Peter Pan really shreds in a halfpipe

There are certain things no right-thinking person can do if he truly hopes to be considered adult by the population at large. He can't wear flip-flops as everyday footwear, for example. He can't use Internet chatroom-spawned lingo — Cya L8r, for example — in regular communication. And he can't ride a skateboard.
There are other things, obviously (no cartoon characters on bedsheets OR underpants; no backwards baseball cap) but these are some of the basics. Unfortunately, it appears even at the most basic level things are going downhill.
Consider flip-flops. Minnesota winters ensure they're out of the question for at least half of the year, but during the warmer months a style of footwear commonly referred to as shower shoes is becoming increasingly popular among a group of people apparently in too big a hurry to tie a pair of shoes. Last year, a member of the national champion Northwestern University women's lacrosse team caused a stir when she wore her flip-flops to the White House to meet President Bush. The act was annoying both from a fashion standpoint and because of the number of horrible "flip-flop flap" headlines it spawned.
And chat room lingo? It's everywhere and as instant messaging becomes more popular it's only going to spread. Florida Rep. Mark Foley has been in the news lately for the sexually explicit instant messages he exchanged with underage former pages. Yes, it's unconscionable that a grown man would solicit sex from a 15-year-old boy. But isn't it also terrible to realize that this same man also on multiple occasions typed "lol" instead of "laugh out loud" and on at least once typed "me 2," apparently too busy to bother with the additional keystrokes necessary to spell out "too"?
OK, maybe that's not the best comparison, but still, do we really want our country to be run by people who might respond to a particularly good e-mail forward from the Prime Minister of Canada with "ROTFL!"?
As bad as those other things are, though, it's the skateboarding that's been most on my mind most lately. Until last weekend, I didn't even realize it was an issue. When I come across skateboarders around the Twin Cities they appear to be almost exclusively 15-year-old boys with no apparent fear of catastrophic injury. Apparently, the skateboard culture is a whole lot different in other parts of the country.
Last weekend I was in Santa Barbara, Calif., to attend my cousin's wedding. With some time to kill Saturday, I wandered along the beach and happened upon a skateboard competition, a fact that should have let me know right away things were a little bit different. In 31-plus years living in Minnesota I have happened upon bicycle circuses and Lutefisk suppers but never once an organized skateboard competition.
The really amazing part, though, was who was competing. I caught only two age divisions: the 30- to 39-year-olds and the 40- to 49-year-olds. And there were a lot of them. The oldest competitor there was 61. SIXTY ONE! Next thing you know my parents are going to take up big wave surfing.
It appeared to be a pretty diverse group. Some of the guys could have been doctors or lawyers. One claimed to be a distant relative of existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. The guy who did the announcing had long, blond semi-dreadlocks and spent the entire time shirtless. Actually, he looks exactly like the guy you pictured a minute ago when I told you I saw a 40-something California skateboarder.
They are guys who, if they came of age somewhere other than California, would probably spend their Saturdays golfing or jogging or, in some cases, panhandling.
I guess it's just a different culture. I actually heard one skater refer to another as "bra," a greeting (I assume it's short for "brother") that I didn't think existed outside of the Partick Swayze/Keanu Reeves surfing/bank robbing classic "Point Break."
Still, while I'm willing to make an exception for those X-Games skaters who make their living on a skateboard, I have to draw the line somewhere. At a certain point it's just time to put the flip flops and the skateboards and the Super Man Underoos away say Cya to childhood for good.