RULE 11

DO NOT BOTHER CHILDREN WHEN THEY

ARE SKATEBOARDING

DANGER AND MASTERY

There was a time when kids skateboarded on the west side of Sidney Smith
Hall, at the University of Toronto, where I work. Sometimes I stood there and
watched them. There are rough, wide, shallow concrete steps there, leading
up from the street to the front entrance, accompanied by tubular iron
handrails, about two and a half inches in diameter and twenty feet long. The
crazy kids, almost always boys, would pull back about fifteen yards from the
top of the steps. Then they would place a foot on their boards, and skate like
mad to get up some speed. Just before they collided with the handrail, they
would reach down, grab their board with a single hand and jump onto the top
of the rail, boardsliding their way down its length, propelling themselves off
and landing—sometimes, gracefully, still atop their boards, sometimes,
painfully, off them. Either way, they were soon back at it.
Some might call that stupid. Maybe it was. But it was brave, too. I thought
those kids were amazing. I thought they deserved a pat on the back and some
honest admiration. Of course it was dangerous. Danger was the point. They
wanted to triumph over danger. They would have been safer in protective
equipment, but that would have ruined it. They weren’t trying to be safe.
They were trying to become competent—and it’s competence that makes
people as safe as they can truly be.
I wouldn’t dare do what those kids were doing. Not only that, I couldn’t. I
certainly couldn’t climb a construction crane, like a certain type of modern
daredevil, evident on YouTube (and, of course, people who work on
construction cranes). I don’t like heights, although the twenty-five thousand
feet to which airliners ascend is so high that it doesn’t bother me. I have
flown several times in a carbon fibre stunt plane—even doing a hammerhead
roll—and that was OK, although it’s very physically and mentally