Headed toward daycare, pushing the Boo in his stroller. Light changes, and I’m just pushing him over the lip of the curb when zoom: a skateboarder appears out of nowhere, fast, the wrong way up the one-way street. He pulls up as hard as possible, practically falling off his board in the process, and arcs his body six inches over that of my baby son to avoid a collision. Then takes off without a word.
I should explain that this isn’t some dumb 13-year-old with no judgment who will outgrow his cluelessness soon enough. The guy is more like 30, and is fully kitted out for his web-design/graphic-arts/hip-ad-agency job, in a blue-and-white-striped dress shirt and hipster sneakers and a very expensive full-coverage helmet. A guy you can dislike on sight, without guilt.
In my old meek civilian life, I’d have grumbled and moved on. In my newly empowered dad-as-righteous-protector role, however, I shout after him: “THIS IS A ONE-WAY STREET, BUDDY.” He stops, abruptly, and looks at me quizzically. Whereupon the guy next to me (who also almost got clobbered) ambles over to the guy and starts to get into it: “Yeah, you know, this is a one-way street…” I leave them to it and head off, appreciating that someone has my back, and musing on how little patience I have with skate-punk culture as practiced by grownups.
I have to say I used to be one of those young skate punk kids. Not caring who’s way I was in or who was in my way. Now being a dad of two, I would have flattened the guy!
Hey, Chris: Sorry, man, that was me. Next time I’ll just ollie the stroller so fast you won’t even notice—and leave a flurry of “Sorry, ‘scuse me!” stickers in my wake…
Matt: I’ll tell you how indifferent-to-disdainful I feel about skateboarding: I just had to look up what “ollie” means.
One of the big aggravations in life is skateboarders. Thankfully though many of them a skinny little wimps that are easily pushed over when they get in my way 🙂
Since I’ve become a dad, I feel pretty comfortable yelling at people for endangering civilians. Then I feel guilty because I realize I’m using my babies as human shields.
On behalf of aging skateboarders everywhere, I apologize. If it makes you feel any better, I’m teaching my kid to skate, and I constantly reinforce the “Don’t Be A Punk-Ass” Rule.
(Also – dude was wearing a helmet? Pussy.)