Skateboarding Part One

My oldest son is a skateboarder. That is his life. He watches skateboarding videos. He has seen some of them hundreds of times. I have tried watching them with him. How boring can you get? Try watching bowling, bass fishing, golf (without the scenery)or rhythmic gymnastics for more entertainment. Even curling is more watchable. I have to place one caveat, the segment that features wipe-outs and guys getting their balls racked on hand rails is funnier than hell. What can I say, once a 13 year old male always a 13 year old male.

He wears skateboard shoes and skateboarder T-shirts. He will not wear shorts. He has short hair. He does not wear chains. The Boy has no tattoos or piercing. He does not dye his hair. He sports no earrings (Hoosierboy rule #37 -- no earrings unless you are a girl or a pirate). The B-man is just a typical teenager who wears mostly jeans or cotton pants and dark colored T-shirts.

Recently we rented a condo in Florida for our Spring Break Vacation. B took his skateboard. He spent most of his day grinding on the ledge below our balcony. He was not the first to do so, based on the scratches and scrapemarks. He was not the only one while we were there. At times there were as many as 6 skateboarders outside. They were not yelling or swearing. In fact, there was little talk at all.

One jerk had a problem. This family was one balcony over and one floor higher than ours. On two occasions he thought the best way to discourage skateboarding was to throw water on the boy. The first time it was just a cup and most of it missed. I passed it off to my son as just an asshole prank -- like a water balloon.

The second time he threw an entire bucket of water on my son. Now we had problems. fortunately, I was at the pool and only heard about it otherwise. The wife quickly repaired upstairs to find out the problem. The guy said he hated skatebaorders and was tired of them. He said that skateboarders were out there at midnight the night before. This BTW was a lie as I was on the balcony having a cigar at midnight and there were no skateboarders. The jerk admitted that it may not have been my son who disturbed him the night before, but he was "just sick of it".

The wife pointed out that this could constitute assault. She asked if he was from Michigan since that is the way those people act -- throw water. She mentioned that maybe he should not go out as we were "sick of" his family and we would dowse them everytime they left the safety of their condo. The asswipe finally saw that he was in error. After I was told about the problem I waited for more than an hour with a bucket waiting for them to leave, but they never came out. Not even when I knocked on their door and said that I was his little skateboard buddy with a big apology. Pussy. They checked out the next day.