“
Daily I walk around my small, picturesque town with a thought bubble over my head: Person Going Through A Divorce. When I look at other people, I automatically form thought bubbles over their heads. Happy Couple With Stroller. Innocent Teenage Girl With Her Whole Life Ahead Of Her. Content Grandmother And Grandfather Visiting Town Where Their Grandchildren Live With Intact Parents. Secure Housewife With Big Diamond. Undamaged Group Of Young Men On Skateboards. Good Man With Baby In BabyBjörn Who Loves His Wife. Dogs Who Never Have To Worry. Young Kids Kissing Publicly. Then every so often I see one like me, one of the shambling gaunt women without makeup, looking older than she is: Divorcing Woman Wondering How The Fuck This Happened.
”
”
Suzanne Finnamore (Split: A Memoir of Divorce)
“
When I was growing up, my mother enrolled me into the same classes as my brother so I learned karate, kung fu, and swimming. She also took us fishing, skateboarding, and to martial arts films. Needless to say, my mom was and still is cool. - Strong by Kailin Gow
”
”
Kailin Gow
“
Skateboarding has taught me two things - that symbolise a meaning of life.
How to keep a balance and how to pick yourself up when you've fallen.
”
”
Nikki Rowe
“
We got hungry around three in the morning, and ordered a ton of pizza from an all-night pizza place. Afterward, Blake talked a guy into letting him borrow his skateboard, and he once again entertained all of us. If it had wheels, Blake could work it.
“Is he your boyfriend?” a girl behind me asked.
I turned to the group of girls watching Blake. They were all coifed and beautiful in their bikinis, not having gone in the water. My wet hair was pulled back in a ponytail by this point and I was wrapped in a towel. “No, he’s my boyfriend’s best friend. We’re watching his place while he’s . . . out of town.”
A pang of fear jabbed me when I thought about Kai.
“What’s your name?” asked a brunette with glossy lips.
“Anna.” I smiled.
“Hey. I’m Jenny,” she said. “This is Daniela and Tara.”
“Hey,” I said to them.
“So, your boyfriend lives here?” asked the blonde, Daniela. She had a cool accent—something European.
“Yes,” I answered, pointing up to his apartment.
The girls all shared looks, raising their sculpted eyebrows.
“Wait,” said Jenny. “Is he that guy in the band?”
The third girl, named Tara, gasped. “The drummer?” When I nodded, they shared awed looks.
“Oh my gawd, don’t get mad at me for saying this,” said Jenny, “but he’s a total piece of eye candy.” Her friends all laughed.
“Yum drum,” whispered Tara, and Daniela playfully shoved her.
Jenny got serious. “But don’t worry. He, like, never comes out or talks to anyone. Now we know why.” She winked at me. “You are so adorable. Where are you from?”
“Georgia.”
This was met with a round of awwws. “Hey, you’re a Southern girl,” said Tara. “You should like this.”
She held out a bottle of bourbon and I felt a tug toward it. My fingers reached out.
“Maybe just one drink,” I said.
Daniela grinned and turned up the music.
Fifteen minutes and three shots later I’d dropped my towel and was dancing with the girls and telling them how much I loved them, while they drunkenly swore to sabotage the efforts of any girl who tried to talk to my man.
”
”
Wendy Higgins (Sweet Peril (Sweet, #2))
“
And don’t ever, EVER compare yourself to a neurotypical (NT) girl or woman. They are a different species and you’ll only feel inadequate and bad about yourself. Find your tribe – online, in groups at comic conventions. Find people who are delighted that you are you. And you should be delighted that you are you too because when you’re 70, you’ll still be skateboarding, you’ll look amazing (from all those years of not ruining your skin with make-up) and you’ll realise that all those things you worried about don’t matter at all.
”
”
Sarah Hendrickx (Women and Girls with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Understanding Life Experiences from Early Childhood to Old Age)
“
What if she doesn't worry about her body and eats enough for all the growing she has to do? She might rip her stockings and slam-dance on a forged ID to the Pogues, and walk home barefoot, holding her shoes, alone at dawn; she might baby-sit in a battered-women's shelter one night a month; she might skateboard down Lombard Street with its seven hairpin turns, or fall in love with her best friend and do something about it, or lose herself for hours gazing into test tubes with her hair a mess, or climb a promontory with the girls and get drunk at the top, or sit down when the Pledge of Allegiance says stand, or hop a freight train, or take lovers without telling her last name, or run away to sea. She might revel in all the freedoms that seem so trivial to those who could take them for granted; she might dream seriously the dreams that seem to obvious to those who grew up with them really available. Who knows what she would do? Who knows what it would feel like?
”
”
Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth)
“
the fact is, our relationships to these corporations are not unambiguous. some memebers of negativland genuinely liked pepsi products. mca grew up loving star wars and didn't mind having his work sent all over the united states to all the "cool, underground magazines" they were marketing to--why would he? sam gould had a spiritual moment in the shower listening to a cd created, according to sophie wong, so that he would talk about tylenol with his independent artist friends--and he did. many of my friends' daughters will be getting american girl dolls and books as gifts well into the foreseeable future. some skateboarders in washington, dc, were asked to create an ad campaign for the east coast summer tour, and they all love minor threat--why not use its famous album cover? how about shilling for converse? i would have been happy to ten years ago. so what's really changed?
the answer is that two important things have changed: who is ultimately accountable for veiled corporate campaigns that occasionally strive to obsfucate their sponsorship and who is requesting our participation in such campaigns. behind converse and nike sb is nike, a company that uses shit-poor labor policies and predatory marketing that effectively glosses over their shit-poor labor policies, even to an audience that used to know better. behind team ouch! was an underground-savvy brainreservist on the payroll of big pharma; behind the recent wave of street art in hip urban areas near you was omd worldwide on behalf of sony; behind your cool hand-stenciled vader shirt was lucasfilm; and behind a recent cool crafting event was toyota. no matter how you participated in these events, whether as a contributor, cultural producer, viewer, or even critic, these are the companies that profited from your attention.
”
”
Anne Elizabeth Moore (Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity)
“
How recently have the sharks been fed?" the guy next to me asked.
Alex and I were in a small room with a dry-erase board, a perky blonde aquarium emplyee, and three guys from Rutgers who'd won their fraternity Christmas prize. True to Alex's promise, no one had seen me in my miniscule jungle print. Another perky girl had handed me a wet suit and pointed me into a changing room. So as I listened to the basics of shark tank etiquette, I was fully encased in blue neoprene from ankle to jaw. The frat boys kept sneaking looks at me when they thought I-and Alex-wasn't looking. It made me feel just a little bit better. Alex's promise that I didn't have to get into the water if I really didn't want to helped, too. It had gotten me out of the car and into the aquarium.
"You can do it," he'd coaxed.
"Yes," I'd answered, thinking of the skateboarder a little and "fake it til you make it" more. "I can do it."
"Yesterday." Perky Girl answered the feeding question. "Believe me. They're not hungry."
I wanted to know exactly how she knew that.Did she ask the sharks?
"Okay," she chirped. "Let's get snorkeling.
”
”
Melissa Jensen (The Fine Art of Truth or Dare)
“
What if she doesn’t worry about her body and eats enough for all the growing she has to do? She might rip her stockings and slam-dance on a forged ID to the Pogues, and walk home barefoot, holding her shoes, alone at dawn; she might baby-sit in a battered-women’s shelter one night a month; she might skateboard down Lombard Street with its seven hairpin turns, or fall in love with her best friend and do something about it, or lose herself for hours gazing into test tubes with her hair a mess, or climb a promontory with the girls and get drunk at the top, or sit down when the Pledge of Allegiance says stand, or hop a freight train, or take lovers without telling her last name, or run away to sea. She might revel in all the freedoms that seem so trivial to those who could take them for granted; she might dream seriously the dreams that seem so obvious to those who grew up with them really available. Who knows what she would do? Who knows what it would feel like? But if she is not careful she will end up: raped, pregnant, impossible to control, or merely what is now called fat. The teenage girl knows this. Everyone is telling her to be careful. She learns that making her body into her landscape to tame is preferable to any kind of wildness
”
”
Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth)
“
What if she doesn’t worry about her body and eats enough for all the
growing she has to do? She might rip her stockings and slam-dance on
a forged ID to the Pogues, and walk home barefoot, holding her shoes,
alone at dawn; she might baby-sit in a battered-women’s shelter one
night a month; she might skateboard down Lombard Street with its
seven hairpin turns, or fall in love with her best friend and do something
about it, or lose herself for hours gazing into test tubes with her hair a
mess, or climb a promontory with the girls and get drunk at the top, or
sit down when the Pledge of Allegiance says stand, or hop a freight
train, or take lovers without telling her last name, or run away to sea.
She might revel in all the freedoms that seem so trivial to those who
could take them for granted; she might dream seriously the dreams
that seem so obvious to those who grew up with them really available.
Who knows what she would do? Who knows what it would feel like?
But if she is not careful she will end up: raped, pregnant, impossible
to control, or merely what is now called fat. The teenage girl knows
this. Everyone is telling her to be careful. She learns that making her
body into her landscape to tame is preferable to any kind of wildness.
Dieting is being careful, and checking into a hunger camp offers the
ultimate in care.
”
”
Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth)
“
Betsy didn’t want to be at the party any more than Cole did. She’d met the birthday girl in a spin class a couple of years earlier and had been declining her Evites ever since. In an effort to meet new people, however, this time Betsy replied “Yes.” She took a cab to the party, wondering why she was going at all. When Betsy met Cole there was a spark, but she was ambivalent. Cole was clearly smart and well educated, but he didn’t seem to be doing much about it. They had some nice dates, which seemed promising. Then, after sleeping over one night and watching Cole wake up at eleven a.m. and grab his skateboard, Betsy felt less bullish. She didn’t want to help another boyfriend grow up. What Betsy didn’t know was that, ever since he’d started spending time with her, Cole had regained some of his old drive. He saw the way she wanted to work on her sculptures even on the weekend, how she and her friends loved to get together to talk about their projects and their plans. As a result, Cole started to think more aspirationally. He eyed a posting for a good tech job at a high-profile start-up, but he felt his résumé was now too shabby to apply. As luck would have it—and it is often luck—Cole remembered that an old friend from high school, someone he bumped into about once every year or two, worked at the start-up. He got in touch, and this friend put in a good word to HR. After a handful of interviews with different people in the company, Cole was offered the position. The hiring manager told Cole he had been chosen for three reasons: His engineering degree suggested he knew how to work hard on technical projects, his personality seemed like a good fit for the team, and the twentysomething who vouched for him was well liked in the company. The rest, the manager said, Cole could learn on the job. This one break radically altered Cole’s career path. He learned software development at a dot-com on the leading edge. A few years later, he moved over and up as a director of development at another start-up because, by then, the identity capital he’d gained could speak for itself. Nearly ten years later, Cole and Betsy are married. She runs a gallery co-op. He’s a CIO. They have a happy life and gladly give much of the credit to Cole’s friend from high school and to the woman with the Evites.
”
”
Meg Jay (The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now)
“
The boy whose father takes him swimming, the girl whose mother takes her to the theater, children whose parents do things with them - these are not skateboarders.
”
”
Sean Wilsey (More Curious)
“
You feel so overwritten you're like a palimpsest;
the original girl almost lost under years of scrawling
yet you nurture an illusion of beauty,
brush your hair in the dark
so when your reflection finally catches up with you
you stare straight past that older woman
to the skateboard dancers behind
hitting the frosty air
with exuberant grace.
On the loose in the morning city reminds you of lovers,
catching the tram to work in last night's laddered stockings,
the sharp-edged day already intruding like a hangover.
It's not the sex you miss or the hotel mornings
but the reassurance of strangers and that wild card.
Now everything's played out the same,
no surprises in the pack except those dealt by disaster.
Early this morning such certainty dragged on your thoughts
they stumbled flat-footed through the breakfast silence
and you knew neither the apples
orchard fresh, crisp as snow
nor the blue bowl they posed in were enough.
People disappear all the time,
emerge like summer snakes newly marked and glittering
into a clean desert.
Without the photo of a child you carry in your wallet
which reminds you who you have become
you'd catch a train to Musk or Mollymook,
some place your fingers have strayed over.
Even thinking that, you turn your face into the wind,
keep walking that same old line in your new flamboyant shoes.
Oh my treacherous heart.
”
”
Catherine Bateson (The Vigilant Heart)
“
do you think MM stands for?” I asked. “March Madness?” replied Michael, who never ties his shoes. “Marilyn Monroe?” said Ryan, who will eat anything, even stuff that isn’t food. “Mickey Mouse?” said Neil, who we call the nude kid even though he wears clothes. “My Mom?” said Alexia, this girl who rides a skateboard all the time. Everybody was buzzing, which was weird because we’re not bees.
”
”
Dan Gutman (My Weirder-est School #8: Miss Aker Is a Maker!)
“
He hangs out near campuses at lunch, after classes, his skateboard rat-a-tat-tatting across sidewalk cracks just barely past school-ground limits. The girls cluster and giggle, and he chooses one to peel off the herd. He tells her to snap pictures. He tells her to get a secret Facebook account, one her parents don’t know about, and upload them there. He tells her that everyone does this in high school, and he’s mostly right, but not everyone is hooked into a scheme like this. He targets Title I schools, broke girls, easily impressed, looking for a dream, a romance, a way out. Girls whose parents lack the resources to do much if they disappear. The secret Facebook page links go to Hector Contrell. The genius of it is, the girls create the sales catalog themselves.
”
”
Gregg Hurwitz (The Nowhere Man (Orphan X, #2))
“
Now, Tom had seemed like a decent guy when we watched him during track practice, and seeing that sign on the bulletin board had given us a clue that he had a good heart, too. But it was almost as if he knew we needed more convincing. And by the time we lost him—just a few streets away from our block—we were positive he couldn’t be the same guy who had robbed Speedy Jack’s. In fact, he turned out to be the nicest, most polite, most civic-minded boy I’ve ever seen. Here’s what we saw him do:
He spotted a dog wandering into the road and stopped to coax it onto the sidewalk.
He helped a little old lady across the street (really!), holding his hand up to stop traffic for her.
He hopped off his skateboard and bent down to tie a child’s shoe. The mother (whose arms were full of groceries) looked like she wanted to hug him.
He gave directions to a motorist, nodding politely at all her questions.
He picked up litter from the sidewalk and threw it into a trash can.
He stopped to admire a baby in its carriage.
It was while he was cooing over the baby that Sunny gave me a disgusted look. “Are we wasting our time, or what?” she asked.
I giggled. “Somehow I find it hard to believe he could swat a fly, much less hold up a store.”
When Tom finished with the baby, he straightened up, stepped back onto his skateboard, and zipped around a corner. We let him go. Sunny sighed. “He’ll make some girl a fine husband one day,” she said, with a straight face.
Then we cracked up.
We were still laughing about it a half hour later, when Jill and Maggie showed up at Sunny’s for our party-planning session. We told them all about “Saint Tom,” as we’d begun to call him.
”
”
Ann M. Martin (Dawn and the Halloween Mystery (Baby-Sitters Club Mystery, #17))
“
No!” said all the girls. “Are you excited about moving up to third grade?” Mrs. Dole asked. “Yes!” said all the girls. “No!” said all the boys. “I was thinking. Wouldn’t it be nice to give presents to Mrs. Daisy?” said Mrs. Dole. “She worked so hard for you all year. What would you like to give her?” “I’ll give her a skateboard,” I said. “That’s what you want, Arlo!” Andrea said, rolling her eyes. “Try to think of something Mrs. Daisy
”
”
Dan Gutman (Mrs. Dole Is Out of Control! (My Weird School Daze #1))
“
the weeks that followed, Poppen tinkered—and his girls tested—several design variations. On March 17, 1966, he filed the Snurfer idea and name with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, describing his invention as relating “to a snow ski, and more particularly to a surf-type snow ski which is adapted to support both feet of a skier and to be easily maneuvered therefore without foot bindings, thereby providing a new snow sport which incorporates features of certain summer pastimes, namely surfboarding, [and] skateboarding. . . .” Poppen had just foretold the future of an entire subculture of recreationalists, athletes, professionals, and world champions—most of whom hadn’t even been born yet.
”
”
Eric Blehm (The Darkest White: A Mountain Legend and the Avalanche That Took Him)
“
Since she started skateboarding, it has been her departure from the ordinary. It makes her feel strong even though most other times she’s seen as quiet and shy.
”
”
Sierra Prescott (Shredders: Girls Who Skate)
“
The little girl who’d made up stories of fairies under the toadstools, who’d built a drag racer out of scrap wood and an old skateboard, who’d won the science fair four years in a row and never brought home anything less than an A?
”
”
Ivy Layne (Stolen Heart (The Hearts of Sawyers Bend, #1))
“
An hour later Tianna was walking toward Planet Bang, wearing a sweater shell with sequins and an ankle-grazing skirt slit up the sides to the top of her thighs. She glanced at the waning moon and stopped. There was something important she had to do before the moon turned dark and it was in some way connected to Justin and Mason, but what? She stared at the sky as she continued, hoping the memory would come to her the way soccer and skateboarding had.
When she rounded the corner, the music grew louder. A neon sign throbbed pink, blue, green, and orange lights over the kids waiting to go inside. She recognized some of them. It seemed as if everyone had come with a friend or friends. Their heads turned and watched her as she walked to the end of the line.
She spread her hands through her hair and arched her back. As long as they were going to stare, she might as well give them a show. She twisted her body and stuck one long leg out from the slit in her skirt. Guys smiled back at her as she stretched her arms in a sexy pose. The girls mostly turned away, pretending they hadn't been checking out their competition.
”
”
Lynne Ewing (The Lost One (Daughters of the Moon, #6))
“
At that moment Tianna spied a skateboard. Her hand acted on its own, and before she knew what was happening she had grabbed the board, sent it rolling, and jumped on. Two strokes with her right foot, then she pumped, moving her knees from side to side. She curved down the front sidewalk, bumping over the bricks, and just before reaching the front steps, she turned a high ollie and landed on the thick iron banister. She tail slid down the rail, then bent her knees to cushion her landing and kept going.
"Awesome," she breathed, impressed with herself.
”
”
Lynne Ewing (The Lost One (Daughters of the Moon, #6))
“
Oh my god!” Helen pushed through the guys on the patio, knocking one off his skateboard as she made her way to us. “Didn’t I tell you to stay away from this bitch? Now you’re over here making her blush like a little girl?
”
”
Julia Wolf (Burn it Down (The Savage Crew, #3))
“
The girl was wearing a backward baseball cap and a black T-shirt that said LED ZEPPELIN on it. “Yo!” she said as she hopped off her skateboard. “They told me I was supposed to be in Mr. Granite’s class. Are you Mr. Granite?” “Yes,” Mr. Granite replied. “Who are you?” “My name is A.J.,” the girl said, “and I hate school.” WHAT?!
”
”
Dan Gutman (Miss Child Has Gone Wild! (My Weirder School #1))