My role: Timer.
Minor. But equally important. The 2600 Skateboarding Community Try Outs welcomes kids aged 9-15. The team worries that only four participants will join. After all, encouraging the younger generation to leave their gadgets nowadays is as difficult as landing a job when you’re changing careers. 14-year old boys who’s taller than me. Oh wait, everyone is taller than me. AHAHAHA.
Anyway.
Watching them glide with their skateboards, a sting of envy whispers. How I wish I could do that. They make it look easy, but merely standing on a skateboard deck and balancing my heavy-weighted body is difficult that my knees tremble from fear. How do they even do that? Maybe I need to know how to bike? Just like how you should know how to bike before you can buy your own motorcycle. Pfft.
Everything is breath-taking: When they stay in the air for wee little seconds, that plop when they change directions and or tricks, the way they bend their bodies to their will, and the way they stride on the railings. I wish I could have been a better photographer for them. I want to capture their movements up close. But of course, our shyness gets the better of us, so our butt stayed glued on a skateboard, watching them from afar, observing their every move, and clicking my phone in hopes to capture some magic.
The judges decided that the five of them should go to Batang Pinoy in Bacolod this December. Each one of them has potential, and that they all qualify. I looked at the participants and imagined everything in one seating.
I initially planned that my involvement will be as shallow as it gets, after all, I am not a skateboarder even if I know the basics. But I realized it too late, that I was already in too deep the moment I said “yes” in becoming the timer for the event. Caring too much, and going overboard and beyond. I guess that is my problem when I let things sway my heart.
So here we are with so much desire to monitor and support them. As to how long this will last, we do not know yet.