In the middle of a particularly harsh high school boarding-school winter, my favorite English teacher began class by projecting a video of an epic longboard crew. These girls looked carefree and energetic as they carved through breathtaking mountains and laughed at their injuries. They looked, honestly, nothing like how I imagined myself. Not only was I uptight, but I also took ballet classes every day and lived in constant fear of an ankle injury. I loved tough, scary choreography in the studio, but outside of dancing I didn’t even dare to ice skate. These sacrifices become a matter of course in pursuing a professional ballet career.
So when my infinitely-cooler-than-I best friend bought a hot pink penny board to ride through our high school campus, I didn’t think to ask for lessons. Longboarding, like taking a day off stretching, was off limits. But I couldn’t shake the memory of those girls in the mountains. I started compiling a mental “after I quit ballet” list. It was the beginning of the end.
When I chose Kenyon over a dance career, I vowed to myself that I would make up for the lost opportunities from training for so many years. I also had a lot of anger from my experiences in the ballet world, and skating would provide an exhilarating therapy. My friends in Nashville jokingly made a crew, called Lords of Woodbine, the fall of my freshman year. They taught me to ride on a wooden board with images of Bob Marley plastered on the bottom. Once I got to Kenyon, my best friend sent me a Sector 9 board with light-up wheels for my birthday. It arrived in a five-foot-tall box, addressed somehow to an irate Campus Safety, with a handwritten note that said, “sorry it’s dirty. I rode it.” When I came back to campus after spring break ready to learn to longboard on Kenyon’s harrowing hills, I didn’t think people would find it unusual. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I don’t necessarily look like I ride a longboard. I’m 5’8”, I wear dresses, and I still walk like Old English nobility (and not in a good way) from years of ballet. However, acquaintances and strangers had downright odd reactions to seeing me with my board. I walked into class and a professor skeptically asked me during attendance if I rode the board there. “Is that yours?” people would ask. Most commonly, people would look at me, look at the board, and ask, “do you RIDE that?”
Although the skepticism bothered me, I tried to channel it into something positive. Every time someone doubted I knew how to ride, I would practice harder. I learned to balance on my board while wearing a heavy backpack. I learned to skate tougher hills. I found (and shared) stories like that of Kanya Sesser and the skater girls of Afghanistan. I used comments about my longboard as a launching pad for some great discussions on identity. However, all the comments about my board surprised me because I expect better from Kenyon: we talk a lot about avoiding judgement and stereotypes, but I felt like a poser, even when I knew that I actually could skate.
This year, I saw a freshman walking down middle path with one of the coolest Arbor Shakedown boards I’ve ever seen. I ran up to her, hanging up on my boyfriend after telling him that I had found another skater and had to go. “I love your board, where did you get it?” I asked her. She seemed taken aback by my enthusiasm, but answered me politely. Although I felt embarrassed about acting like she was a big deal for skating, the fact that she didn’t understand my excitement gave me a strange contentment. This contentment grew as I saw more and more freshman girls carrying cool boards without self-consciousness. I hope they can go to a Kenyon that sees them as skaters. In fact, I hope they can go to a Kenyon that sees them as whatever they want to be seen as. I know I certainly do.
Image Credit: Lena Mazel, Instagram user zachzoinks