A Labor Day Skateboarding Disaster

I recently saw a sign sticking out of my neighbor’s yard advertising a “free movie night.” I mentioned the sign to my wife (I like movies) and she informed me that it was a church-sponsored event. While I thought I had just discovered one of my neighbors was a cinephile, in reality it was just a plot to recruit people for their church.

Churches have a long history of such tactics. Once as a teen while bussing tables at a local pizza restaurant, I saw a folded dollar bill sticking out from a plate covered in pieces of crust. When I began to unfold the dollar I discovered that it was fake. The rest of the “bill” was an advertisement for a local church. For the record, our restaurant always looked like a complete disaster after the Sunday church rush. Nobody left a bigger mess, and instead of tips they left fake dollar bills for kids making minimum wage ($3.35/hr, back then) to find. Why would anyone start attending a church after being tricked?

In the late 80s and early 90s, skateboarding was huge. My friends and I spent lots of time practicing tricks in parking lots and neighborhood cul-de-sacs. We built a few “launch ramps” designed to shoot us up into the air (which they did) so that we could perform tricks (which we tried to do) before landing gracefully (which we never did). The thing we never had wa a half-pipe. None of us had the money to build one or a parent willing to accept the legal responsibility of having a gigantic ramp in their yard.

During the summer btween my junior and senior years of high school, I was headed downtown in my car when next to the interstate I saw agigantic skatepark being assembled in the parking lot of a local mega-church. I immediately exited the interstate and doubled-back to check out the skatepark.

The makeshift park had pretty much everything a kid could want in a skatepark. There were multiple slide or grind rails — metal pipes or PVC pipes mounted to long pieces of wood, designed for skaters to slide their skateboards down. There were launch ramps, much higher quality than the ones my friends and I had cobbled together using wood left behind at construction sites and rusty, mismatched nails. The impossible to miss centerpiece in the middle of the parking lot was a gigantic half-pipe ramp. It was at least 8’ high on both ends, covered in smooth, expensive wood.

I did not have my skateboard with me at the time. I was standing in the parking lot, mesmerized at this makeshift playground, when I was approached by an adult who asked me if I attended church there. When I said I didn’t, I was handed a flyer covered with pictures of skateboarders that also listed all the church’s service times.

It was basically an updated version of that dollar bill I had found years earlier.

Also, I have long subscribed to Mitch Hedberg’s theory regarding flyers. Whenever someone hands me one I imagine them saying, “could you throw this away for me?”

I quickly scurried away, but it hit me that it was Saturday. Sunday, the entire parking lot would be filled with church attendees.

Monday was Labor Day. The place would (hopefully) be abandoned. Monday would be the day I would skate that half-pipe. My first ever half-pipe. I told all my friends about my plan and when one of them said other kids might show up on Monday as well since school would be out, I suggested that we all meet at the ramp at 7 A.M. That was the plan, and that’s exactly what we did.

Getting a bunch of high school seniors to wake up early and drive across town at the crack of dawn on a school holiday was no easy task, but the thought of having an entire skate park to ourselves was too much for even my circle of friends to resist. Back then, the idea of carpooling was foreign within my social circle. The sun hadn’t yet peeked over the horizon when I pulled into the church’s parking lot. Over the next few minutes each of my friends pulled into the parking lot and parked next to me. Five or six cars all alone in a parking lot that 24 hours earlier had been filled with worshipers.

I grabbed my skateboard from the backseat of my car and started walking toward the makeshift park. I could hear my friends behind me as we walked past the slide rails and the launch ramps, making our way to that sweet, sweet, gigantic half-pipe. It was the thing of dreams. It was truly massive; as big as the Ark, I’d reckon. It must have cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars in lumber alone. It was as if God himself had picked up the perfect half-pipe from California and gently placed it here, in this church parking lot in the middle of Oklahoma, for my friends and I to enjoy. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

And as I turned around to look at my friends, I noticed… none of them had their skateboards.

And that’s when it hit me. None of them had come to skate the mega-ramp. All of them had come to see ME skate the mega-ramp.

Did I mentioned I had never skated a half-pipe before? None of us had.

There’s a scene in Sixteen Candles where Farmer Ted (Anthony Michael Hall) is attempting to explain his social status to Samantha (Molly Ringwald) by telling her he’s “kind of king of the dipshits.” Now, everybody’s the hero in their own story and while my circle of friends had nothing that resembled a hierarchy, that day, as the only one there with a skateboard… I was king of the dipshits.

If you’ve ever stood on the roof of a house you know that 8’ looks a lot higher from above than below. As I made my way up the rungs made out of 2x4s that had been affixed to the backside of the ramp, I felt myself getting higher and higher until I reached the top of the ramp. With the cold morning air blowing in my face I felt like I could see the entire world. I could see and hear the cars zooming by on the interstate, the same place I had originally spotted the ramp from. I could see the entire parking lot and our small huddle of cars parked nearby. From the top of the ramp our cars looked so sent and rust free. Next to the ramp I could see my friends, all waiting impatiently for me to “drop in.”

Dropping in on a half-pipe is a learned skill. The trick is to balance the rear of your skateboard on the edge of the ramp, holding it in place with all your weight on your rear foot. As you place your front foot on the front of the skateboard, in one fluid motion you “fall forward”. The most common mistake is to not lean far enough forward, which cases the skateboard to shoot out from under you.

Knowing this, I put on a brave face, took a deep breath, and making sure to lean forward I dropped into the half-pipe.

No, literally. I fell forward and dropped 8’ feet from the top of that ramp directly to the bottom, landing on my side. I don’t think my feet ever touched the skateboard at all. I just fell, like a sack of sand, 8’ down through the air landing on the wood below.

Go big or go home.

Often, when a person trips or stumbles, their biggest albeit irrational concern is, “did anyone see me?” But when you fall hard — I mean, really hard — you’re not really worried about that. I could no longer hear the cars whizzing by. I’m pretty sure my first thought was, “do I still have all of my teeth?”

Also, if you’ve ever stumbled and tripped over a curb or something, your gut instinct is to hop back up as if to convince the world (or maybe just yourself) that you’re okay. I did not hop up. I just laid there, staring at the bottom of a gigantic skate ramp.

After a minute or two I slowly made my way up to my feet. One of my friends had graciously walked across the parking lot to retrieve my skateboard. One bone at a time, I began taking inventory. Nothing felt broken and all my joints seemed to still be functioning.

After a minute of silence I finally said, “we good here?” Everyone nodded in silence and we all sauntered back to our cars, starting them up one by one and heading back home only a few minutes after we had arrived.

I don’t remember how long that makeshift skatepark remained there; no more than a month, I think. It had to be a logistical nightmare, not to mention a real insurance liability. I’m sure they kept it around long enough to serve its purpose, luring a few kids in with honey before dismantling it.

So I said to the Lord,
"Lord, you promised that if I followed you,
you would walk with me always.
But I have noticed that during the most challenging times of my life,
there has only been one set of footprints in the sand.
Why, when I needed you most, were you not there with me?"

The Lord replied,
"My precious child, those times when you saw only one set of footprints,
it was because while I was walking in the sand,
you were skateboarding in my skatepark nearby.
But don’t worry—I saw you fall and it was divine.”