Streetboarding

    I have an idea. Let’s tie a rope to the seat of our bike, and pull each other on a skateboard.

     That’s a good idea. I’ll pull you first. We get the dog’s leash, tie it to the seat-post of his bike, grab the fastest skateboard we can find, and we start. I pedal as fast as I can as he drags behind me. Suddenly as I turn the corner, he whips around and is all of a sudden in front of me. We discovered this thing where when the biker slows down on the turns, the skateboarder can go faster around the corner. After a trip around the block, it was my turn.

    Go! I yell as I get onto the board. He starts pulling me, and I start to think: Uh-oh, I’m going too fast. We come to the first turn and I prepare to fall from the speed. As I lean into the turn like playing tug-of-war with a giant, I fly past the bike and the board wobbles underneath me from the speed. Once I slow down, all I want to do is do it again. We took turns for over an hour going as fast as we can around the corners. We say, We should put ramps in the street and do tricks off of them. We could get really good at this, and be towed by a motorcycle to go faster. We’ll go to the X Games and make it a sport. Let’s call it streetboarding.

Waves

We’re going to Carlsbad. That’s what Dad said after he came home from work one summer day. I don’t know where Carlsbad is. All I know is that it is a beach and we are camping there with our cousins and their cousins and their friends. I’m kind of excited. I like the beach, but big waves scare me. I packed my bodyboard and fins in the trunk of the car and off we went. Once our tent was set up, we walked down the cliff to the sand. The waves looked big. I put on my fins and strapped my leash to my arm and tried to paddle out. Every single time a wave came at me it was too big and knocked me off of my board. I left the water, angry like a bee who’s hive just got exterminated. The next morning came and I did not want to go back to the water. Let’s go boogie board, my Dad said that morning. No, I can’t paddle out, I said defiantly. He walked me down to the sand, and waded in the water next to me as he taught me to paddle out and make it past the waves that just one day earlier, were knocking me off of my board.

  Test Dummy

The mountains. The place that I can always see but rarely get to experience. But we’re going this weekend, my church group and I. Hopefully there’s snow. We drive up, arrive, and set up in the cabins there for us. There is a couple inches of snow, but not much. Hey, let’s go sledding, I say to my friends and brother. We walk down and past the snow-covered volleyball court and  find a hill that has a lot of trees at the bottom. Well, we can just roll off before we get to the trees, right? We all say as we look down the slope. 

“Ok but you’re the test dummy,” my friend says.

I get on with my thoughts telling me all sorts of things like when you’re at an airport and everyone needs help to get to different places. But eventually I take my feet up and go. I fly down the hill, bounce off a log, and just nearly miss a tree before I roll off the sled. YOU GOTTA TRY THIS I yell up at my friends as I stand up. We went sledding and it was awesome.

Cars IRL

    I used to watch NASCAR races all the time, every weekend. I knew almost every driver of every car and I would watch all 300 or so laps around the circular track. I’m not sure why I liked it back then, but I did. I liked it when they crashed, passed and won. I had a favorite driver, team, and car. I knew Jimmy Johnson was number forty-eight, Jeff Gordon was forty-four, Denny Hamlin was number eleven and so many more. I wish I still liked it. I had a video game where I would race my favorite drivers and lap other cars over and over again. I would play for hours. Why don’t I do that anymore? Now I go to the skate park and surf and do homework. I watch football, not cars. I want to watch cars again. 

“Misery”

    I was born in Huntington Beach. Then when I was three we moved to Missouri. Most of the time I think people forget Missouri exists. Missouri is super hot in the summer and way too cold in the winter. At least that’s what my parents say. They call it “Misery.” Unless I think really hard, I don’t have any bad memories from living there. We had a super nice house, a big yard with a swing set, fun friends, and good school. When I think of “Misery” nothing miserable comes to mind. I don’t necessarily miss living there but I want to go back someday and see all the things that seemed big and all the things I remember. It feels like a past life, but it was a good life.