The Olden Times #2

In the olden times ...

Reinventing yourself was hard work. You couldn't jump on Facebook and fabricate stories about yourself. There was no Instagram where you could show off your fabulous life - no cheap champagne in an expensive bottle on a rented yacht in the part of South Florida that vaguely resembles a tropical paradise. We would never be royals, and we knew it because we were from the suburbs. We didn't have ways of documenting our lives anyway. Sure, there were Polaroid cameras, but every pic you took on a Polaroid looked like it should be attached to your ransom note. There were film cameras, of course, but you had to take 52 shots before you could take the film out, or you'd ruin the whole damn roll. And hey, when you did reach the end of the roll, you'd drop it off at a weird little kiosk in a grocery store parking lot and pray that the stoned kid working there didn't lose your film roll or screw up the process altogether. Sometimes your pictures would end up with a ghost thumb in them, and you'd wonder if this was the product of supernatural forces. Nah, it was just a blur or a glitch in the development. There was your ghost, Scooby-Doo.

There were ways you could pretend you were something you were not, of course. You could tell your friends you had sick BMX moves, but then they'd ask you to prove it. You couldn't Google a picture of some professional doing bike tricks and be like, "Check out my sick skills." They wanted real-world, blood and guts proof of your abilities. That was how you found yourself in the middle of the road, staring down a hastily assembled bike ramp. It was all shoddy plywood and half-hammered nails. You couldn't back out at the last minute because you'd already committed to the stunt. You'd pedal for your life, hit the ramp at a weird angle, and fly ass over tea kettle through the air. If you were lucky, you and your bike parted ways mid-air, and you only collided with the pavement. The unlucky ones kept their bike between their knees, coming down nuts first on the whammy bar, the handlebars slamming into your guts like sharp-edged cannonballs.

You'd lie in the street for a few minutes, your friends wondering if you were dead, if this was the end of so-and-so from the house on the corner. Eventually, you'd come to, gasp "I live," and spring back to your feet. You were made of rubber in those days, so you'd walk around for a second, making pained gasping noises and telling yourself it's okay, you didn't die, you're alive, and please God, at least let me get street cred for the attempt. They'd talk about it for a few days, but after the thrill of watching your body crash and burn, eyes would start to narrow with incredulity at your approach. "Hey, there goes Matt Hoffman with his sick BMX moves," they'd snicker, and it would be months, years before you lived down your untruth. There were really only two ways you could reinvent yourself. One was temporary, the other was permanent. You could get a new pair of Converse All-Stars or Nikes, and people would marvel at how cool you were for a few days, but once the glamour wore off, you were still the same dork who rib-planted on his dirty little Huffy.

The more permanent solution would have been to fake your own death, move to some town in the Midwest, and start from scratch, convincing people you were interesting, admirable, and mysterious. The problem with that was you were a kid, and eight-year-olds can't really fake their own death and start over in Kansas. Heck, you barely even had enough money to get yourself a Yoo-Hoo and some ketchup-flavored potato chips.

So, you had to be your authentic self most of the time, allowing a few moments of pretense where you convinced your friends you had some sick skateboard moves. Then, there you were again, staring down that ramshackle ramp, wondering if you would walk away from your crash and burn this time around. Mostly, you had to accept who you were and that who you were was good enough, at least for the right people.