson. This realization has allowed me to forgive myself... some.

But, that's not the moral of the story.

The moral of the story is that to become a great skateboarder, you have to be okay with the pain of falling off the skateboard. You have to be okay with the skinned knees, bruised elbows, broken tailbones and concussions. This is willingness to accept pain is what separates the skateboarder from the wannabe just like it separates the professional from the amateur in any vocation.

There are a lot of people in this world––not unlike my preteen wannabe skateboarder self––that like the idea of being something until they are faced with the painful costs of becoming that something.

While I get the sentiment, Charles Bukowski's line about finding something you love and letting it kill you is a bit dramatic and, perhaps, toxic in creating a well-balanced life.

However, I do think all of us should find something we love and let it hurt us.

But, I digress.

By Cole Schafer.

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twoweek long writing course Etniewearing beanietouting shaggyhaired fuck defunct local skate shop angsty teenage boys new found obsession retrolooking strip mall cherry red wheels Chinese River Dragon adult toy store

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