I wrote out a Christmas list this year. With a pencil and paper. The old-world method, like climbing up a telephone pole to make a call. Like they did on Green Acres. Hard work is rewarding, like changing your own oil in your car, or toasting a Pop-Tart in the toaster instead of the microwave. That things smell like Pizza Rolls anyway.

I am 35 years of age and I wrote out a Christmas list. It was phenomenal!

When I was a kid, I would wait with such anticipatory delectation, bursting at the seams as I envisioned the latest Homeric correspondence of remote-control cars, bikes, video games, and action figures that was known as The Toys R Us Catalog. Upon its arrival, I’d get my #2 pencil (just in case Santa used the same scantron as Mrs. French, my 2^nd grade teacher) and paper and take immediate inventory, deeply analyzing while simultaneously making the necessary cuts, all in the name of building the quintessential Christmas List with the proficiency of the Ancient Aliens that probably built the pyramids. I’m a believer in alien forms.

Me, being the consummate professional, left no stone unturned in my endeavors, digging deep into analysis with my peers. Josh, he was my source, and he knew all about the top toys on the streets. While meditating on the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo, he was my 16-bit guru. (I got the Sega, obvi.) It was so exciting! Waking up at 5:00am, beating my siblings to the Saturday edition as my dad pondered over news and sports while drinking Maxwell House. I’d go through the pile of discarded words next to my dad’s recliner with the urgency of an open-heart surgeon, throwing everything in my wake until I saw it. The Toys R Us Catalog. Feelings swept over me like Ryan Gosling in The Notebook. I too have something to build, and there were endless possibilities on the horizon. The best toys at my fingertips. Yak Baks, Talkboys, SpyTech’s hidden camera, a bicycle with neon-green front shock-absorbers and those little Tiger hand-held games! Ninja Gaiden and Electronic Tecmo Bowl! My mind would spin. I’d expeditiously write something down, then see something way cooler and erase what I had just written down to add the way cooler toy. Holy shit! It was a rush to get the list out the door to Santa, not a moment to spare! Building that list was one of my best memories of being a kid.

Adults, man, we aren’t supposed to write Christmas lists. Once we get bills and responsibilities and judgement for being hungover on a Wednesday, for some odd reason we are banned from this enumeration of ecstasy, at a time when we need it most. When we were kids, we didn’t have to do shit. Literally nothing, except do flash cards and learn cursive. We didn’t need to be picked up out of the gutter, and we never required wake-up calls at noon because we drank on Tuesday night. So, I wrote my adult Christmas list. And I put toys on it! Because my life is hard AF. My back always hurts. I feel like how one feels after they just helped a friend move. Eight-hours of lifting and my sweating thighs rubbing together like they’re trying to build a fire on Naked and Afraid. I feel like this ALL OF THE TIME. My knees creak like the floor of an antique store. Like they’re dialing Morse Code or beating a 5-gallon bucket outside the subway. Get this, I went golfing the other day, and the next day, my right elbow had a dull pain, and my right hand was tingling. It could’ve been a stroke, even though I’m only 35, because my diet is shit and I don’t have a taste for exercise. Just calamari. I’m still alive though, writing this crappy essay with acid reflux, so I’m doing something right. #QuentinStrong

I need something in my life that doesn’t involve Tums and iced knee wraps and opprobrium over my Velcro shoes and drinking habits. I deserve toys and fun in my life!

At the top of my adult Christmas list was a skateboard. My number one activity from 6^th grade until I got my driver’s license, some 19-years ago. Like, I haven’t been on a skateboard for the length of time a baby could be born and go to college and become an actual adult. That has neck brace and stitches written all over it. I had the exact one picked out, though. (The skateboard, that is, not the neck brace. Not a bad idea to get that knocked out though). One that would look good with my blood on it after the inevitable happens. The accident report would read:

Toy Machine skateboard. Red monster on it. Can’t tell where the monster ends and the blood begins. Victim is crying.

 I look forward to hitting my medical deductible by March. I can’t wait to have my own room at the local assisted living. I love playing Rummy!

When I got my driver’s license, my dad gave me a Chevy S-10 with a four-cylinder engine and a four-speed manual transmission. It was his old truck, still registered in his name and all that, because I was 16 and had no sense. As we’ll see in this anecdote.

Often, my friends and I would go to the town square and skateboard. The square had benches to do nose-grinds on and storefronts that had little 3-step sets to ollie down. One day, these city workers were doing some work at the Civic Center, and they had some road cones out to block cars from getting too close, and I thought that having my own road cone would look boss in my room, and it would tell my mom “room closed.” She’d always get pissed when I stayed up late to watch Monday Night Raw, and this cone would give me the privacy a 16-year-old needs. Plus, I could ollie over it and say I stole it. Win win! I was the Creed Bratton of high-school skateboarders, so I liberated the cone by putting it in the back of my truck in the middle of the day with like a hundred people around. I just figured if I acted cool, then people wouldn’t say anything. You know, like when that girl was stabbed in New York in the 1960’s and a bunch of people saw it but nobody called the cops because they thought somebody else would call the cops. It’s called bystander effect. I assumed the order of the bystander effect, especially since this was a road cone, not a murder.

Well, as it turns out, a road cone is more important than a human, and my mother promptly received a call from the police, stating whoever drives the black S-10, please have them bring our road cone back. I guess the police sat the cones out, and they too thought road cones were handy. So, every time I went skateboarding, my mom would tell me not to steal shit, as a joke, because she was making fun of me. She wasn’t mad that I stole it, she thought it was funny. Just like the time the cops picked me up from school and took me home for the day. She also thought that was funny.

Different things happen when you are 35-years old and on a skateboard. For one, my mom isn’t here to tell me not to steal anything and not get arrested. But my wife is here, and she gives me her own guidance for a successful day of skateboarding.

Here are some examples:

One: What will you be wearing? Presumably in the event I’m found out cold at the bottom of a set of stairs. She’ll give the police a description as they call local hospitals to see if I’ve been found.

Two: Do you know where your health insurance card is? I asked her why, and she said we should always have this important stuff organized. Are you an organ donor?

Three: Have you taken your Nexium and Claritin? I don’t want you to get all itchy and start coughing because of your allergies and acid on your skateboard.

 Four: Do you think this is how you’ll die? I asked her why she said this, and her reply was because I’ve seen your athletic ability, and if it were a car, it would be a Ford Pinto where the gas tank explodes because it got hit on the ass. If it were a football player, it would be Mark Sanchez running face-first into a lineman’s fat ass. If I encapsulated your raw athletic ability into an ooze like one of those things on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that the ooze comes in, it would inevitably fall and break without being touched and miss every shot from 5-foot out to turn anything into a mutant turtle. We would have nothing to worry about.

 Five: Be sure to carry your skateboard with your left hand. Remember when you hurt yourself golfing, I don’t want your elbow hurting you tonight. Then you’ll sleep on your left side and snore like the sound of a kazoo.

 Six: Do you have any allergic reactions to any type of pain killer or medication?

 Seven: Don’t stay out too late. I get worried when you drive at night.

Still worth it. For one, I’ve never broken my arm, and I always wanted an arm cast that people could sign. So, I’m not angry about the prospect of my humerus giving way to the concrete jungle that is the skater’s domain. Let it snap like a twig for all I care, I’m not interested in a sling.

I’m not going to lie though, it felt bittersweet to put my Crocs sandals to the side in favor of the Chuck Taylor, which does make for a hip skate shoe. It’s just that the Croc is such a versatile shoe, it’s easy to clean, easy to put on, and easy to wear, especially with a nice white tube sock. The Chuck though, is like getting fake boobs when you’re 35, but for dudes. As soon as I tied ‘em up, I walked out of my garage with a feeling of superiority coming over me like a demon overcoming its host. I checked for cars. The coast was clear. I sat the skateboard on the black asphalt of the street and began my precarious adventure. With my arms close to my side, in order to pad my fall when that happens, I step one foot in the middle. The board moves a bit, like a bull does when it’s caged and ready to be released. I step my second foot on the board, and immediately wonder what my wife will do when she needs heavy stuff lifted, or things hung on the wall, because I won’t be able to do them anymore. Will she take another lover, or will she wait for me to come out of this coma? It’s a riveting story, resembling a plot from All my Children. Then all of a sudden, I get a vision, one of her unplugging my life support so she can charge her iPhone. She is texting a guy named Enrique, he’s Latin and can dance and doesn’t have any moles on his back. He’s only 5-feet-10, but he can use MY stepping stool to reach high shelves, and he wears tight black shirts and slim white chinos that lend to the belief that he can lift heavy things. With this as my motivation, I push myself along on the skateboard, my right foot on the board, and my left foot thrusting my motion, defending my wife’s honor against Enrique and his gelled pompadour! After several pushes, I get out of breath, and put both feet on the board. I’m moving! I’m skateboarding. I’m Tony Hawk. Then I think of my wife spending even more money at World Market and getting more furniture that I have to put together and lift up the stairs and I wonder if I shouldn’t just skate this thing right into the highway like Bodhi from Point Break.