:: The Beginning of Asshole Chris ::

It's well established now, and something of an inside joke amongst our friends, that my brother, Chris, has a bit of a jerky side to him. Sure, he is for the most part a nice guy. But there's been plenty of times – after a few beers – where he's not so nice. Not towards us, mind you, but usually to complete strangers. Which of course, usually makes for big entertainment for the rest of us. 

This persona has become known as Asshole Chris, and nearly every one of us has a story. 

A few months ago, I tried to explain the Asshole Chris phenomenon to Christene, because she's always so damn adamant that this cannot be the case – "He's such a nice guy," she always says. And while I explained, I tried to think of how this whole asshole personality came about. 

Now, it's easy to assume that it came about as soon as he hit 18/19 years old and started drinking and going out to the bar. But in fact, I think the seeds were planted much, much sooner.

When I was 18 and Chris was about a week away from turning 15, the two of us went to the movies to see the South Park movie on opening weekend. Now, this was in the days when – for big movie openings – a theatre employee would introduce the movie and talk to the crowd before the film actually started. 

Before South Park, the employee offered some kind of prize – probably a free movie pass – to the person who could do the best Cartman impression. Even though it was a packed theatre, only one guy volunteered. So up he walked to the front of the theatre, grabbed the microphone, and did his impression.

It was not good. Awful, as a matter of fact. When his impression was over, the theatre remained almost dead silent – some people weren't paying attention while others were simply too polite to boo. 

Except 14-year-old Christopher. 

After about a one-second pause, he yelled out from our seats near the back of the room, "THAT FUCKING SUCKED!!" 

He got some laughs, some scattered applause and the rest, as they say, is history. 

But that was the start. 

:: Instant trade analysis ::

Yesterday, the Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks traded Dustin Byfuglien and a bunch of extras, to the Atlanta Thrashers for a couple high draft picks. The deal was widely — and instantly – panned as awful for ATL, as it should be, because despite his playoff heroics, Big Buff isn't exactly a 30-goal scorer, and first- and second-round picks are a lot to cough up.

Not too much though, for Atlanta, where years of awful decisions don't get you fired, but get you promoted instead.

The trades sounds even worse when you consider that the draft picks Atlanta moved to Chicago are the same picks they got from New Jersey in exchange for their former superstar Ilia Kovalchuk. When you consider the two moves together, the Thrashers essentially traded a 45-50 goal scorer – not to mention team captain and face of the franchise – for Byfuglien, Ben Eager, Johnny Oduya, Niclas Bergfors and a prospect who didn't even finish his last junior season because he attacked a guy.

Basically an all-star for spare parts.

And after hearing that, I think the trade with Chicago was summed up best by Chris, who said to me yesterday:

"Wow, that's like when we were kids and I traded your best hockey card for 25 shitty ones."

And you know what? It's exactly like that.

When we were kids, one day when I wasn't home, Chris traded my Ed Belfour rookie card – which at the time was probably worth $10 bucks (big money in a kid's world) – to some neighbour kid for a stack of shitty commons. I was not very happy.

Come to think of it, I still haven't forgiven him.

What a dick.

:: Candy Salad ::

When I was a kid, I had what I thought at the time was a culinary creation for the ages. In retrospect, it was a pretty disgusting idea – a total Fat Guy move – but it's the kind of thing you'd expect from a pudgy 11-year-old.

My idea – which came to me while eating dinner at my grandparents' old house in South Surrey – was for a Candy Salad. What you'd do, see, is replace lettuce with chips, and all the veggies, croutons and other things you'd normally find in salad would be replaced by various delicious treats - gummy bears, chocolate chunks, Smarties, Ju-jubes, etc... And what would replace the dressing?

Well chocolate and caramel sauce, of course.

See? I told you it was a total Fat Guy move. Regardless, this was my brilliant idea. I never actually made the Candy Salad – there's probably no way in hell any parent would allow such a thing to be made, but still, I always remembered my brilliant (at the time) idea.

And I was reminded of it again this week when Christene was telling me about a surprise wedding shower that somebody threw for somebody else at her office the other day.

A lot of people brought food and goodies for the event, including one woman who channelled her inner-child and brought, you guessed it, a candy salad. (She called it a chocolate salad, but it's the same general idea)

It had the following things: chocolate almonds, chocolate raisins, Aero minis, Reece's pieces and "any other chocolate I could find."

I mean, there's no Doritos or caramel sauce, but still, she stole my fucking idea.

If I could go back in time, my pudgy 11-year-old self would totally copyright that shit.

:: Chips and a Coke ::

On Friday afternoon, needing a junk food/caffeine rush of some kind to get me through the last few loooong hours of work, I walked across the street and bought a Diet Coke and some Doritos. And as I walked back with these two items in my hand, I was for some reason reminded – out of the blue – of my Grade 8 gym teacher.

I am, as you are likely aware, not in the greatest shape. Sure, I'm not 288 pounds like I was in my Alberta heyday (I'm a svelte 227 now for those scoring at home), but I'm not about to go run a marathon either. Or wear anything slim-fitting, for that matter. 

But during the early days of high school – before what I'll call the Pizza Hut Era – I wasn't yet The Fat Kid. I was just a regular-sized guy. And my Grade 8 gym teacher was Mr. Bergen. He was a gruff no-nonsense guy, but he always got along well with the jocks – pretty standard for all gym teachers everywhere, I'd guess. He was likable enough, as far as most were concerned. But I never really liked him. To be honest, I thought he was a bit of a pompous dick.

So that's probably why I never paid much attention to anything he said, and it's also the likely reason I quit the Grade 8 basketball team halfway through the year. But more on that in a bit. 

One thing – possibly the only thing – I ever remember Mr. Bergen telling us in class came during a little speech he gave about the importance of being in shape and all that stuff. His point was that a healthy, active lifestyle was actually pretty easy to keep up. (His ulterior motive was to get us to sign up for the basketball team. He was the coach.)

"It's easy to stay fit, but it's all about choices," he told us. "When you go home from school today, for example, you can do two things. One, you can grab a basketball and go get some exercise in the driveway or at the school. Or two, you can go sit in front of the TV and watch cartoons with chips and a Coke."

Obviously, I eventually chose to align myself with the chips and Coke option. But it may surprise you to know that this wasn't my first choice. 

My first choice was to actually get some exercise. So I signed up to play basketball. Which wasn't really a stretch for me – I knew how to play, had a modicum of athletic ability, and I loved sports, so why not?

But aside from the 7 a.m. practices before school, the other thing that dissuaded me from the game – and made the chips and cartoon option look pretty sweet – was what I quickly noticed about the rest of my new 13-year-old teammates.

They were all douchebags.

Of course, at the time, I probably didn't think of them as "douchebags" but I know that I didn't like their attitudes one bit. They were mostly from James Kennedy Elementary – which was the elementary school hoops powerhouse, if there was such a thing – and I just thought they were, much like the coach, pompous dicks.

(Turns out my suspicions were correct – by Grade 12 they had all turned into your typical douchey jocks. You know, the kind of guys who all shave their heads to look the same, and say "Bro" a lot. So in retrospect, I'm glad I recognized it early and got out when I did.)

I was a mediocre player on the team. I played a few minutes off the bench, don't remember scoring much if at all (the latter fact also describes my early 20s) but I do recall being a pretty good rebounder, which was shocking for a kid who was barely five-feet tall. But basketball interfered with my weekend hockey schedule, and because hockey was more important and less douche-infested, I quit the basketball team after about a month. 

And that was really the beginning of the end for me, fitness-wise. I suffered through two years of miserable gym classes, where the pompous teachers spent most of class-time trying to act cool around the jocks while not really giving a shit about the regular kids, while the token one-year-older-because-he's-a-retard-and-failed-gym bully spent his time making life hell for the younger kids.

By Grade 10, my knees and head (concussion) were pretty sore from hockey, so I got a doctor's note to exclude me from my last year of mandatory high school gym. Sure, I probably milked it, I could've toughed it out, but by then I'd just had enough of all that high school gym class entailed – the asshole teachers, bullies, dumb jocks, etc...

And thus began my long, loving relationship with the Coca-Cola company.

Now, I'm not blaming douchey high-school basketball kids for putting me off the road to fitness and down Dorito Boulevard. I've become what I've become because of my own choices, and to be honest, I don't necessarily regret it. I'd rather be fat than an asshole. 

Just makes me wonder what might've been, is all, had I stuck with the whole basketball thing.

Maybe I could've played pro. Or at least been a gym teacher.

:: Songs stuck in your head ::

As I was sitting here, browsing the Interweb for potential housing purchases (I'm moving - perhaps you've heard), my iTunes, which is on random, started playing some late-'90s Korn song that I didn't even know I had in my playlist.

Anyways, the song itself is pretty forgettable, but I hadn't heard it in ages, and it instantly reminded me of the summer between Grade 12 and college. And it's encouraged me to write a post that I'd been meaning to write for awhile (And actually may have written before, but a quick archive search turned up nothing, so I apologize if this is a repeat).

Through the years, there have been a handful of songs - or collections of songs - that instantly bring up a lot of memories, mostly good. And with that in mind, here they are:

1. Cruisin' Classics
When I was a kid, we took a handful of road trips to California - to go to Disneyland, or to visit my family in Northern California. And we had a handful of tapes (remember them?) for the trip, but the one that got played the most was Cruisin' Classics, which I'm pretty sure was bought at a random gas station one day, for about $3.99. Now, anytime I hear any of the songs from this tape - Rock 'n me by Steve Miller; Don't Worry Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin; Kokomo by the Beach Boys, among others - reminds me of sitting in the back of my parent's Volkswagen van for hours at a time, asking "Are we there yet?! Are we there yet?!"

2. Collective Soul
Anything off Collective Soul's self-titled blue album reminds me of Grade 11 spring break. Chris and my parents had gone out of town somewhere for a hockey tournament, so my parents let my stay home for 4-5 days by myself, along with Jay, who was in the early stages of living with us at the time. We didn't really get up to too much debauchery (because we were nerds), but we did drive around a lot in my dad's Hyundai Sonata, and we left the same Collective Soul CD in the stereo the entire time. And listened to it over and over and over again. So whenever I hear a song off that album, I think of that week - complete with drinking, driving downtown for no reason other than because we could (not while drunk though), playing tennis, and Duke Nukem. Good times.

3. Korn
I already mentioned this off the top, but Korn was still pretty popular when I was in Grade 12. I'd switched schools for my final year of high school, and my new friends were big fans of Korn and metal bands. Whenever I hear, say, Freak on a Leash, for example, all I remember is house parties at my friend Brett's house, which almost always got waay out of hand and would end with cops being called, doors being pulled off the hinges and toilets being shattered. Yes, shattered.

After spending the first 16 years of my life being cripplingly shy, this was the year I finally started coming out of my shell a little bit, mostly because Brett forced me too. He was outgoing, fun, and popular with everybody, and even though I was shy and at a new school, he made a point of dragging me along for the ride, including me in everything, and I always appreciated that.

It was a far cry from Grade 11, where I became something of a pariah because I was too smart, too responsible, not cool enough, etc.. (You know how high school works). I don't see anybody from Grade 12 anymore - not Brett either, because he kind of went sideways after high school, but these are the memories I'm left with.

4. Thunderstruck, AC/DC
Anybody who ever played minor hockey will likely have this song stuck in their head for eternity. It was always the default "hockey warm-up song" during the 5-minute pre-game warmup, and was a go-to song at pretty much every tournament you'd ever go to. It was also the "theme song" of the Langley Thunder, back before they were the Hornets and then, finally, the Chiefs. And when I was 12 or 13, I went to a lot of junior hockey games.

5. Apologize, by Timbaland/One Republic
Not a great song, by any means, but it's a more recent memory. Last spring, when Chris, Jenna, TO, Carly and I went to Las Vegas, this song played in the Monte Carlo casino - where we stayed - over and over again for four days. Now, whenever I hear it, I think of sitting in that casino, in front of a slot machine or video roulette table, drinking my face off, and losing money. So no matter that this song isn't that great, and is definitely not my style, it has grown on me because of what it reminds me of.

6. The Distance, by Cake
The first time I heard this song was when my cousin Brian came to stay with us for a week from his home in California. He was up here for a hockey scouting showcase that Chris was also in, so Brian and a couple of his hockey buddies - Marcus and Beltzy (real name also Brian) - stayed at our house, and they had a Cake CD. I'd never heard of them before, and now they are one of my favourite bands. We had a really great week, and even though I keep in touch with Brian on Facebook, the other two guys have sort of fallen off the radar, which kinda bums me out, because they were great dudes.

7. Any weird punk cover of a previously lame song
Mike likes punk music, and he especially likes really weird music. When I lived in Kamloops, he made me a CD with a ton of weird cover songs by bands I'd never really heard of - like Ghoti Hook, Black Train Jack, MxPx. They covered songs from Celine Dion, Paul Simon, and a bunch of '50s tunes. I still have the CD on my shelf, and the songs are all in my iTunes library (Even the bad quality ones, which suck), so whenever one comes on randomly, I think of driving aimlessly around Kamloops with Mike and Shaun, eating Arby's and stealing garden gnomes.

Feel free to add your own songs/memories in the comments.

:: Surviving the round ::

"You prick! I hope you lose 53 balls (ha!), hit every water hazard and bunker on the course, and get kicked off the course for holding everybody up and generally being the worst golfer in history." - Kelsey's message to me yesterday, after my Facebook status bragged that I would be golfing while everyone else was working.

When I was in high school, I had a friend, let's call him Mike (because that was his name) who loved to tell stories. And by stories, I mean blatant fucking lies. Now, I've never begrudged a person for embellishing a good story ever-so-slightly - God knows I've been known to tell a good drawn-out story now and then - but Mike's fibs were so ridiculous they were beyond believable. In fact, looking back on it now, I wonder why none of us called him on his bullshit, but that's besides the point I guess.

One of my favourite Mike stories included the time he was a pitcher in a Little League game and accidently hit the batter in face, and his pitch was so incredibly fast that the ball stuck in the kid's forehead and when they took it out, you could basically see his brain.

I'm not even making this up - this was the story told by a 15 or 16 year old.

Then there was the time that he took his 2-wheel drive truck off-roading, smashed the shit out of all his fog lights and punctured a tire, then tried to tell ICBC that somebody had vandalized his truck in the school parking lot. The insurance adjustor took one look at his truck, saw the undercarriage caked with mud (which he stupidly didn't think to clean off), and told Mike to get the fuck out, and never try pulling that shit again or he'd be charged with attempted insurance fraud. To this day, he'll never admit the truth.

However, for the purposes of this post - which eventually will be about golf, I promise - my all-time favourite Mikeism was his tale about a round of golf he once played. He told us once that, when he was 13 or 14, he was golfing on a PGA course, and on a Par-3 he got a hole-in-one.

Now, consider so far the holes in this story:

- Mike was just as bad at golf as we were, if not worse. The odds of him hitting a hole-in-one on any course, ever, in the history of time, were about 53,000:1.

- He had never travelled anywhere, and with no local course being of the PGA variety, the mere idea that he set foot on a pro golf course was impossible.

However, despite these pretty significant problems with his story, Mike proceeded to dig himself into an ever bigger lie when he described how it happened. To hear him tell it, his tee shot made it just to the side of the green, then it clanged off the clubhouse (or some other on-course building), then hit an old man who was doing some maintenance (seriously), and then bounced off the man and into the cup.

So...yeah. That is my favourite golf story ever. Me and some friends from high school still laugh about it to this day, about 12 years after its first telling.

And now, the point of this story (I told you earlier I tend to ramble, what the hell did you expect?): Yesterday afternoon, Bobby and I golfed a round at Newlands that, at times, was nearly on par (pun intended) with Mike's story.

Well, in truth it's not really very close at all, but it was still the craziest round I've golfed in a couple years, and I wanted to tell you about it. (But I also wanted to write about my old friend Mike's stupid stories, so I had to find a way to combine them).

We teed off at 11:52 a.m., and the first tee box is oddly situated - it's elevated, and tucked right between the restaurant and the pro shop. I teed off first, and expected to hit a mighty slice (it's just what I do). However, no slice I've ever shot topped this one - after making contact with the ball, it did not travel the usual 85-100 yards before fading right. Instead, it went right immediately after contact, and smashed into the pro shop window.

(editor's note: Hi, I'm the next Tiger Woods. Nice to meet you)

Slightly embarrassed, I took a mulligan and tried again. Clang. Once more, off the pro shop, and into the garden. Lost ball #2. Now I was pissed off. So I teed off one more time, and this time successfuly got the ball 15 yards out - thus missing the pro shop hat trick - before it curved hard right and nearly killed some people on the putting green.

Now really mad, I just decided to hit from somewhere up the fairway so I could get on with things. So, we continued on our way up the fairway, and after Bobby rattled a few shots off some trees, we were both equally rattled and angry.

"Let's just get this fucking hole over with," we said.

So we hopped into the cart, planning to finish the hole asap. I stepped on the gas.

Nothing.

Put it in reverse. Nothing.

The fucking cart was dead.

So, we left our stuff there, on the edge of the first fairway, and marched back to the pro shop to explain what happened and get another cart. Soon, we had a working cart, went back to our old cart and transferred all our gear over. However, as we got set to continue, we realized that there were about 4 different groups on the par-5 hole, including a pair of old guys right where we were.

So we waited. And the people behind us waited. And the people on the tee waited too. We (or, to be specific, the course's broken cart) single-handedly delayed a whole ton of people before even finishing the first of 18 holes.

We rushed through the second hole, a short par-3, and the third was a rush job too. I was so rushed and rattled, in fact, that I lost another couple balls with my terrible slice. It was at this point thatI realized my summer goal of breaking 100 was not to be reached today. If I could break 115 that would be a small miracle.

By the fourth hole, we started calming down, and ended up joining up with the two old dudes in front of us - both of whom were awful golfers too, and one of the guys looked like John Madden's identical twin, which was actually pretty kick-ass.

Anyways, the next 15 holes went OK, although I eventually lost my eighth and final ball and had to borrow a couple from Bobby (plus I found a couple, which helped). In fact, I even had a couple of birdie putts (which I obviously missed) and I re-learned how to hit my three-wood from the fairway, which was another bonus.

But my main source of enjoyment was watching John Madden golf. I already mentioned his age - probably late 60s or early 70s - and because of this, he was certainly not the strongest guy, and his tee shots were pretty short, although usually straight. His mid-range game wasn't too bad either, but what was awesome was his putting.

It was absolutely terrible. He assumed every putt - no matter the green, no matter the distance - had a break on it, and he'd play it as such. He pushed every single putt at least a foot wide, sometimes much more.

And then he'd swear and piss and moan and complain about the course.

"This fucking course is a joke. Where's the break!? We're on a hill for crissakes!"

"I'm never making the mistake of coming here ever again. This is ridiculous."

I'd guess from these outbursts that he was either a) losing his marbles in his old age, and therefore thought he was much better than he actually was, b) having stroke and therefore not seeing straight, or the most likely, c) He was a pretty good golfer in his younger days, and could not come to grips that his game was getting worse as he aged.

Whatever the case, he was fun to watch. He didn't even putt out on probably 8-10 of the holes. He'd just make his putt from 6-8 feet, miss it by 30 yards or so, swear, pick up his ball and stomp over to his cart, where he'd sit and stew until the rest of us were finished.

And after we finished on the 18th green (well, he finished first because he just picked up his ball and went to the cart), we went over for the customary "Thanks for the round" handshake, and all he grumbled was, "You too. Now let's get the fuck out of here and go to the bar."

And then, the best part - when we added up our scores afterward, I had shot a 102.

Somehow, despite losing seven balls (and taking the penalty strokes that come with them) I had, inexplicably shot the best round of my summer.

102. If I took away the shitty first hole, in which I nearly killed a man on the putting green, I would have fucking done it. When I get back from Vegas, I still have a week's holidays, and I plan on golfing that fucking course until I get to 99 or better.

And if I have to kill a man on the putting green to make it happen, or bounce a hole-in-one off the head of John Madden's grumpy identical twin, I'll do it, so help me God.

"It'd be rad if I was black." - Christene

"In (high school gym class) square dancing, you basically got an A if you smiled and looked like you were having a good time. I was always good at it, because back then I was a naturally sunny person. That was back before life handed me some shitty cards." - Christene again.

:: Random Childhood Memory #58: Vacation Edition ::

Growing up, we used to go on one "family vacation" per summer. Once in awhile we'd mix it up – a big camping adventure or Puerta Vallarta (we went when I was 13) – but for the most part, we rotated between three main spots - Edmonton, to visit my uncle and go to West Edmonton Mall; Southern California, to go to Disneyland; or Northern California via the Oregon Coast, to see the sights and visit family near San Francisco.

While each vacation had its charms, as kids, we obviously like Disneyland the best (I think we went two or three times), because, well, because it's fucking Disneyland, and it's basically part of a kids' DNA to like Mickey, Space Mountain and those giant pickles they used to sell for three dollars. Any person under the age of 13 who doesn't like The Happiest Place on Earth is basically a Nazi. But I digress...

Though Disneyland was the most anticipated trip, my most memorable was a journey we took to San Francisco when I was 9 or 10. Though today I'd kill to spend some time in NorCal, back then I'm not sure my brother and I fully appreciated it. The year before we'd been to Disneyland for the first time, and it was very tough for our tiny little elementary school brains to understand why we'd come alllll the way to California again without going to see the Big Mouse and his friends. Sure, the distance between San Fran and Anaheim is 601 km (I checked) but still – WE'RE ALREADY HERE! C'MON LET'S GO!!!!

As we did in those days, we hopped in the Volkswagen camper van that we had purchased from my grandparents earlier in the year, and set out on our two-week trek. Being that I was 10 and Chris was 7, we were not the most easy-going travellers – especially when those travel days are 8-9 hours long. We would have been completely unbearable if my mom had not planned ahead for this situation.

At the time, both my brother and I collected baseball player stickers. They were great – essentially they were baseball cards that you would peel the back off and stick on the designated team page/rectangle.

Before the trip, my mom purchased an entire box of these Topps Baseball stickers, and every hour or two, when we were getting restless, she would reach into the box and toss a pack or two of these stickers at each of us. We would then be kept occupied for the next five to 10 minutes, as we found places in the book for our new Mark Langston or Hubie Brooks sticker.

It was also during the early parts of this trip that we became acquainted with the rock 'n roll stylings of Steve Miller, the Beach Boys and Bobby McFerrin (my dad purchased a Road Trip Tunes mixtape).

But things went bad around Sacramento.

The temperature was about 40 degrees celsius out (or something close) and the old VW van started to fizzle out. Eventually, it just died by the side of the road. While my dad tried to flag down some help and call a tow truck, the rest of us sat in a nearby air-conditioned McDonald's for hours, drinking orange pop and eating fries. Though the ensuing details have been glossed over by time, the end result was this: Eventually we moved out of our new home at McDonald's and into a local hotel, and the van got a new engine put into it for the low, low cost of $3,000 (USD).

Once that was finished, we carried on with our trip, visited our family and the wonderful city of San Francisco, and also ate an Earthquake Sundae at Ghirardelli Square, much to the disgust of the other diners (They were just jealous).

It was, without question, the most expensive family vacation we ever had. But they say you can't put a price on a memory, and if that is indeed the case, then it was money well spent, because to this day, every time anyone in my family (including extended family) sees a Volkswagen camper van driving down the highway, they say the same thing:

"Uh oh, they're in trouble."

I felt compelled to write this long-winded, mildly amusing (at best) story because less than 48 hours from now, I will embark on another holiday. And although it won't be a family vacation in the sense that my parents aren't coming, I will be going with my brother.

We realized today that we've never been on a vacation together since the old family vacation days. He went with Jenna to Disneyland a couple years back. I went to Cancun a couple Octobers ago, but he did not. Then Jenna and him went to the Mayan Riviera for a wedding that I did not attend, and my previous two trips to Vegas were with mom and/or dad.

So Thursday morning when we embark for our trip to Phoenix (and later, Vegas!) for some Mariners spring training baseball, it was be a first. We're gonna drink some beers in the outfield bleachers, hob-nob with minor-league players destined to spend another year with the mighty Everett Aqua Sox, and heckle opposing teams' outfielders from our seat on the stadium's grass.

And I'm gonna check if they sell baseball stickers, too.

(Hey, it's a five-hour drive from Phoenix to Las Vegas.... gotta stay entertained).

:: Random Childhood Memory #42 ::

When he was a teenager, about 15 years old if I recall correctly, Ian left Walnut Grove and spent most of the summer with his cousins in St. Catherines, Ont. Why he voluntarily chose to stay for an extended period of time in Ontario I'll never know, but that's what he did.

He finally returned later in the summer - thus bringing an end to the saddest, most boring summer of Chris's life – and he brought with him a fairly expensive skateboard that he had purchased back east. I guess his cousin had got him into it or something, I don't know.

We all laughed at him because, let's face it, Ian with a skateboard is akin to me with gang tattoos. What a waste of money, we said. But Ian – who always boasts that he never gives in to peer pressure – was adamant that he was going to use his new board, "like, all the time."

For a couple weeks he'd bring it over to our house, and try channelling his inner Tony Hawk by doing ollies and kickflips at the end of the driveway.

Then the summer ended, school began, and we never saw the skateboard again.