I’ll never forget landing my first kickflip. I’m not sure how old I was, but old enough to firmly believe it would be the greatest moment of my life. I remember my first fractured elbow and the pride that came with such a milestone. I remember the weekends spent navigating public transport to far-flung skateparks. There were worries and stresses, I’m sure, but I don’t really remember them. The soft hiss of the wheels and the sharp clack of the maple plywood would drown them out.
I remember when everything changed.
I had just turned 19 and an internal monologue urging me to grow up had harmonised with a swelling external chorus. I needed a plan to stick the landing into adulthood, and if I wanted skateboarding to be part of that plan, it needed an end goal. Suddenly, I wanted to be a professional skateboarder. This would be one way to justify the amount of time I spent skating. For the next two years, my life played out like a training montage from Rocky. Skateparks became my second home. At night or when it rained, I’d watch skate DVDs on loop. Nothing else mattered. Naturally, I wasn’t invited to a lot of parties during this time but I wouldn’t have gone anyway. After all, you can’t skate hungover. There was just one issue: I wasn’t good enough.
So I stopped.
The joy of skateboarding had been reduced to failure, of which my skateboard became a cruel reminder. Before long, it was relegated to storage, then lost altogether until more than a decade later, aged 34, I found it while tidying. The discovery lined up perfectly with the excitement around Olympic skateboarding and the gold medal performance of Australia’s Arisa Trew beamed into every living room.
After so many years, I couldn’t remember the names of many of the tricks Trew landed – a 360 something-or-other, or a frontside thingamajig – but the cheers from onlookers stirred me. I remembered: that was fun.
For many I rode with when I was younger, skateboarding may have been much more, but I realised for me it was play and I was eager to reclaim that.
The voice in my head was still saying if you’re going to do something, you better be getting something back from it. Pleasure unearned consumes itself. Play is a luxury, one that should only be considered once progress has been achieved. Sure, I had become more practiced at ignoring this voice, but it makes some good points. The first one: you’re going to make a fool of yourself.
I knew that would most likely be the case, so it took a lot of work to get up the nerve to enter a skate store to replace my old and battered skateboard. Later when I talked to Jamie Knapp, owner of Sydney skate store World of Wheelcraft, he validated my trepidation: “It can be pretty daunting.”
He said adults made up the majority of his customers and gave me the advice he imparts to all mature-age boarders: “Don’t be afraid of sucking.”
His words resonated. They gave me the permission I didn’t need – but deep down wanted – to remove the ego and other self-imposed conditions-of-entry keeping me from skateboarding.
I wasn’t the only person in my orbit hearing the clarion call to rediscover fun in skateboarding.
My good friend Aimee Joy, a former team rider for the now defunct Australian skate institution UPS, has been skating for most of her life. Now in her 30s, Joy says she has a “whole new appreciation” for skateboarding – even after three ankle surgeries and a calf reconstruction. “It’s more fun than it’s ever been at any stage of my life. I’m just in the moment now, enjoying it.”
I was emboldened by a newfound desire to be bad at something, but still planned my return to the skatepark in Sydney’s Lilyfield like the Allies’ landing at Normandy. I gamed it all out: here is where I’ll arrive, here is where I can sit out of sight, and here is where I’ll make a quick exit if things go bad.
I needn’t have worried.
On the day I returned to the skatepark, there was a family with young kids, a group of teenagers and some older riders peppered throughout. All bore witness to how much I truly did suck. They responded with cheers of encouragement or, at worst, were too busy having their own fun to even notice. We all got advice, gave advice, held cameras and shared Allen keys. We unplugged from the world and enjoy the sun. We did just about everything but judge.
From the first push, it didn’t feel weird being back after all this time. The only weird thing was that it felt like no time had passed.
I strapped on my helmet and began rolling around the skatepark. I was confident of accomplishing great things in my life, but I let out a sigh of relief that none of them would be here.
