Skateboarding as a Literacy

The non-educational literacy I have chosen to explore, and perhaps the one area I am most literate in is skateboarding. Skateboarding presents a world of creativity, an activity that has no established rules and little in the way of established norms. I have been fully engrossed in skateboarding since a relatively young age; somewhere around either nine or ten years old, and thus have become well-versed and experienced in its intricacies. Skateboarding is something I wouldn’t consider to have any quantifiable way of calculating literacy, as no one trick that is done can be considered to have any more merit than another trick.

            Being introduced to skateboarding by my father, maybe in the year 2001 or so, was, without a doubt, one of the defining moments in my life. My interest began with the now-simple task of just balancing on the board while it was standing still. The fact that I even knew to use it in that method was due to my father teaching me. Since then, I have had a vast array of influences that have molded my perspective on skateboarding and the way I actually do it. These influences include videos featuring my favorite professionals, produced by various skateboard companies, as well as a group of friends who are as dedicated as I am to skateboarding. These friends, who I spent nearly every free hour of my life with in my youth, helped influence my skateboarding through mutual instruction (teaching each other tricks we had learned), as well as critique. If someone suggested that I could do something a different, better way, I utilized that advice and it helped shape the way I am now.

 The vocabulary of skateboarding itself, I realize now, can be considered a foreign language relative to the average person, much like technical descriptions of other activities or sports. For example, if I was to describe to the average person how earlier that day, I had learned how to do a “frontside kickflip back-Smith revert,” they would have virtually no idea whatsoever what I was talking about (even Microsoft word red-flagged half of that quote). The vocabulary of skateboarding, although now second nature to me, wasn’t ingrained in me when I was born, of course. I learned that through reading skate magazines, watching videos, and hearing other skateboarders talk. Even today, new tricks are being developed that I’ve never seen before, so my skateboarding vocabulary grows more every year. Vocabulary, of course, is but a small part of the literacy of skateboarding.

The most important part of skateboarding is the actual motion. Development of the coordination necessary to learn new tricks is essential. Perhaps in no other sport are there so many moving bits and pieces in what looks like one simple trick. I’ve heard before that certain tricks in skateboarding defy some laws of physics, and I don’t doubt that notion. Each trick takes so much precision; so much practice and hard work, that achieving “literacy” in even one fifth of all the tricks that exist in skateboarding would render an individual an absolute expert in the activity. I consider myself to be literate because I can control my skateboard totally, to the point where I probably would fall less skating down the street than most people would walking.

The impact this literacy will have on the remainder of my life is profound. When I walk or drive anywhere, I see everything differently. Where the average person sees a staircase, or a slight incline leading to a hand-rail, skateboarders see a world of possibility, something on which there are so many more purposes than walking up, or holding on for support, respectively. I think that skateboarding has greatly expanded the creative element in my brain, and it enhances my ability to think outside the proverbial box. I imagine I will see a similar impact in my teaching career. The ability skateboarding has given me to improvise and create on the fly will serve me will as a teacher, because things often don’t go as planned in both activities. I just hope that one day I will be able to claim the same proficiency as a successful teacher that I can as a skateboarder.

By the way, if you are further interested or want to see my skateboarding, here is a video my friends and I made years ago that features some of our skateboarding.