Making of a Man

Real Men Stand What would it take to show the world the real you? I still remember how it felt standing at the top of "the Big One." Long before halfpipes and vert ramps, we simply had this steep, daunting hill. The journey down the Big One was the only way home from the neighborhood swimming pool, so for us there were only two ways down: walk or ride. At the end of each day we'd stand gazing down the Mount Everest of blacktop, and then, one by one, the others would launch their boards until I was the only one left, standing alone with my board and a stomach full of fear. That's when I would finally take off down the hill...sitting on my board. It took about fifteen seconds to actually make it down. But it only took five or six seconds for the insults to start flying. "Stand up! Stand up, you sissy!" the other boarders would yell. There was a protocol, the unwritten riding rule, and we all knew it. Stand, or be: a boarding baby a sissy skater a sitter Anyonecould sit down while surfing the Big One. That was easy. But it took a "man" to be willing to stand and conquer the holy hill, the supersurfing slope, the four-wheel ride of royalty, the... Okay, you get it. Anyway, as a kid, I was not only afraid of heights, wasps, sleeping in the dark, and my older brother's fist, I was also afraid of standing on a fifteen-by-five-inch orange plastic board on wheels as it traveled much faster than I dared, especially since, somewhere between the top and the bottom of the paved slope, I could experience real pain. So it didn't take long for me to be labeled a "skating sissy." Brad, Eric, Steve, others whose names I can't remember, and, of course, my older brother were just a few of our neighborhood boarding heroes who had mastered the Big One. Day after day they would sit poolside, bragging about their downhill dominance. I dreamed of having the courage to graduate from sitter to stander. ThenIwould have bragging rights and, most important, the respect of my older brother. I'm not sure what made me decide to finally attempt to stand, but it might've had something to do with the fact that the Schubert twins, Laura and Leslie, who lived in our neighborhood and whose home was directly at the bottom of the Big One, were looking particularly lovely that summer day. They were watching, and they knew what it meant to stand. They knew about the boarding heroes. And unfortunately for me, they also knew that I was a sitter. I had to do something about that. hit pause Have you ever had one of those moments where you envisioned the finish line and everyone was there chanting your name as you were the first to cross? or that moment in the final seconds of the big game when the score is tied and the ball's in your hands? or the Hail Mary spiral that's thrown into the end zone as the final second ticks off the clock and your hands and the ball meet at just the right moment, and then you're hoisted onto the shoulders of your teammates, and everyone is cheering for you, including that hot girl you've been checking out at school? So I did it. I positioned my lead foot, I shifted my weight forward, and I pushed off. I guess it was somewhere around the seventh or eighth second that I realized I was moving much faster than I wanted to be moving. And just as quickly, I realized I no longer cared what Brad, Eric, Steve, my brother, or even the Schubert twins thought. Shortly after that moment of enlightenment, the pain began. I'm not exactly sure which body part met the pavement first, but eventually every inch of me got a closeup view. Becoming one with the pavement is an experience unlike most I'veDean, Jeffrey is the author of 'Making of a Man ', published 2007 under ISBN 9781590529843 and ISBN 1590529847.