I was well out of step with my fellow teenyboppers in the eighties in a lot of ways, but the wholesale adoption of the skateboard was a major source of disconnection, because skateboards are stupid. A bicycle is a passport—a skateboard is a toy for aimless kids to jump on in the driveway in between whining for their parents to drive them to the mall to do whatever assholes do at malls. I had one, or to be precise, two–the first a fancy old school transparent plastic one that looked the business but was actually terrible, and the second, a well-specified and respectable one that I got for twenty bucks from a kid who I suspect might have needed money for weed. Thing was, you couldnt go anywhere on a skateboard. Those idiotic little wheels got hung up in every single crack on Scaggsville Road, the lack of brakes meant the hills were a combination of exhaustion and a complete loss of control, and you had to stand upright in what would be perfect practice for the era of retail and food service that youd earn with your lack of aspiration for something more than the perfect Ollie in a driveway. Bicycles could go places, and take you away from the nest. Id regularly make the trek, 7.9 miles each way, to my best friends house on my red Varsity, stopping along the way for a peach Nehi. Other times, Id ride twelve miles into Columbia to lurk around the mall like an idiot or drop in on my cool friend on Greek Boy Place. I could ride my bike from Scaggsville into Laurel, where there was stuff to see and do, and would pedal over to Lurleens trailer park so we could go see Purple Rain one more time. A bicycle was a ticket to everywhere, while a skateboard was just a one-trick nothing, and they are still one-trick nothings, keeping kids occupied in the repetitive training for their futures in the cubicle farms, cowering behind the wall of their parents fears. Who wouldnt want a ticket to everywhere?
Posted on: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 14:26:52 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015