More on Skateboarding

More on Skateboarding

Yesterday’s New York Times carried an article about skateboarding, in the business section of all places. I read it with interest. It was all about skateboarding in middle age. The author passionately described his sessions in a Costco parking lot. The emphasis was on bonding with his middle-aged buddies, learning tricks and filming it. These wild and free heroes of the concrete and tarmac had learned to skateboard as teenagers and were still doing it! Imagine that: in your forties and fifties (and in rare cases your sixties) and still able to skateboard, even quite competently! I thought: I started skateboarding when I was 74 (no exclamation point). It wasn’t that hard—hardly heroic at all. I was doing it (sans buddies) yesterday afternoon on my prized Magneto long-board, with helmet and wrist guards, gliding along the local byways (the next street over). Looking dashing, no doubt. No tricks, no fancy stuff, just solid no-nonsense cruising. What is it with the tricks? Not if you want to avoid body-road collisions. Let’s not get all American-macho about it, with age-group rivalry and what-not. I like to glide and cruise, gaze at the scenery, feel the air rushing past. I did it after my usual Sunday afternoon tennis practice and motorcycle riding. None of this is in the slightest bit miraculous (though I suppose my medical history makes it statistically improbable). Remember, I started playing the guitar at 60, singing at 70, knife throwing at 75. It doesn’t really warrant an article in the business section of the New York Times. If I can do it, you can. The thing is you don’t really want to: you are afraid you will look foolish, do it incompetently, fail to do it at all. Be honest now. You think you are past all that and prefer the comfort of the sofa. Think again, I say.