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Canberra Today 14°/19° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Welsh / Confessions of a surreal ‘skategeezer’

IN reality, statistics would dictate I should be spending the holiday season hospitalised with a broken femur or a fractured hip or both or, at the very least, laid up home nursing a severely bruised coccyx and ego. But thankfully I was only dreaming. I recently did something, in a dream, that I’ve never done before; not in a dream or in real life. I dreamt I was riding a skateboard.

Mike Welsh
Mike Welsh.

Statistics reveal a spike in the number of middle-aged men sheepishly hobbling into ER departments over the holiday season who, after over-indulging in festive cheer, attempted to ride a skateboard with the predictably disastrous consequences.

But there I was, a 60+ man fully aware of the fact I had never ridden a skateboard, carving and cruising my way down an empty, unfamiliar suburban street at twilight.

Reliving the long-forgotten sensation of the wind in my hair (odd how the reality of baldness does not rear its ugly head in a dream). No arrogance or recklessness, no grinding or kick flipping, not a backside or front side in sight. Just calm and confident but slightly miffed (a word I only use in dreams) for not having taken up skateboarding years ago. Angry that I had missed something that is strictly reserved for the young. A fact of life brutally explained in Lee Coan’s 2014 article “How old is too old to skateboard?”. “Skating when you’re old enough to have a mortgage or haemorrhoids is not a good look,” he wrote.

Alarmingly, “skategeezers” (middle-aged men on skateboards) are on the rise.

Given the dare-devilish theme and dangerous mode of my dream transport, you’d expect a savage and shuddering return to reality, but I was enjoying this dream way too much. As I recall it ended without incident. But that’s the thing. Why was I dreaming of such folly?

Most people who dream, dream dreams that are similar. The top five dream themes involve falling, running, being naked in public, losing teeth and being lost.

To dream that you are skateboarding apparently indicates – according to a less-than-specific analysis similar to the daily horoscopes – “the ups and downs of some emotional situation or relationship”.

Another unscientific theory is: “If you zip along with no crashes in your dream, it means you have the strength and energy to achieve your goals in life”. That’ll do me.

A more rational view is my dream was a warning or reminder of those holiday season, emergency-room stats. Stay off the deck. It’s for young people only.

A fantasy I know but it is also possible that I have a special gift, one I must use only for good and therefore publish a book which offers to help unravel dreams and helps me make a bucket of money?

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Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

Mike Welsh

Mike Welsh

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