Cool or Crazy?

This week I've made two expeditions to unknown territory, both related to Christmas presents. First off, I headed to an edgy local shop to find a tee shirt for my 12 year old nephew. I walked in and looked at the shirts and frankly, none of them meant anything to me so I asked for help from the kids working there. I told them I was looking for a shirt that met the following criteria:

For a 12 year old boy
Living in Arkansas
A very very very conservative part of Arkansas
It needed to be somewhat edgy
But it wouldn't get him kicked out of school

They were somewhat stymied for quite awhile. One of the first things the clerk presented me with was a red eye with a cross in the pupil. I think not given that churches outnumber just about every kind of establishment in the area. I didn't find it offensive but I was guessing that someone would. Next up was a nice collage of fangs and squinty mean eyes...with a naked lady riding on one of them. Er, probably not. I finally ended up with a snowboarding logo tee shirt that is pretty decent. While it won't be as edgy as I'd like, it should be sufficiently mysterious in the south. The clerk told me that it was the most difficult search he'd had since he began working there.

My second foray into the unknown is the quest for a skateboard for Sam. He's fascinated with our neighbor's skateboards and frankly, I like to give him gifts he can use outside, even if they're weather inappropriate. There is a little (and I mean TINY) skateboard shop downtown so I ventured in to see what they'd have for little boarders. I thought I'd feel way out of place but strangely, I didn't. I mostly found it amusing. First, the owner, I'll call him Jon, was obviously very enthusiastic about boarding. Jon was obviously enjoying the effects of some sort of probably illegal substance and I imagine that he spent more time in this state than could possibly be good for him. He was thrilled that I was getting Sam a board at five; told me all about his start at seven.

He headed off into nonsensical tangents at every possible point. During our conversation, he pulled out a mini-trampoline (to demonstrate what you need to do to turn on a board but he never actually explained that) and jumped so high his head nearly hit the ceiling fan. He gave me half a lecture about the "religion" of skateboarding. He showed me maps of the city with streets marked by boarding difficulty with a street relatively near us labeled double diamond. That is NOT reassuring. He regaled me with half conversations about his broken bones, his coma(!), the long board that he wants to ride with his girlfriend and with the baby(!) in the middle. He pulled out skateboards of the past with wheels from metal roller skates. He demonstrated a helmet, he put on a videotape of crazy skateboarders. He wanted to outfit a board for Sam that would go faster than all his friends and then invited Sam to come to some sort of place, with 4000 square feet of indoor space, to practice his skateboarding with all the other local boarders. I kept reiterating that I wanted something good for learning, something relatively slow and easy to manipulate.

Luckily, there was an older man, probably late fifties, that helped me get the message through to Jon because it just wasn't sinking in that I wanted something slow and easy, not the fastest board on the street. This man kept telling Jon to focus and by the end of the transaction I was doing the same thing!

This entire transaction took about an hour and a half! I hope it meets my criteria of slow and stable -- I really don't have much by way of perspective on this. I got him to halve his price on a pair of wrist guards and finally, I was off.

For some reason people were looking at me kind of funny when I was walking down the street with a skateboard under my arm dressed in my work clothes. I can't imagine why.