Birthday recap

Samson spent his third birthday much like he spent his first, kind of sick and slightly feverish. Even so, we had a little pizza party at the house with Nana and Papi, and Sam got some pretty cool gifts, including the Playmobil skate park you see above.

For weeks he'd been asking for a skateboard, and we actually did get him a scooter for his birthday [pictures to follow, including one that shows what happens when speed and Samson meet gravity and pavement]. But this seemed like the most sensible way to handle the skateboard request.

And I'm pretty sure it's a hit: He tried to take it into bed with him last night.

We pulled up some old Bones Brigade videos on You Tube so Samson could see real skaters doing cool tricks. Which got me to thinking that when I was a kid, part of the appeal of skateboarding was its rebellious image.

There were probably only a handful of kids (mostly guys) in any given junior high school who could have told you who Animal Chin was, much less who was looking for him.

Likewise, to have a "skateboarding is not a crime" sticker on your locker, book bag, etc. signaled you were out of the mainstream and intentionally so. [Full disclosure: I didn't have one of those, but I wanted one. I was also pretty lame on a skateboard, lacking the necessary components of coordination and fearlessness --- and of course, actually owning a board --- that would have made me a decent skater. I did have a lot of friends who skated though, and I'm happy to rewrite history so that my son thinks I had to make a tough decision between focusing on my skating or writing for the school paper.]

[Sidenote: This is not unlike the kind of revisionist music history that you see in movies, like Donnie Darko, where the Halloween party has Joy Division and Echo and the Bunnymen playing in the background. I can say, proudly and truthfully, that I listened to those bands in the 80s, but I remember the parties I went to usually had soundtracks provided by White Snake or Steve Miller Band. I digress.]

Anyway, clearly times have changed, which makes me wonder if Samson's generation --- having been raised to think of skating as mainstream in the same way that listening to "alternative" music is hardly alternative at all --- will go the other way. Will we see stickers on lockers like "Debating is not a crime" or "Model U.N.: If you have to ask, you wouldn't understand."?