That I were on my skateboard

I've secretly been back on my skateboard again. Well, secretly between you, me, and the powerful publication and syndication tools made available to me by Google's Blogger. I'm not thinking about writing right now. I'm thinking about the fact that it was almost 100 degrees today in Michigan (well, 93), and that it would be a good time to find an abandoned lot and practice.

The thing that stops me is last fall's broken wrist, cause mentioned above. My left fibula and tibia, to be exact. And that I am sill recovering; case-in-point I was unable to carry my own weight (pun!) yesterday as my roommate attempted to solicit my help while putting in the air conditioning.

The other thing that stops me is that while I want to be good, or at least better at skateboarding than I am now (I can stand up and move around, but not very fast and I still don't know how to stop and I still flail my arms around wildly if I start going too fast or just generally freak out), I am also aware that I am a 26-year-old woman. No amount of funky glasses, cargo shorts and Converse All Stars can change that fact. This would be a pretty sweet fuckin' age to skateboard if I already knew how to skateboard, but I'm old enough to know how dumb it is to try, and right now my brain is worth more than my bank account (thank you, Master's Degree).

Yet sometimes when I'm at the edge of being awake, I'm reminded of the dedication with which I used to spend my final waking hours when I was fifteen, learning how to snowboard. I knew our local ski hill so well that I would practice mentally (with 311's self-titled album in my Sony Discman) until I fell asleep at night. I never became all that good, but I became comfortable, well beyond proficient, to the point where I believed that snowboarding was certainly the best feeling on earth, and true I was still a virgin, and I had never been in love or passed a major test that I thought I might fail, but in retrospect I don't think I was that far from the truth.