Why Your First Board Is Still Better Than Any Board You'll Ever Own Again

• Posted by Dez Fontaine Fri at 10:30 AM Filed in Personal #personal growth  #skill  #skateboarding  #nostalgia  #obsession  17 views
  click to rate

  Look, I'm not saying skill doesn't matter. I can land tricks now that would've sent my younger self into cardiac shock. Board control is real, technique is everything, all that jazz. But there's something about that first board that no amount of progression can touch, and I've been thinking about it way too much lately.

  That first board was pure hunger. You weren't thinking about style or sponsorships or whether your setup was dialed. You were just thinking about not eating pavement and maybe, just maybe, landing an ollie before school started. Every crack in the concrete felt significant. Every successful push felt like you'd just cracked the da Vinci code. You rode that thing until the grip tape was basically sandpaper and the wheels were flat-spotted into oblivion, and you didn't care because the board itself wasn't the point. The obsession was the point. The absolute inability to do anything else with your brain was the point.

  Now I got multiple boards. Nice boards. Boards I actually know how to ride properly. And they're all somehow emptier. I can land kickflips blindfolded but I can't remember the last time I felt that same electric panic mixed with hope when I stepped on a board. That's not the board's fault. That's just what happens when you get good at something. The mystery dies. The stakes feel smaller because you know you won't die trying anymore.

  There's this weird grief in mastery that nobody talks about. You spend months begging the universe for ability, and then one day you got it, and somehow that's worse than when you didn't. Because now you just got expectations. Now you got technique to execute instead of miracles to chase.

  I keep that first board in my closet. Not like some nostalgia thing, not exactly. Just like a reminder that the best feeling isn't on the board at all. It's the person you were when the board was still impossible. That's the real ride.

  What's the thing you were obsessed with before you actually got good at it? Do you miss that version of yourself?