Glasgow, Scotland, UK • March 2008 • Length of Read: 2 Minutes
From the baggy jeans with obligatory chain attached; to the over-sized t-shirts of bands I didn't even listen to; to the rock-hard hair gel; to the grumpy and depressed attitude, my early teenage years perfectly encapsulated the insecure wannabe punk-rocker vibe.
From watching too much of the Kerrang! music channel on television; to wishing I were in the cast of Jackass; to having a severe obsession with the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater video game series, my early teenage years also perfectly encapsulated the kid who idolised rebellion because he never had the courage to rebel himself.
And the culture at the heart of this movement was the increasingly popular sport of skateboarding.
Everyone could perform an 'ollie' jump, but to 'kickflip' - that made you worthy of some attention.
So, practice, practice, and practice is what I did. The bruises, cuts, and grazes on my elbows and knees never having time to fully heal before the next fall re-aggravated the wounds and sores. But these weren't marks of failure, these were marks of courage and fearlessness. To hit a ramp and then to head-to-head with the concrete pavement? That took guts.
Anyway, at that age you are just able to dust yourself off and go again. And eventually, after months and months of practice, I finally managed to land that elusive 'kickflip' move in real life, the move that you just had to flick 'circle and left' on your PlayStation controller to accomplish, and boy did it feel good.