Hey there. It’s me… you know, Sk8er Boi! You know, from the song, “He was a sk8er boi, she said see you later boy” …. Remember? That’s me.
You can just call me Paul. I was Sk8er Boi though. You probably can hardly recognize me anymore, but I was quite a little Casanova back in the day. Picture this: lip ring, gages, wool beanie, oh, and the soul patch. I miss that thing. Think I can still rock it? Ehh maybe you’re right, I better not.
These days I’m looking a little different: I’m rocking the visor, the reflective shades, joggers, and a pullover. Topped off with an orange vest. I let the lip ring and gages close up and I’m pretty vigilant about the ole’ hairline these days. Things have changed, man. It’s like I blinked and I missed it.
Back then, me and my boys Blazer, Lou, and Markie would spend our days at the parking garage by the movie theater skating for hours. We would film each other landing all of these wild tricks. Okay, maybe not all of the tricks. Looking back, I think we had more of a 20% shot of landing a trick. At any given point at least one member of our crew was rocking a cast.
Nowadays, my arthritic bones ache just thinking about it. I can confidently predict when rain is coming based on my knees. I busted my front tooth trying to land a tre flip. I used to pop out my fake tooth as a party trick, but I haven’t done that in years. I think I can still do it if you want to see it? Oh you ate recently? Okay, I’ll put that back then.
We were bopping along having fun, but things changed once we hit thirty. It’s like there was something in the water. Once we started circling thirty, they all started thinking about growing up a little. Not me though, I could have kept up that way for a few more years. Blazer joined Americorps in Chicago. Markie accidentally got his girlfriend pregnant and they got married. Lou started going by Louis, went corporate, and had to relocate for work. So I made a Match.com profile, met my wife, bought a house, and had a couple of kids.
Growing up kind of sneaks up on you. But Sk8er Boi is still here deep down. Sometimes I still sneak off to smoke at the end of my cul-de-sac. I like to think I’ve just leveled up. Except for now I sleep with a humidifier and take a daily men’s multivitamin. I’m Visor Dad and that’s pretty rad too.
My wife Tammy is a teacher and we have three girls. I work in finance, which could mean anything really. It may or may not involve a little sports gambling. All I’ll say is, I wear a Bluetooth headset to all of my kid’s soccer games and I am not opposed to taking a call in the stands either. Duty calls.
