was a railing artist. I skidded down metal railings wherever I could find them. I didn’t care what was at the bottom. Usually just concrete. I understood that concrete was hard and flat and unforgiving but I’d made my peace with that. Oz said I understood the physical nature of concrete — up close and personal — more than any other person on this planet or any other planet in the solar system. Oz had taken a backseat in the thrill-and-spill-a-minute world of skateboarding. He had introduced me into the lifestyle and then sat back, nursing his small wounds and watching me go for the glory. He was my number one (and only) fan.
My mother insisted I get professional help for my “problem” (and this was not the first time for that). But it turned out that the professional help was on my side. “He’s just trying to get your attention,” Dr. Rickbenbacker told my parents. “You need to spend a little more time with your son.” Grumbling and griping the whole way about a golf game missed and potential bond business down the tubes, my father took me fishing. I wasn’t really interested in fishing. “Let’s go to the beach,” I begged. “I want to learn to surf.”
“We’re going fishing,” he said, gritting his teeth, gripping the steering wheel tightly as he beheld visions of corporate bonds, whole truckloads of them, being sold to unwary investors by his rabid competitor, Hal Gorey.
Turned out there was a cell phone in the glove compartment, and it rang. It rang often. The fish were not biting at the fish farm he took me to. We bought a salmon, already cleaned and filleted, as evidence of father-son bonding. Just for the record, let me say that I was not trying to kill myself. It’s safe to say, though, that skateboarding had consumed me. If there had been an ocean handy, I would have been surfing and falling off into salt water. But I had no ocean, only streets and sidewalks and elaborate steps to public buildings and railings and ornaments of various shapes and sizes. What I had to fall onto was concrete or asphalt. It was not my destination of choice, but it was what was available when I was ready to fall.
I would be lying if I told you that I did not enjoy coming home with a bloody nose, a forehead abrasion, or a nicely mangled knee. These were all showy awards for attempting the impossible. A kid trying to liberate himself from various laws of physics and reality wants to show off his effort, if not his success.
Ozzie had a bad habit of locating new venues for me to try — places he himself would not attempt. Twice he suggested the long, three-tiered set of granite steps in front of the downtown courthouse. Better yet, there was the metal railing going down the middle.
It was an in-service day for teachers, the sort of day when kids have no classes and go for broke with parents away at work. Teachers were cloistered away in meeting rooms gossiping about their students and inventing new ways to bore them to tears. Meanwhile, Oz and I would rule downtown. We were twelve and had the right clothes, the right skateboards, and enough attitude to start a world war.
The steps were impressive, and the railing gleamed in the sun. We ran up the steps and, without even a split second to determine where I might end up, I placed my board with me atop it on the railing and began my descent. It was another cowabunga moment with adults aghast, pulling their hands off the railing as I slid south at the speed of infinity. I stayed focused, kept my wits about me, and was near the bottom when something went wrong. My board caught on metal, and I was launched into the air.
All of the arguments about safety helmets had fallen on my two deaf ears, of course, and some protective Styrofoam would have come in handy at the moment my skull made impact with the curb. A bus tire skidded to a stop a full twenty centimetres before crushing my skull, but my head had come down hard on that darned curb. I was delivered into unconsciousness and went someplace else while pedestrians tried to figure out what to do with my unconscious body. Ozzie began to cry. He thought he had killed me. He kept shouting, “It isn’t fair” for some reason, but I guess he thought I was a goner and that my life had been too short.
Someone would later explain that my brain had been bruised (along with my ego) and that it was a pretty serious concussion as far as concussions go. I did not die and then resurrect like a Jesus Christ of skateboarders or anything. But I did travel to someplace far from Stockton.
It was a beach, I can tell you that. And everything was shimmering (a word Mrs. Dalway says is overused). And there were two beautiful girls. (I’m sorry, but there were.) They were wonderful and sweet and they were surrounded by light. Everything was fuzzy in an extremely bright sort of way. I thought I recognized them both as my two all-time favourite babysitters, but I could not make out their faces very well. I just knew that I was someplace safe and happy. A young man with a surfboard walked up to me and held out something in his hand. I put out my own hand, palm upward, and he dropped into it twenty or so of those little shiny ball bearings used in skateboard wheels. He motioned up at the sky, and I seemed to understand that I was supposed to throw the ball bearings up, so I did.
The little steel balls flew to the sky and hovered there, each becoming a small, beautiful planet. Everyone on the beach applauded.
I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but it was like the first time in my life I felt truly appreciated. I felt loved. And I did not want to have to return to my old, ordinary self.
But I eventually returned anyway — to a blinding headache and a hospital room with a TV. The Simpsons was on, and Homer was trying to save the nuclear power plant from a meltdown.
And I remember my mother crying one time when she came into my room and thought I was asleep. I recall feeling her tears soak through my hospital gown. She said that she loved me very much and if I would only get well, she would promise to be a better mother. When I did start to get better, though, she didn’t show the same kind of affection. But both of my parents seemed relieved that I was back.
I recall one doctor, too; I think he was still in medical school, and he had kind of long blond hair and a really relaxed way of talking to me. He was a Star Trek fan too and used to quiz me about Klingons and Star Fleet regulations. I remember that. He played chess as well, but poorly. No sense of strategy at all, and he was easy to beat.
All the time I was in that hospital room, I never felt alone. I had my own room — my father saw to that, big spender that he was in those days. Doctors came and went. Orderlies, nurses. But there was something else as well, like a presence of some sort, like someone was watching over me, making sure I was okay, even when no one was in the room.
By the time I left the hospital, I had regained most of my memory, but it had holes in it. I couldn’t remember if I liked Coke or Pepsi better. I couldn’t remember which channel Star Trek was on. Or which drawer in the kitchen had the knives, forks, and spoons.
They said I suffered some short-term memory loss, which came in handy as an excuse for doing so poorly on a math test and French vocabulary quiz (both of which I had never studied for). My parents gave me only a short, incomprehensible lecture about how foolish I had been. They bought me things to make me feel better, but my father threw away my skateboard, which the ambulance driver had kindly returned to my house after the accident.
The doctor explained my lethargy as part of post-traumatic stress. “His accident,” he said, “has had as much of an emotional impact on him as if he had been in a war.” I did continue to have that image of the bus floating towards me the split second before I was knocked out. But that wasn’t what was bugging me. I really wanted to get back to that beach and those people on it. My old babysitters and the surf dude who handed me the tiny ball bearing planets.
Regular life just wasn’t going to work for me anymore.
CHAPTER FOUR
I accidentally started to pay attention to Mrs. Dalway, who was telling
