subjective objectivity

Lake: “There’s this old dude named Dave that skates this bowl.”
Misfits: “He’s fully padded and everything, but he catches air and does all this crazy stuff.”
Lake: “I heard he used to skate with Andy MacDonald.”
Misfits: “I saw him do a spine transfer—it was just sick.”
Lake: “He used to be a pro back in the day or something, but didn’t like how skateboarding got all commercialized, so he got out.”
Me: “He’s sponsored by ColdWar Skateboards right now, he skates for their team. And he used to skate for Santa Cruz back in the day.”
Misfits: ‘Man . . . a pro skater from Lansing.”
Lake: “That’s so cool that someone from Lansing could do something cool like that.”

I forgot to tell them that Dave was instrumental in getting the skate park built as well. It was obvious that he had already achieved hero status with these kids, so it would have just been overkill at this point.
My daughter and had gone to the skate park and after carving around a bit, I decided to hit the egg-shaped bowl. There were two kids messing around in the bowl when I was on the platform, putting my pads on. They were both kind of apologetic, asked me if I wanted to skate, and were starting to climb out of the bowl to get out of my way. I told them I wasn’t planning to do anything special, just wanted to jump in with them.
My guess is that they were in junior high, seventh grade probably. The taller one had a Veronica Lake hairdo—long bangs swept over to one side. The shorter, stout one wore glasses and had a Misfits t-shirt on. They were just doing basic carves in the bowl, which is all that I am able to do.
I envied their naïveté, their youth, but left it alone. Time will crush their spirits and harden their hearts, and maybe someday they will look upon life with different eyes. However, the fault will not be mine, not today at least.
I have returned to skateboarding after a fifteen-year absence. That is longer than either of these kids has been alive. A lot has happened in that time span—all three of my children were born; my wife and I met and married; I graduated from university; I got a “regular” job; numerous aunts, uncles and cousins passed away; I’ve lived in Detroit, Lansing, Traverse City and on Manitoulin Island in Ontario, Canada.; I’ve occupied nine different residences and had at least fifteen different jobs—not in that order, of course.
A lifetimes worth of experiences and baggage has accumulated in those fifteen years. My cynicism is a defense mechanism, deployed as an act of self-preservation. I don’t want to be used or abused any further than I already have been. I tend to believe the worst of people, figure they always have some ulterior motive.
These two young kids are unjaded by comparison, if they are buying into some of the social mores of their peer group. They believe and pass on the urban legends of their group as well and have begun to accept many of the values held by that group. These kids appear to be slight outsiders—younger and not as technically skilled on the skateboard.
How will they change over time? How will they be different or the same fifteen years from now? Will they be as jaded as me, or even more so? My co-worker, Glenn, is about ten years older than I am and the two of us have completely different worldviews. We get along fine, but we have such differing perspectives on international, national and local politics. We both view them through the lens of our unique experiences and personalities.
Whose view is true? Is there such a thing as truth? Can you separate something from its context in order to determine its veracity? Buddhists believe in codependence of phenomenon—a thing cannot exist without its context. Any phenomenon cannot be an independent entity, wholly cut off from anything else.
But what if the two kids were to say—“Dave is a great skater”. Can we examine that comment and prove its truthfulness or refute the same? By what measure shall we look at Dave’s skating ability? Is there any such creature as an objective measure? Or is it all really subjective after all? Dave is a great skater in so-and-so’s opinion, or as compared to—What/who?
I believe in truth, but each of us has to determine for ourselves what is true for us. I believe Glenn to be a good person/worker, I believe Dave to be a good skater—based on my observations and comparing them to other persons/workers, or skaters that I have known. I try to judge a person by their words; their actions; their treatment of me and their treatment of others. It is still a subjective act of acceptance or rejection, though. There is no such thing as objectivity.

Speaking of objectivity, the kids and I watched “The Lords of Dogtown” later that evening. My eleven-year-old daughter asked me about the main message of the film after it had finished.
Nan: “So the guys realize what’s really important to them at the end?”
Me: “You mean skating for its own sake and friendship?”
Nan: “Yeah.”
Me: “Well . . . the movie was based on their story, but told from Stacy Peralta’s perspective.”
Nan: “Stacy?”
Me: “Yeah—he was the producer/director or whatever. He had it made, along with the Dogtown documentary. It was based on fact. Not one hundred percent factual.”
Nan: “But did they all become friends again after Sid died?”
Me: “I don’t know . . . soon after that Stacy and Tony (Alva) both started their one skateboard companies and Jay (Adams) . . . not really sure what he did. Stacy started the Bones Brigade, did a bunch of skate videos in the nineties.”
Nan: “A movie director got his start making skateboard videos?”
Me: “The Bones Brigade were huge—Powell-Peralta sponsored Tony Hawk when he first came out.”
Nan: “So the movie would’ve been different if Tony Alva or Jay Adams had done it?”
Me: “It would have to be, they would’ve focused on different things. Same story, but from a different perspective. Who’s to say which one is right? You’d have to have a third-person narrator, like in a novel to be “objective”. The narrator is the voice of truth.”
Nan: “What really happened then?”
Me: “This was based on true events, but even a movie that claims it is factual might not be completely true. Truth can be murky, muddy. Hindsight fills in the gaps—but sometimes that has more to do with what you want to see, then what actually was or is.”