I have broken my wrists, fingers, a tibia, a fibula, chipped a handful of teeth, cracked a vertebra and snapped a collarbone. I have concussed myself in Tallahassee, Fla., and Portland, Ore. I’ve skittered across the sooty hoods of New York cabs and bombed down many of San Francisco’s steepest avenues.
For many years I was a professional skateboarder. I first stepped on a skateboard at 11. The nomenclature — switch-stance frontside tailslide, kickflip to nose manual — was the language of my first friendships, with wild, strange boys who were as ill suited for school and team sports as I was. They were from broken homes. Poor homes. Group homes. We were like little cement mixers, keeping ourselves in constant motion, our skateboard’s movement the only thing preventing us from hardening into blocks of pure rage.
It was through those friends that I first realized the oddity of my own home. Skateboarding gave my mother panic attacks. She bought me helmets and pads (which I never wore), and gasped at my scars and bruises. She would have forbidden me to skateboard at all if she believed for a second that I would comply.
This might sound like typical parental anxiety. But with my mother, it was something deeper.
[For more of this story, written by Michael Christie, go to http://opinionator.blogs.nytim...id=67927627&_r=1]
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