AJ Update:
As many of you may recall, I predicted that he would be born on April 1st. This is looking pretty likely considering he hasn't come yet.
And he better not be late again because the 2nd is our wedding anniversary.
The Persistance of Prejudice:
If you have known me for more than six years then you already know how important rollerblading is. It is not just an activity. It is a way of life.
It began, much the same as with many of you, with the rollerskates that attach to your shoes and are horribly dangerous (and these are for kids?!) and the occasional trip to CalSkate (yeah, you know what I'm talking about =). It didn't exactly stand out in the beginning. At first, as with most physically active boys, it was more of the mainstream sports: basketball, football and, my favorite, baseball. I enjoyed these activities, but they were frustrating for many reasons I do not here want to hash out. However, it was a fateful trip to the snow that would change everything. While coming down a black diamond course at the tender age of 12 or so I twisted my knee and had to coast the rest of the way to the bottom sitting on my board. A few hours after sitting in the first aid room nothing solid came from the on site medics. A trip to the doc's didn't reveal anything either, but I would not be able to run again as I had before and would continue to feel pain in my right knee to the present day. My excuse to quit sports I had grew tired of had finally materialized.
It was not long after that I longed for strenuous activity again and found few that catered to my status of not quite injured, but not quite well. I had grew tired of competition and longed for an activity we're I could compete against myself and no one else. In this way, I was sure to make friends without having to worry about being better or worse than any of them.
Enter: Speed Skating
For those of you who haven't watched the winter olympics, speed skating is where you go around in circles at speed up to 35 m.p.h. In the olympics it is done on ice, but in warmer climates it is also done in a roller rink. The local team (Calskate) was fortunate to have an ex-world medalist as an instructor and was very diverse. We had people from 4 to 70; Boys and girls; prissy people and tattooed; some who competed and some who liked the exercise. Heaven.
I joined their organization and within a year of intense training I had strengthened my knee to almost preinjury levels. What had definitely increased though was my concentration. By this time I was consistently giving the top three skaters (two of whom were "world class") a run for their money. With lots of pushing they got me to compete. Within a year I quit.
Enter: Aggressive Rollerblading, a.k.a. Blading, a.k.a. Tearing S*** Up
I highly dislike the term aggressive rollerblading because most of us are far from aggressive. But it is the term that is most well known for the small group of people who use rollerblades to create art in motion. Somewhere between 14 & 15 some friends and I began this activity and had little knowledge of how it would transform us. Within a year or two, we had accumulated better skates, cool videos for inspiration and skate parks starting popping up in our area. But one park would change everything. The Fremont Skate park near lake elizabeth was one of the first places we saw Jon Julio and Fabiola DeSilva. The godparents of modern day rollerblading who must have been in their mid twenties at the time. Within a few months we would actually find ourselves at Jon's house in Milpitas, hanging out with over half of the "pro" skaters we had come to idolize. It's really hard to translate this. These weren't uber-cool kids who we were fortunate enough to know, they were regular Joe Shmoe's, just like us. Thanks to skateboarding and the like taking up the limelight, we got to enjoy the shade of the lesser known. In the years following these encounters we would come to meet bladers from around the states and around the globe. It is like the tightest knit church you'd ever find. If we went to a city and found bladers, we had a place to stay. If we found bladers visiting our city, we'd put them up at our house. I can't say this is true of any other sport. And this is how we came to know it wasn't just a sport: it was a way of life.
Because of this cult status, there were sure to be those who were, to say the least, confused about us. For simplicity's sake, I will narrow it down to the rift between skateboarders and bladers. If you aren't aware of the rift, it is not far from being like that of whites and the recently freed slaves of the post civil war era, only where the slaves outnumbered their masters, the bladers of the world are far outnumbered by skateboarders. We would go places and get harassed, yelled at, called names, etc... While everyone else in school was taught about the civil rights movement and how prejudice is fading from our lives, we were caught in the middle of the new battle ground: prejudice between cliques.
In reality, this type of prejudice is the original kind. Racism being fairly new in the history of mankind, the older forms tended to revolve around groups that were often united by common activities or ancestors. We were living smack dab in the middle of a resurgence of old school ignorance and hatred. Imagine pulling up to a park, miles from your home and there are 30 or 40 skateboarders and no bladers. As you and two of your friends approach the park you are met with stares from everyone, even the 10 year old off in the corner. But we wore our activity with pride. It allowed is to view the normal world of buildings, rails and ledges as a canvas for our art form. The funny thing about the rift is that we too once owned skateboards. We knew what they were doing was not so different from what we were doing. So we let our feet do the talking.
At first it was difficult. It's bad enough to get made fun of upon arrival, but when you are starting out and suck, its even worse. Over time though we would get better. In fact, at one point, we arguably were among the top unpaid bladers in south bay area* (I must note there is a difficultly with saying this because bladers view their activity as an art form and as such there is little objective ground to say who was better than who). As I mentioned before, the community was small and tight knit. It really began to change our outlook on things when we'd go places and get recognized. But just as we got our start and inspiration by the humble pros we met years earlier, we knew that our status had responsibilities. We were the face of rollerblading in our area. If behoved us, then, to bridge the gap.
We would go to parks, still outnumbered by skateboarders, but able to outperform them on many levels. A few of them would even have respect for what we were now able to do. It was important for us, now at this point in our skill, to not shun the skateboarders for their earlier ignorance. In fact, the better we got, the more respect I had for talented skateboarders for I knew the difficulty of the tricks that both of us attempted. In fact, I do think that in the hay-day of rollerblading (2002-2006 roughly) we saw a fairly strong acceptance of bladers amongst skateboarders in our area and I believe that my friends and I had a large role in this change.
Is the problem solved then? Sadly no. As some friends and I went to the park yesterday, I noticed on the sign that read "FOR SKATEBOARDS, ROLLER BLADES AND ROLLER SKATES ONLY" that roller blades and roller skates were crossed off. It may seem insignificant to the outsider, but imagine going up to a restroom and someone wrote "WHITES ONLY". It still stings. But this only means that we must press on. Like racism, few people will still make fun of us to our face or in public, but by the various graffiti we see we are aware that we have work to do.
In fact, we all have work to do. Prejudice anywhere means that our minds are still far from their potential. At this point in our lives, we do not have the time or bodily abilities we once had. It is time then to pass to torch. Would I like to see Alexander rollerblading? It's hard to say. The activity does have an exceptionally high risk of injury. Each of my friends and I have ended up in the hospital at one point (I even broke a finger while rollerblading in Paris). One friend in particular and I have both lost some memory to concussions. But then again, some of the other lessons we've learned beyond standing up to discrimination with dignity and humility were about standing up to one's own fears. How many times can you say that you faced death? Willingly? With composure? I've fallen down a flight of stairs, hitting my forehead twice along the way. My friend has been knocked out after attempting a rail. Two friends of mine have fallen off a roofs. Were we stupid? Maybe. Insane? Likely. But we each came to learn that a life lived worrying about death is no life at all and that this lesson alone has the capability to destroy prejudice for the power of prejudice is rooted in fear.
So it is fortunate that before Alexander is born I learned one of the most important lessons and the third tenant of Practical Philosophy:
3. In order to create life, you must first be free from the reigns of fear.
~ Namaste ~
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