Skater Boy - Coming of Age Part X

Title: Skater Boy – Coming of Age

Part X

California.  It was a normal day on January 24^th, 1848, when a man named James W. Marshall discovered gold at Coloma, California.  Hundreds of thousands of Americans would rush West to strike it rich!  California, which at that time was sparsely populated area with little laws would suddenly change forever!  Matthew had a similar experience.  He sought gold in California too but instead of panning in the streams or digging under the mountains, he would skate on frozen water and labor in the dark bowels of a local restaurant.

It all started when Matt got back from England.  He wanted to take another run at nationals and so he began to do a partner search in earnest.  One after another girl didn’t work out for different reasons.  Sometimes things would look good and Matt would think, “This is it,” only for them to fall apart.  It was summer when I saw him at Adrianna’s wedding.  Time was slipping through his fingers and he knew it.  Suddenly there was a girl in California that might be interested!  Matt went out to see her.  It wasn’t an ideal situation but like many of the gold miners, Matthew was going to risk it to get better.

Now, while it was true that most adult readers probably went through their life where they worked two jobs, it was not like this.  “What do you mean?” you might ask, thinking I’m being an over sympathetic father.  You might state, “I worked hard and collapsed into bed only to get up the next day and do it again!”  Yes, I know how that feels too, but Matt didn’t have this luxury.  Most people’s coming of age story, if it includes multiple low income jobs, does not include attempting to become a professional athlete.  For example, I’m not trying to be a professional athlete but in the summer I try to build up to eleven miles a day.  Some years I make it and some I don’t, but it is time consuming and even exhausting.  I do that training to try and do well in the summer 5Ks and to keep in shape as an XC coach, not to try and win a national competition!  Even my training is vastly different from Matt’s because I’m only trying to get in cardio shape, Matt is a pairs skater so he has to do a huge amount of weight lifting too. 

They had started late and then the girl had a serious death in her family that was a huge blow to her.  She was out of action for awhile and Matt had to train without her.  He worked long shifts just to pay the rent (I guess the cost of living in California is a nightmare!)  In the end, Matthew did get to skate at nationals, and he improved so much from the four months in California, but he left in debt and exhausted.  He might not have struck gold but it wasn’t for a lack of trying!

Coaching.  I love coaching kids in XC and Track and I think Matt loves coaching ice skating!!  Our disciplines are different enough that we rarely talk shop about coaching, so it was neat when Matt took up a hobby I understood.  “Dad, do you want to do a 5K together?”  Matt had messaged me in my off season.  I still run year round but in the winter, I run slower and shorter.  I also tend to pack on the pounds, like it’s my job!  Still, I was very excited to do a race with my son.  He picked out a five mile one on New Years day and we met to run the course together.  I had asked Matt his last 5K time and was relieved when it was on the high side.  I should easily be able to run with him!  We started out and Matt set an aggressive pace... at least for my fitness level at that moment.  I thought, “No problem, he won’t hold onto this pace.  He’ll die, I just have to wait for him to slow down.”  He didn’t slow down!  At one point I thought I was going to catch up to him and then he blasted ahead!  Matthew beat me by a minute and had beat his recent 5K pace in a five mile run!!  Oh, my!!  He was very pleased with himself and I was happy too!!  On race day we would both drop another minute off of our time but that race was one serious race!  It was sponsored by a running club and the level of people we were up against were very different from your average Saturday morning 5K.  Still, we got cool knit hats out of the deal and ran good races! 

Getting beat in the 5K by my ice skating son was neat!  I don’t know if Matt will beat me this summer, when I’m in serious training, BUT I think he could!  He has an incredible stride and he is a great athlete!  It was fun that day and brought the Coming of Age story to its end.  Matt is not the Skater Boy any longer.  He is a man.  Matt currently coaches all the way from Syracuse, New York, to an hour into PA at many different rinks.  I don’t know if he’ll ever tour with an ice troupe again or make another run at nationals but he has become a man. 

*** Author Adrian Essigmann has eighteen books in print on Amazon.com, soon to be nineteen!  All of them are $.99 cents on Kindle, with the exception of “An Assumed Risk” which will be (Lord willing) an e-book before summer.  All of his books are available in soft cover too!  Type Amazon Adrian Essigmann and his author’s page should come up ***

Book of the Week – “Life, Liberation, and the Pursuit of Video Games”  If you’re a kid I would describe it as SAO meets Dystopian literature!  (Sword Art Online)  If you are an adult I would say it is more a modern Dystopian novel.  In the old ones, there is little the hero can do against the machine they are caught in.  Take Fahrenheit 451, where the hero merely escapes robot dogs (like a normal person) instead of blasting them with a rocket launcher.  He manages to go be with other book worms (like me:) and spends his time memorizing works of literature so that they will be preserved.  How about the main character in 1984.  He pathetically works out in his State mandatory session in front of the TV instead, a mere cog in a massive wheel.  The Rocky or Karate Kid music doesn’t hit and our hero rips his shirt off to do pull ups out of the camera’s view.  Deep in the night, our massively muscled hero, breaks into his work place, and beats up five hundred guards, who all forget they have guns!  Blowing up the building, he walks off with a ripped up tee-shirt, his arm around a beautiful girl, muttering, “Double speak that!”  Even conservative icon, Ayn Rand’s hero in Anthem, Equality only manages to escape the repressive society he lives in.  His realization of the need to escape is the reaction to the “light bulb”.  Can you imagine if Equality had discovered the “M-16”?  His epiphany might have gone MUCH differently!  You say, “There is a big difference between a light bulb and an M-16!”  Is there?  It’s not like he discovered the wheel or even the concept of a bicycle!  A light bulb is a fairly advanced piece of technology, no matter how normal it may seem to us.  Even more modern Dystopian Novels like “The Giver”, “The City of Ember”, and “The Host” (okay, the Host is more alien invasion, but it is still very close to Dystopian Genre conventions) the heroes merely escape or survive.  My novel is more like the Modern Dystopian novels where the hero has the power to fight the machine and maybe... just maybe... win!!  It is $.99 cents on Kindle!