The Innocent Statement

On Sunday I went skating with a lad called Ricky. I take him out skating every now and again, as a favour to his parents, who have obviously don't like the idea of watching Ricky skate for a few hours. I can imagine that it might be quite boring.

You see, if I take Ricky it gives me an excuse to get my skates back on and join him on the ramps. It has been about 5 years since I was big into skating. At 21 years of age some folks might think that I am a bit old for it now. They might be right. It does seem to hurt a lot more now when I fall. I have even thought about learning to surf when the summer kicks in. Does that mean I am growing old? I hope not.

Swansea is not to far away from where I live, about half an hour in the car. So that is where we go skating. Next to the leisure centre (which they plan on knocking down soon) is a skate bowl, a collection of street ramps, and a mini-ramp. The street ramps are metal, and pretty unsafe in the rain, and the bowl is a fibreglass thing that can also get very slippery when wet. For this reason, we only normally go when it is dry.

We got down to the park at about 4PM on Sunday, and it was quite busy. The mini-ramp and street ramps where new to us (they only had the bowl before), so we stuck to the bowl to warm up. We ventured over to the mini-ramp later on, but the quality of the inline skaters there was a bit intimidating to say the least, so I didn't shame myself amongst them.

It was a good day, and we stayed until about 7:30, going for food at Burger King in the early evening. Just like the days when I used to skate before, the folks hanging out (skateboarders, inline skaters, bikers, and others) all got along great. Everyone is respectful to the others, and no one causes any trouble.

Well, almost no one.

There is always someone who has to ruin it for everyone. There is always someone that has to come along and potentially make everyone there look bad. It makes me mad!

About half an hour before Ricky and I decided to head for home, a bratty little kid comes along in pop-up tracksuit bottoms*, and starts acting hard. His skateboarding skills are lacking to say the least, so he has nothing to be confident about either (Not that I am Tony Hawk or anything). It some attempt to display his masculinity to the audience he has with the rest of the skaters (Who, by the way, are looking on mostly in disgust), he starts picking up large stones, and smashing the windows of the close by leisure centre.

It hit me straight away, that what he was doing was completely out of character for all the others skateboarders/inline skaters/bikers there, but that they were all going to get tarred with the same brush because of him. 'Those punks down on the skate ramps are nothing but trouble. They smashed the leisure centre windows all up' is what the townsfolk will say. I couldn't let it seem like that, so I phoned the police.

Police:

You are calling from a mobile phone, with the number ####, what is the problem? (- I'm not sure, but it is something like that)

Myself:

Hi, erm, I am down at the skate park, by the leasure center in swansea. A kid has just come along and started smashing up the windows. I don't want anyone else here to get in trouble for it. If you send someone over now, you will be able to catch him doing it.

Police:

Which Leasure Center did you say it was sir?

Myself:

Swansea Leasure Center

Police:

The one that is closed down?

Myself:

Yes, thats the one.

Police:

And your name?

Myself:

Phil Baines. But I don't really want to be picked out when you get here. Anyone down here will most probably help out.

Police:

Ok sir, thanks for your call.

Myself:

That's alright, goodbye.

When I had that conversation I was out of the way, so that no one could over hear the conversation. I didn't want the kid to scarper, and make the rest of the people down there look bad.

So, Ricky and I continued skating, and ignored the kid who was still smashing up the windows. We carried on for about half an hour and the police still hadn't come. I waited a little while longer, and realised that the police were not going to come.

They didn't care that some kid was getting away with this, and that he would probably doing something worse next time, because he believes he will get away with that also. They didn't care that the actions of that one brat would make every person to use that skate park look bad on that day. They had enough time to stop me on the way to a friends house, because my headlight was out, and keep me for half and hour, but they didn't care about this. Some times I wonder why I have respect for authority.

* Not that I have anything against this item of clothing, but it is not something you wear to go skating, for practical reasons. Also, it is not really something you wear to look cool while skating, for non-practical reasons.