fiction

Kill All the Skateboarders

Forget about the lawyers. They are at least of the human species. Skateboarders are mutants. How do I know this? Because anything that can repeatedly scrape the concrete outside my door, slowly sanding down my patience, must be a mutant life form.

It’s not that I don’t have sympathy for the alien beings. I did some skateboarding during the first coming, back in early 60s. We were just happy to balance on the narrow platforms and ride some gentle inclines with a few slalom moves that would be laughable now, By the time the second coming rolled around in the 70s, the surfer influence had kicked in, and kids started doing tricks. In the 80s, skateboarders took to the streets. Or should I say took over the streets.

Now the mutants are at my door as they try to ride the stair railings and bounce down the concrete steps. Over and over I listen to them scraping the concrete while they encourage each other with shouts and enthusiastic declarations. The mutants speak in their native tongue and have a bizarre vocabulary that consists mostly of words like truck, ollie, kickflip, popping, lipslide, noselide, tailslide and grinding. All the time they are talking to each they also are trying toperfect acrobatic movements that seem designed to break arms, wrists, legs or knees. Trying to talk to them is useless. When you suggest they move tosome other location, they only stare back at you as though they heard the sound but cannot process the language. Then they continue to communicate in their language while riding the skateboards. It’s as if you are invisible to them.

I dream of owning a laser powered weapon that has the conventional red dot to mark the target, but when the trigger is pulled the victim is frozen in time -- a monument to skateboarding in the new millenium. Thousands of these statures could be arrayed in communities all across the country. One thought would be to group the statues around existing war memorials so that we might never foget these brave skateboard soldiers who have sacrificed their lives so that we might have some peace. Skateboarding might become a lost art, practiced in only a few remote locations such as rural skateboard parks or empty swimming pools in some abandoned exurb. A whole generation or two might have a chance to grow up without knowing the skateboard mutants. I can dream can't I?

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Got a 400 word fictional piece you'd like to contribute? Click here.

© 2006-2013 ConceptDesign, Inc. Terms of Use
BoomSpeak - For babyboomers - by babyboomers.