I’m a guy that prides himself on his abilities. Like my ability to be dashingly good-looking. Or my ability to be freakishly athletic. Or my ability to be really cool in general. And don’t forget my ability to be humble. The list goes on.
You’ll notice that I describe characteristics of myself as if they were my abilities. They’re not. But I treat them as so to compensate for the abilities I lack in other areas. Like in skateboarding.
Skateboarding was all the rage in roughly 5th-7th grade. You know, the age when Power Rangers just aren’t that cool anymore but possibly still cooler than the opposite sex? I’m not entirely sure this accurately describes my mindset as a 5th-7th grader, but it’s late, and I’m tired, so it’s the best I’ve got.
Anyways, skateboarding. I bought the shoes, the clothes, the helmet, the pads, the boards, the wheels, the bearings, the trucks, the Tony Hawk Pro Skater video games, the skate park entry passes, the build-it yourself grindrail, the wax, the more wax, and the more wax. I talked about ollies, nollies, manuals, kickflips, double kickflips, heelflips, 50-50s, 5-0′s, pop-shove-its, noseflips, nosepicks (not sure that was a real one), and about every other trick that I couldn’t do.
That was the problem: I couldn’t do them. I just wasn’t good. Baseball? I was good. Lacrosse? I was good. Basketball? Not bad. Skateboarding? Terrible.
It was just one of those things that pissed me off, because I wasn’t good at it. I got so fed up that one day I said to my mom, hoping for support, “I’m so sick of this! I hate skateboarding! I just don’t get why I’m not good!.”
“Maybe you should quit…”, said my Mom, not really trying to make me quit.
I quit.
