"Memory is conditioned by emotion; we remember better and more fully, things that move us." -- Isabel Allende

"Dad?"

I looked up from the magazine I was reading as my eleven-year-old son approached the table. Every Saturday for as long as I could remember, the two of us had been going out for lunch. Just us guys. Sometimes, if the weather was nice, we'd grab some burgers and fries, find a shady spot, and have a picnic in the car. It was the best time of the week for me. That particular Saturday, we had stopped at a local pizza place. They had a video arcade, and while we waited for our pizza, he tried his luck. Score high enough and you won tickets to redeem for merchandise. 

"What is it, man?" I asked. I could see that he was excited.

"I want to get a skateboard," he exclaimed. Then, he pointed to a display case behind the counter where various items, including a shiny black skateboard, were displayed. "I only need 1800 tickets to get it." He tilted his head and looked at me sideways like he was trying to read my mind. 

If he could have, what he saw would have gone something like this: arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh?

My son was still trying to find his niche, athletically speaking, but this was too much. True, it wasn't soccer, but please. I didn't care that ESPN was calling skateboarding an extreme sport. Extreme, maybe. But sport? I had my doubts. Anyway, I couldn't get beyond the vision of an emergency room in my future.

Okay, so I didn't really know anything about skateboarding, and I didn't actually know any skateboarders personally. But, I knew their reputation, and it wasn't good. I knew better than to confront this head-on though.1800 was a lot of anything. He'd lose interest. So, I went along. 

He didn't have a lot of spending money -- just his allowance, some birthday money he was saving, and the money he made collecting bottles along the local roads. I guessed that he wouldn't want to invest too much of it in tokens for playing video games. 

I guessed wrong. For the next few months, we spent a couple of hours each Saturday at the pizza parlor. I would ask every week if he wanted to go some place different, but to no avail. With practice, he mastered most of the games, and soon the tickets were piling up. Each week, after we had finished eating and were about to go, he would visit the counter to take a closer look at "his" skateboard. 

He kept his tickets in a shoe box in his bedroom, and when we got home, he would set them out in neat rows, stack the new ones alongside, and carefully count them. As he got closer to his goal, I began to doubt the wisdom of my strategy. So did his mother, who was worried more about her little boy getting hurt than about the unconventional types he might meet. 

But, I couldn't change the rules now.  I had never given him any reason not to trust me, and I wasn't about to start. Anyway, I was beginning to admire his resolve -- and his passion. When I was a boy, we would play with a baseball until the cover came off and the yarn unraveled. Then, we would pool our pennies and nickels and scavenge for bottles until we had enough to buy a new ball at the local hardware store. In his passion, I recognized my own. And, I respected that.

I wouldn't help him though. I recognized, even as my resistance eroded, that this was something that he needed to do himself. And, so he did. When he finally had enough tickets, I drove him to the pizza parlor. He proudly handed over the shoe box and watched as the clerk on duty counted them. He actually had included a few extras just in case.  When the clerk finally finished the count, she opened the display case, retrieved the skateboard, and handed it over. The smile that spread across his face spoke volumes. I still wasn't sure about the skateboard, but I was sure about my son. 

When we got home, he took the skateboard outside and practiced standing on it and riding the few feet across the driveway. The next day, he rode all the way down the driveway to the street. The third day, he grabbed his board, and headed off up the hill in front of our house. I wanted to tag along and remind him to be careful, but I knew that he had earned this moment. 

Minutes later, I looked up as he wheezed past, a determined look on his face. I waited anxiously for the sound of the nasty spill I feared was waiting for him somewhere farther along. Shortly, he came running back up the hill and into the driveway. His lips were stretched thin by a wide grin, and he was talking a mile a minute. It was a Kodak moment.

I was wrong about the skateboard. It takes a great deal of skill to ride. I know because I tried, and the footwork was harder than turning a double play. My son was pretty good at it -- better than I ever expected -- and I believe that he gained confidence from his success. 

And, he didn't start dressing in black, or become a juvenile delinquent. In fact, his friends who skateboarded were no different than his other friends. All were basically good kids and turned out fine. My son made the honor roll throughout high school and won an appointment to West Point. Not exactly the mental picture I conjured up when he first announced in that pizza parlor that he wanted a skateboard.  

In junior high school, he took up roller blades and street hockey, and the skateboard began to gather dust. In high school, he played baseball and ran cross-country and track, but every now and then, he'd retrieve the skateboard from its resting place in the garage and dust it off. I didn't ask what he was thinking at those moments, but he never failed to smile.