The Sixty One Year-Old Skater Dude

The freestyle writer

I often get asked how I write my posts. What’s my process? Do I have a weekly or monthly plan of topics I’m going to cover? Do I write using a particular formula? Word limit? Do I methodically and strategically mix up the sciencey stuff, the motivational stuff, the funny stuff, the philosophical stuff, the fitness stuff and the how-on-earth-does-your-mind-work-Craig stuff? All good questions. If only I were that organised with my writing. Formulae are good to a point, but sometimes the price of being too formulated, is creativity.

There are types?

Someone asked recently what type of writer I am. “There are types?” I enquired. I didn’t know. Perhaps I should have done that writing workshop after all. I didn’t know that I had to classify myself. Okay, I’m gonna go with… freestyle. How’s that? I figure that if I label myself too specifically then people might expect certain things of me. And we all know how I hate to disappoint. Oh the pressure.

The truth is, I have no set formula for writing. If there’s a start, a middle, an end and I happen to make some sense along the way, then I think I’m going okay. If it’s 500 words or 2,000 words (as is often the case), I’m okay with that too. The reality is that I enjoy writing immensely and when I sit at my keyboard, it’s like my logical mind and my creative self start dancing together. Some of my friends worry that I write so much and so often, but for me it’s far more like therapy than work. I’ve worked plenty… and what I’m doing right now isn’t it.

More often than not, my life (an experience, a conversation, a challenge, an observation) tells me what to write about. I never sit down at my computer and rack my brains for a topic. If I ever get to that point I won’t write. When I got up this morning I had nothing planned for what I would write today. And then half an hour later life happened right outside my house. And today’s post is the result…


“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing”
George Bernard Shaw

Yes, I’ve used that quote before and yes, it’s worth repeating. I’ve spoken publicly many times regarding my beliefs about age; that it is more about attitude, the choices we make and how we manage our body, than it is about how many years we’ve been on the planet. Most of you are familiar with my philosophy but I thought that this little story might inspire you.

A smorgasbord of humanity

I live on a busy street in a very multi-cultural city. It’s a fun place to people watch; a veritable smorgasbord of humanity. Looking out the window of my upstairs bedroom can easily throw me into a time void. I have lived here for fourteen years and in that time have seen everything from the mildly amusing and interesting, to the completely bizarre. I’ve also met some pretty fascinating people but nobody cooler than Tom, the sixty one year-young Skater Dude.

The mobile speed hump

This morning I was reversing my car out of the drive when all of a sudden I realised that me and my larger-than-necessary 4WD were about to become a painful ‘speed hump’ for one of the local youth who was hurtling towards me at an alarming rate on his over sized skate board. Bloody kids. I jammed on my brakes and he jammed his sneaker-clad foot into the ground and came to a dramatic halt two inches from my passenger door. He ended up with one of his grubby little hands on my window.

What? I’m confused.

Only it wasn’t grubby. Or little. It was kind of big, clean… and old looking. I then shifted my stare from his hand to his face and I nearly fell out of the car. He was old. Really old. Well, really old for a teenager. For a moment I was confused. My brain was overloaded with mixed messages. One message was, “danger, danger, don’t run over the Dude on the skate board”, another was “what is this old buffed guy doing cruising the streets on his grand kid’s skateboard?”… and yet another was “he’s pretty darn good on that thing”.

Buffed old guy

He stepped back from the car and raised his hand in a gesture of apology. I almost wiped him out and he’s saying sorry to me! Clearly, he’s no teenager. As he stepped back all I could see was his lean, fit, athletic body in a pair of Levis and black T shirt. All of this happened within ten seconds.

Being the eternal student, I had a million questions for the old Dude. I was immediately intrigued. For some reason, people who lived outside the box have always fascinated me. I love to know what makes them tick, why they do what they do and how they got where they are. I put on the hand brake, jumped out of the car and walked around to make sure he was okay. I actually knew he was fine, I just wanted to meet him.

We spoke for about twenty minutes and he completely inspired me. I can’t repeat the entire conversation but parts of it went like this:

CH: “How long have you been skate-boarding?”

TOM: “Well, I skated and surfed a lot when I was younger, had a decade or two off and then bought myself a new skate board for my fifty fifth birthday.”

CH: “That board? (the one in his hand).”

TOM: “No, I’ve have four or five boards since that one.”

CH: “You didn’t feel compelled to take up Bowling?”

TOM: “F*** off, that’s for old people!”

CH and TOM: Laughter

CH: How often do you skate?

TOM: “Every day that it’s not raining. Most days I skate to work.”

CH: “Where do you work?”

TOM: “I have my own photography business.”

CH: “Can I ask how old you are” (I thought he was about fifty)

TOM: “Sure, sixty one.”

CH: “Does your wife worry about you skating around the burbs?”

TOM: “She worries more about me getting the shit kicked out of me at karate.”

CH: “You do Karate?”

TOM: “Started when I was forty eight, I’m now a second dan black belt.”
(Okay, I’m really glad I didn’t hit him. I could have had the crap beaten out of me by a sixty one year-old. Not cool.)

CH: “How often do you train?”

TOM: “I’m at the dojo four days, one of those is instructing.”

CH: “So why do you skate?”

TOM: “I love to skate and I hate it how people stop doing fun stuff because they’ve reached a certain age. Old people bore me. There seems to be the list of ‘socially acceptable’ activities for anyone over fifty and let’s just say that nothing on the list really appeals to me! In fact, my skating is actually getting better by the year because I consciously work at it. Most of my buddies hit fifty a decade ago and started to act like old men. Pretty soon they were. I hate it how people do that.

CH: “Aaaah, a kindred spirit.”

CH and TOM: Laughs.

CH: “You actually work at improving your skating?”

TOM: “Yeah, I train once a week on the half-pipe at the skate park with my twelve year-old grandson.”

CH: “You know you’re not normal right?”

TOM: “Good, that’s my goal; old and abnormal.”

CH and TOM: More laughs

CH: “Have you always been in good shape?”

TOM: “Nope, when I started karate I was thirty kilos (66lbs) heavier than I am now, I smoked forty cigarettes a day, drank nearly every day, worked too much and looked like complete shit.”

CH: “What happened?”

TOM: Not long after my forty eighth birthday two of my friends died within six weeks of each other – both were fat, worked too much and had no life. One fell asleep at the wheel and one had a heart attack. I decided I didn’t want to follow suit.

CH: Good plan.

TOM: No shit.

And with that, the old Skater Dude continued his surprisingly rapid journey along my street, leaving me inspired, motivated, intrigued and feeling kind of young.

Enjoy your day.

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