Sk8er Boi Off Balance

I put on roller skates a few times, but that didn't work out so well. I bought a skateboard and that didn't work out so well either. I tried countless times to ride a bike and that didn't work out so well either. I took one look at ice skates and said no. My attempts to snowboard were okay but not great. Skiing, however, is the one activity with an object of mobility under my feet that I actually did well at over time. 

Roller skates were the scariest because every time I tried, whether I had a wall to hold me up or people assisting me, I was totally off balance. For me, the experience was like those cartoons where the character's feet start spinning under them because they're about to take off fast. I was typically about to take off of my feet and go airborne. 

Being a skater was cool when I was a tween and so I went out and bought a cheap skateboard with some lawn mowing money before ever really seeing if I could do it. After a number of rough falls on the concrete, I went to the hardware store and bought parts to turn it into a scooter. I didn't have money to buy an actual scooter so this was the next best thing, I thought, but that was definitely not the case. Those falls were even tougher because I had to avoid getting hit by the handlebars I constructed out of steel pipes. 

I balanced a bicycle once for about 3 seconds and it was a glorious feeling until the crash. It's hard enough for me to balance on my feet, let alone a moving object. But, catching my balance when I lose it is a matter of sheer luck. I've watched other people recover their balance on skates, skateboards, etc. but I've never had a handle of recovering balance when I lose it in any context. 

I tried snowboarding in my late teens because I hadn't been on skis in several years and had lost my ability to stop. I'd also apparently lost my ability to get back up on skis when I fell. That was probably years of no practice along with being a lot taller than the last time I'd been on skis. I switched to snowboarding because I figured that learning something new would at least be more interesting than trying to relearn what I'd forgotten. It was easier to get back up after falling on the snowboard but not having independent use of each foot proved a much greater challenge than I'd anticipated. 

Many years prior, in grade school, I'd done rather well with skiing thanks to independent instruction from people who'd been educated on working with children with Cerebral Palsy. Regular practice made a lot of difference too. I went skiing so much that I actually didn't want to do it anymore by the time I was entering adolescence. 

When I was younger, I felt a lot more comfortable trying to do athletic things that challenged the difficulties of my life with CP. As I've aged and the daily aches and pains went from non-existent to ever-present, it has curbed my enthusiasm to endure practice falls from recreational activities. These days if I can keep my balance in the living room, it's a win.