This is an excerpt of something I wrote a long time ago about the first Christmas after my father died. It illustrates the moment I decided I would be a skateboarder for life not because of the act of skateboarding but who skateboarders are as a whole.

“The cold weather settled in and we would still try to skate as much as we could. My Claus Grabke was starting to fall apart and I was saving for a new setup. It would be the first Christmas since my father died and I wasn’t in much of a holiday mood by the time Christmas rolled around. It was just before sunset when my mother, who had been so against my new hobby, called me into the kitchen in the basement of our row house on Linwood Avenue. She told me there was one other present for me and that it was in the closet. I looked behind the door and propped against the wall was a brand new baby blue G&S Billy Ruff Clown Puppet with Bat Rails, new Tracker trucks and new green Slime Balls. How did she know what to get?

I just hugged her. She said I should go try it out. It was the nicest thing anyone had ver done for me. I hugged her again and headed out into the cold December dusk.

I remember going to a curb at St. Brigid’s School at Fait and East Avenue where I was met by one of the local freestyle skateboarders, a guy named Bruce whose last name evades me to this day. He complemented my new setup and asked me if it was a Christmas present. I started to tell him that my mom had got it for me and that it was the first Christmas without my dad but I just broke down and cried. Bruce sat with me on that curb in the cold and just put his arm around me and let me let it out. It would not be the last time that the community of misfits and weirdos that are skaters would be there for me.

It was the best, worst Christmas I ever had.”