Assume the Position

 

   Whitman, Massachusetts is a fairly small town. It has to combine with neighboring Hanson to field a high school football team. Whitman is a town away from Monponsett, and I can assure you that nothing is going on there.....until this sleepy suburb managed to command national attention recently, when they shackled and arrested a pair of 12 year old kids for skateboarding.

   Yes, it's those two shown in the photo above. They were cuffed for Disturbing the Peace, which is Gendarmese for "skating in front of their houses." Sure, they look like punks, and maybe a little time in the Brockton jail will smarten them up a bit- but you'd think that the local 5-0 would have some more pressing matter to be pursuing.

   I mean, be serious. These kids are exercising. Hell, when I was 12, I had already smoked pot, and wasn't 4 months away from...well, that's a whole other post. Let's just say that there are a lot of worse ways to kill time in a boring bedroom suburb. These kids were exercising, for Christ's sake.

   Deserved or not, skateboarders have that Bad Element rap that usually isn't associated with athletes that operate outside of pool halls. They conglomerate- you see one, you see the whole tribe. Where kids gather in groups, trouble often follows. It tends to be sort of pre-teen trouble- theft, vandalism, littering- instead of AK-47 fire and crack sales.

   I can recall feeling an unexplained chill in the air, and imagined the gaze of Tony Hawk settling on this ancient corner of America. Sure enough, that day I saw Mr. Hawk (I hear his dad's name is "Mike") on CNN, offering what seems to be the sane solution to the problem- build a skate park.

   Get every business that is whining about kids skating in their parking lots, have them kick in some cash, and build a skate park on the outskirts of town. Everybody's happy. The kids get a place to skate. The local merchants do some Good, and don't have kids doing nose grinds on their customers' Lincolns. Some local contractor gets the job, and the economy is stimulated. The cops are freed from this slap in the face that doing their duty entails. Tony Hawk can go back to being 25 years too old for his sport.

   Even if you think skateboarders are punks who deserve to be in Brockton's court with the serious people, you should look askew at this case. Those skateboarders were just the 2004 version of your grandfather's stickball game. They are the distant cousin of Wayne and Garth having to move the goal when the car comes down their street. Had my sisters and I been conducting our 1980s Hopscotch Wars in Whitman instead of Duxbury, we'd be in the court with people who Kill.