Mild Child: Skateboarding

Skateboarding has been my go-to hobby for the better part of ten years now. I've devoted most of my time, energy, and a fair chunk of change in exchange for those days spent on sun-soaked pavement. It's the reason for the friends I have, and the ones I have had. And the same goes for the places I've been, and the places I plan to be from. Years of playing on a makeshift concrete playground has certainly taken its toll. My legs are littered with scars, and my ankle makes this strange clicking sound when I walk barefooted, but that doesn't discourage me. As far as good things go, skateboarding is at the top of my list (literally, I've got a list and everything). The art of skateboarding (yes I call it an art, not a sport. It sounds corny but I will argue till I'm blue in the face on that one. Skateboarding is not a sport) is something that I've tried to explain to people before, but when I do, I usually end up making an ass of myself.
So, if you're reading this, then that means one of two things have happened. Either I typed up an entry that I felt confident enough would convey why I think skateboarding is super sweet without me geeking-out too much and making me look like some sort of hyper-active fan girl...or, I simply swallowed my pride, and ignored that self conscious voice in my head while I ranted on about the art of skateboarding and eventually siked myself up enough to finally press the "publish" button. Things may get a little corny, and I'd usually apologize for that, but I've recently decided that "I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasures of saying true things". Either way, here's my attempt at describing the feeling of skateboarding.
The best, and most accurate (for me anyway) way for me to describe skateboarding, would be to simply call it pure, free, excitement. Whether you're cruising suburban cul de sacs, or tearing through city streets, skateboarding (to me) is just a machine that turns your environment into a playground. It allows you to look at your surroundings from a totally new, perspective. Things like sets of stairs and park benches are no longer lost in the background. Thanks to skateboarding, things that were once just objects, become objects of interest. They become obstacles, they become opportunities. Your board becomes an excuse for you to run and jump and explore and fall and make an ass of yourself, and be completely and totally okay with it. It turns your world into the playground of possibilities that you used to see it as. It gives you common ground to stand on with anybody with a skateboard who otherwise would be a total stranger.
And it's an art, believe me, it's a fuckin work of art. It's not a question of if you can do a certain trick, it's how you do it. Like, I'd take something as simple as an ollie from John Motta over any tre flip I've ever done any day. I could watch and rewatch any of the skate videos in my collection every day of my life without complaint, due to the simple fact that they're all beautiful works of art. The finesse and talent and creativity in skateboarding's history is incredibly enjoyable to watch, and merits multiple viewings (many of them). Skateboarding is totally free of structure, and it thrives on creativity. There's no point system, there's no winning, It's just you, having fun. As a skateboarder, you're free to do anything. You can skate whatever you'd like, you can try any trick in the book...Hell, you can even create your own trick or obstacle. There's no sport in existence that would allow for, let alone encourage, creating or challenging the strict rules that define it as a sport. Skateboarding, on the other hand, is whatever you make of it. Like drawing or painting, skateboarding has techniques and methods, but no rules. There's no wrong way to skate, just as there's no wrong way to paint. It's all up to you. Point of the rant: skateboarding is really awesome, and it's not a sport.

Phew, so there's a condensed version of my thoughts about skateboarding. I tried to keep the geeking-out to a minimum.