Last week Christopher got a skateboard, and his mom ruined it by making him wear a helmet. What an insensitive bitch....oh wait, it was me. WELL! Look, I grew that kid, I saw to it that he had an intact, functional head and I would like to see it remain unspoiled until it comes such I time that I must let go and watch him do something brain-damaging like join the army or play football or get into World of Warcraft. But until that day, if he's going to attach himself to a board with wheels then he's going to wear a helmert.
Yeah, you might say, but then you took him to the skate park...What's wrong with the skate park? NOBODY wears a helmet, knee pads or elbow pads at the skatepark. When you went the other day you, Claire, Emma, and Christopher stood at the edge of the cement and watched 7 teenage boys rolling up and down ramps, leaping over picnic tables and ollying over things, and (you noticed) with no protective gear. In some cases not even socks. It was mortifying.
Claire, mortified for different reasons, took one look at them, pointed to a tree in the park across the street and said, "I'm going to go read over there."
"Mom," Emma whined. She was wearing her rollerblades and, reluctantly, her helmet, elbow and kneepads. "Nobody else is wearing this."
"Well, they're supposed to," I told her and pointed to the sign on the wall behind us. "It's in the rules."
"MOM," Emma stressed in a "I can't believe you just pointed to the rules sign" sort of way.
"Em, go skate."
"But they're gonna think we're weird," said Christopher.
"Guys, I'll bet you they're not thinking of anyhting but their own stuff. Seriously, they're skater boys, they're not football players. Skater boys ARE weird."
"They are?" Christopher said.
"Honey, that kid is wearing a tubesock on his head."
It wasn't really a tubesock. But it was dirty white and so thin that it stuck up at the top like the tip of a skinny balloon that doesn't inflate all the way. "This park is for everyone, not just them. Go ahead, you'll be fine."
Timidly they rolled away from me under the awning and toward the cement slab where there were ramps, tables, steps that led nowhere, and a long gray metal pole that was low to the ground. Nobody used it, but I imagined it was there to give someone a head injury.
At first my kids just skated in circles around me. The older boys made them nervous, and honestly, I would have reacted the same way as Claire at her age, and just left. I wasn't a skater though, and neither is she. Emma and Christopher are. We don't have sidewalks in our neighborhood, and I'm not comfortable with them on the street, especially since Christopher is just learning. A skate park, by definition, seemed to be a good place for them to go.
The boys did leave them alone. In fact, they barely looked at them, but the threw nervous glances at me. Maybe they noticed that I pointed to the sign, and thought, "Shit! She's going to make us obey the sign!" Or maybe they thought, "Shit! Now I can't talk about my nuts." But they were wrong. I'm probably the last person in the world who would be offended by anyone talking about their his nuts - within reason. Talking about them in relation to me - no. Talking about them in general - yeah, that's fine, I don't care. I talk about my nuts in general and I don't even have any. Swearing and crude talk is fine as long as the talker isn't being a jerk. They must have gotten a feel for this because eventually when it became clear that I was not going to call their mothers for saying "Damn, I squashed my nuts!" they stopped looking at me funny and went back to skating and swearing. I didn't care, I wasn't their mother.
I was more focused on not running up to help my kids when they fell, which was a big deal for me. Christopher is going to have to squash his nuts if he's going to learn anything and I'm going to have to deal with that. After a while, when it appeared that the Skater Boys were not going to hang them from ramps by their wedgies, Christopher and Emma began skating all around the park, and even went up a few of the ramps. When they slipped and fell, I laughed. They weren't bad falls, and they were funny. You don't know how funny your kid looks until they roll up a ramp, panic, try to turn around, come to a complete stop, and then fall over.
When it was time to go, and Claire rejoined us she said, "How'd it go?"
Emma said, "We fell and Mom laughed at us."
"You were funny!" I said, and did an impression of of Emma flopping over.
Claire laughed until she remembered to be embarrassed by my behavior and abruptly stopped.
"So Mom," said Christopher, unbuckling his helmet. "Next time we come here, can we not wear this stuff?"
"No, you are wearing the gear. You are wearing the gear for the rest of your life."
"Mooom!" Emma and Christopher whined.
"It's true. Accept it."
They're still fighting me on it. But they're also still falling, so their arguments don't carry much weight. They never will, because even professionals who practice all the time still fall. They will still wear helmets and I will still laugh at them. That's the deal.
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