Life is like a game of poker. You are dealt a hand, but unlike poker, your hand is as good or as bad as you decide for it to be.

I ascended the stairs, skateboard in hand and fear in my heart. I was headed for the large wooden beast. My sunglasses slipped down my nose from sweat as I drew near the top. My hand that was on the rail leveled out, and I found myself there. I shuffled my feet, sweeping them, looking for the edge. Upon finding it, I paused, holding my skateboard. I felt the smooth surface of the board, my hand sweat against the Indus- trial trucks and ATM wheels. I placed my board on the coping, my front and back wheels leaning out over the drop, and then sat down. I ran my hand down the smooth wood, feeling the steep descent, calculating the crouch and angle in my head. It was now or never. My five years of street skateboarding had never prepared me for what I was about to try. My friends told me I would be the first person in my position to attempt this, but that did not matter to me. All that mattered was that this was the next step in being a skateboarder, and continuing my passion.

I placed my back (left) foot firmly on my board. Holding it steady, I then stomped down with my right foot. Suddenly, the world I knew so well drastically changed. Gravity was put into action, and defied in the same moment. I could feel my board vibrate smoothly under my feet as it sped downward. Almost at once, the large wooden beast pushed me in different directions, causing me to swerve and almost lose balance. I could feel the wood forcing me this way and that. I could sense when I reached the other side and began rising with the board, increasing speed. The wood pushed me upward, and for a brief second, I was frozen in midair, before gravity took over once again. I was pushed downward, where my board rolled back and forth, losing momentum, until it came to a stop.

I stepped off my board, feeling accomplished after successfully riding my first halfpipe. I took my skateboard in one hand and my blind man’s cane in the other, tapping my way toward another ramp to skate.

“BLIND KIDS DON’T SKATEBOARD”

Twelve years of my life had gone by, and I had finally arrived at the cross- roads — the crossroads where one chooses to continue on the path that they are on, or to branch off in a different direction, for either better or for worse. I began to see the choices form in front of me when my grand- father — Poppy, as I called him — died. For years I had been picked on and teased, for I was born blind. I was never accepted by other kids. My grandfather was my only close friend, and after his death, the choice came to me — the choice to continue to be teased, remaining nothing but a blind boy, noticed by no one, or the choice to take a different path. I made that choice just before my 13th birthday. I still ride that choice to this day, and will never stop.

When I was 12 years old, in mid-May, I was close to graduating from the fifth grade. My school was about two blocks from my house, and an easy walk, so I walked to and from school each day. Usually these walks were uneventful, but one day stands out in my memory. That day, while walking home, I was stopped by a few of the local skateboarders. Each was around my age, but they all were bigger than me. The skaters picked on me, calling me names, and most of all, pointing out what I would never be able to accomplish. One of those things was to be a skateboarder.

“Blind kids don’t skateboard,” they said. After teasing me , they skated off, leaving me alone and scared. Afterward, whenever I heard the sound of skateboard wheels, I hid, not wanting to be found by another skateboarder.

Two months later, my other grandfather, my Gran Don, took me out for my 13th birthday. He took me to a toy store, to let me pick out what I wanted for my birthday. I was on my way out of the store, having found nothing, when I bumped into something, knocking it over. I reached down to pick it up, and my hands moved over a long piece of wood, with sets of two wheels at each end. I had never felt one, but I knew what it was. That afternoon, I took the skateboard home, and began to practice on my back porch.

I had to get to know my board — to know everything it would and wouldn’t do, depending on where I put my weight and what I did with my feet. After learning the mechanics of skateboarding, I ran into a problem. I lived in a busy neighborhood, complete with trash cans, cars, mailboxes and an infinite number of other obstacles. I could not see any of these things, so how could I pos- sibly skate around them?
LEARNING THE TERRAIN

One night, cane in hand, I walked my neighborhood. I spent long hours bending down on sidewalks to feel cracks, recording them to memory. I crouched in driveways, studying the angles, marking the positions of trash cans, mailboxes and cars, committing them all to memory as well. By the beginning of my sixth-grade year, I had a very detailed 3-D map in my head of my neighborhood, en- abling me to skate it blind. Other skaters were out during the day, so I ventured out after the sun set, to rule the streets at night. I skated by memory, hearing and studying the textures of the ground under my feet and board. I skated low to the ground, and would run my hands on the concrete as I skated, feeling where I was going, feeling my speed. I found that while I was crouched, I had a better sense of the world around me and the concrete I was carving. It enabled me to feel the movements go through my board, so I could make the proper maneuvers. I later learned that this is an actual skate style called the “Z-boys style,” where the skater puts their hands on the ground as they skate, mimicking surfing moves. I used my hands and my crouching as my eyes as I skated. I had no light and I needed no light. Those who did not know my name called me “The Blind Skateboarder.”

The years passed, and my passion as a skateboarder grew. I skated to school, to friend’s houses and any other chance I could get. The skates I enjoyed most were the ones I shared with my friends Cayle Newton and Corey Calvert. Cayle lived at the bottom of a huge hill, where we used to have downhill races and courses. In the courses, we would put cones in the middle of the road and swerve around them as we skated. For me, they would put beepers inside each of the cones so I could hear and skate around them. We would set up small wooden ramps at the bottom of the hill to launch off. In Cayle’s driveway, we would mess around to the sounds of rock ‘n’ roll coming out of the old dusty CD player in Cayle’s garage. We weren’t that good, and really didn’t care to be, because we were having fun skating to the sounds of Led Zeppelin’s “Houses of the Holy” album. Life was simple. Very few people knew of me, so I got almost no attention for what I was doing. This was fine with me. Back then, and to this day, I skate for the passion, and I skate for me. But the summer I was 16, for the first time, attention did begin to come my way.

GETTING NOTICED

Starting when I was 7, I had attended Camp Barnabas, a summer camp in southwest Missouri for children with disabilities. Now that I was approaching 17, I was nearing my last year at Barnabas as a camper. My 10th year at camp was also the 10-year anniversary of the camp. That year the TV show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” came to the camp to make over the home of the owners, Paul and Cyndy Tease.

In order for the show’s host Ty Pennington and his crew to fix up their home, Paul and Cyndy had to depart for a vacation. Before leaving, Cyndy pulled me aside and spoke to me sternly.

“There is to be no skateboarding while we are gone and ‘Extreme Makeover’ is here,” she said. “Do you understand, Cameron?”
I smiled and nodded my head. “Yes, ma’am, my wheels won’t touch the ground,” I said.

But while the cat’s away, the mice will... well, they will skateboard.

The next week was spent skating around the construction, doing inter- views with the “Extreme Makeover” crew and consequently gaining a spot skating on national television. While talking to a few members of the crew, I discovered that Ty himself used to skateboard, which gave me an idea. I found Ty one day and asked him if he would like to skate with me later that evening. Ty agreed, and word spread quickly that I was going to skateboard with him on the camp’s tennis courts. When the moment arrived, people surrounded the tennis courts and stood peering over the dining hall deck. I rolled a spare skateboard over to Ty and tossed him a helmet.

“We’re going to do follow the leader,” I said to Ty. “It’s simple: I’ll lead and do tricks. Just follow my lead and do the tricks I do.”

Ty strapped the helmet to his head and placed his feet on the board. I shot down the hill, and upon leveling out on the courts, I did rapid kick- turns and wheelies, Ty right behind me. I did 360s around poles, and Ty followed. Finally I swerved around to the left and aimed myself for the wheelchair ramp that separated the upper and lower tennis courts. I crouched low in my favorite stance and coasted down the ramp. After clearing it, I skidded to a stop and jumped off my board, as Ty stopped behind me. He got off his board and shook my hand.

“Pleasure skating with you, sir,” he said. “Same to you, Ty,” I replied, as applause sounded around us. At the end of the week, Paul and Cyndy arrived back at camp from their
trip. The first time Cyndy saw me, she walked straight over to me. “I heard there was quite a bit of skating while I was gone, Mr. Black,” she said. I smiled and shrugged my shoulders.

GRAN DON’S GIFT

Unfortunately, I returned home to be met with tragedy. My Gran Don, who had bought me my first skateboard, had been diag- nosed with lung cancer. The doctors gave him only a few months to live. Starting then, I made it a point to skate to his house every single day to spend time with him. There were some times when he had enough energy to talk, but other times he would just fall asleep in his chair.

While this was all going on, I landed my first sponsor, a local skate shop called Hi Performance Board Sports, owned and run by a man named Chris Johnston. Chris and I became good friends over the next few years. He spread word of the Blind Skateboarder, and sometimes even got me free gear.

The school year went by, and it would be my last year in Norman, Oklahoma, where I was born and raised for 17 years. At the end of the school year I would move to Missouri. In the mean- time, I continued skating for Chris and visiting my Gran Don. That next summer I took first place in a talent contest at Barnabas. Soon after that I would return to Oklahoma to see my grandfather for the last time.

We had received word that he was in the hospital and had been given only a few days to live. I stayed at my friend Corey’s house, and one night in August I went and visited my grandfather in the hos- pital. I walked over to his bed and stood at his side, telling him all about skating for the shop, the talent contest and everything that had been going on. He made no sign that he could hear me or un- derstand what I was saying. Finally my dad walked in.

“Cam, let’s let Gran Don get his rest,” he said. I nodded and squeezed my grandfather’s hand as I turned to leave. I was at the door when I heard Gran Don speak. I went back over to his bed- side so I could hear him.
“I’m so proud of you, Cam; keep skating,” he said.

That was the last time I spoke to my grandfather, and the last time I ever saw him.

The next afternoon, while I was skating some of the old hot spots around town with Corey, I got a call from my mom, telling me that Gran Don had died early that morning. Corey came with me to attend the funeral, and we sat, listening to people talk about my grandfather, Don Black. You don’t often expect to hear your own name come up in a funeral, except in the list of relatives, so you can imagine my surprise when they began speaking of me. They talked about some of the last words my grandfather said about his relatives before he died, and I was last on the list.

“The doctors only gave me a couple of months, but my blind grandson skateboarded to my house every day to visit me.” They said my grandfather had said that it had been my own courage and strength channeled into him that made him hold out for so long. I had not cried through the entire funeral, but I then shook violently from trying to hold back tears, and I did not succeed. After the funeral, Corey and I skated around the old neighbor- hood, including skating by my grandfather’s old house. Doing so seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

NEW HOME, NEW FRIENDS, NEW TERRAIN

I said goodbye to my best friend Corey, and my family, my skate- board and I returned to Lake of the Ozarks, Mo., where I would finish out my last two years of high school. Unfortunately, anyone who has ever been to this part of Missouri knows there is very
little skateboarding to be done there, what with the winding country roads and gravel parking lots. There was only one skatepark in the whole of the lake, and it was down an old country road, next to impossible to find and about 45 minutes away from pretty much everything. I did what I had to do to skate, though, and that meant employing the driving of my newfound friend Der- rick Jeffries.

Derrick and I met once I moved up to the lake and started going to school there. Derrick is a very nice guy, and supportive of skating, but unable to do it himself. He is good at understanding the technical side of it, though; he knows how angles work, and how a trick should work if done properly. I ended up making Der- rick my unofficial videographer. We made skate videos together, with my skating, and Derrick’s skills with a camera, and a video ed- itor on his computer. Although Derrick does not skate himself, he won’t hesitate to tell me when I suck, and I’m OK with that. For the next two years, I hung out with Derrick, and on the occasions I was able to talk him into it, we would spend all day at the lake skatepark. It was just a quarterpipe, a halfpipe and three small ramps, but it was better than nothing.
Derrick has definitely contributed to my skateboarding, and not just with his knowledge of physics and video editing. One time we arrived at the skatepark to find it completely soaked in rain water, but we didn’t give up. I tried skating in the wet areas anyway, while Derrick stole a large squeegee from a nearby shed and cleaned all the water off the concrete and halfpipe. Another time, pretty re- cently, we ran into a similar problem. The ramps had been dried by the warm morning sun, but the coping of one of the quarterpipes was still wet, and we didn’t have anything to dry it with. Derrick got up and sat on the edge of the coping and scooted his butt across the coping until it was dry.

After graduating from high school, I attended a community col- lege not far away from home. I don’t have much to say about my ac- ademic experience there, but it was my first exposure to a completely concrete skatepark, and not a half bad one at that.
It had many ramps, three halfpipes, pyramids, banks and a small bowl that my friends and I nicknamed the Cereal Bowl, because it was perfectly round, and rather small. That park was where I really discovered my personal skate style.

SKATING IN THE DARK

I am not an aggressive skater. My style is very relaxed and laid back, much like my own personality. I try to make my motions and moves be very fluid. One of my friends once described my style as relaxed and yet incredibly focused at the same time. I love the relaxed feeling I get when going up and down a halfpipe, or when kick- turning up and down a quarterpipe. When you do those things as a blind skater, it gives it a completely new feeling, one that I hon- estly can’t find the words to properly describe. It is something you have to experience, which is what sets my skating apart from any other skater; it is something only I can experience.

The year went by. My friends and I skated our concrete heaven day in and day out, but we usually cleared out by late afternoon, when the park became overrun with other skaters. One day, when the park had become so congested we couldn’t skate, we kicked up our boards, and crammed into my friend Tony Maldonado’s car. Tony hadn’t skated in years and he had decided to start riding again. The problem was there wasn’t a decent skate shop anywhere in town. So we ended up going to Walmart, buying Tony a board and get- ting yelled at as we tried out each board down the aisles.

I don’t remember if was Aerosmith or Van Halen that was blaring in Tony’s car that night when we drove to Burger King. As we drove, we discussed the places around town we could go skate, like the back of the Kmart parking lot, or behind the old church.
“Why don’t we just go back to the park tonight?” said Tony. “The street lights would be enough light to skate, and Cameron doesn’t even need the light.” So it was agreed: We would return at night, for the park was open 24 hours a day — to our knowledge, anyway.

We returned that night, and the park was abandoned. The halfpipes and the cereal bowl glowed in the moonlight and far-off street lights. Our favorite spot to skate in the park was an area we called the Playpen. The Playpen was a pyramid in the middle of a wall of quarterpipes that went all around on three sides, and opened up to the rest of the park on the fourth side. There was graffiti sprayed all over the ramps and on top of the pyramid, which was decorated with black and white checkerboard. Some of it was very well done and artistic, some was profane, and some was just funny, giving us a good laugh as we skated over it. We skated, launching off the top of the pyramid, doing lazy kickturns of the walls of the quarter pipes and manuals up and over the top of the pyramid.

It wasn’t long after we began our night skate that we were interrupted by a very bright light shining down into the Playpen, and a voice rang out to us in our skateboarding sanctuary.
“All right, skaters, come on out.” One by one we ran up the side of the quarterpipe toward the cop car. I went over to the cop to talk to him.

“Are you aware that you’re not allowed to skate here after dark?” he asked.

“No, sir; we weren’t, actually,” I replied. He asked why we were here anyway, and I explained to him that, being blind, I have a hard time skating with a lot of other skaters. The constant movement and noise confuse me, and I don’t want to hit or hurt anyone because of my lack of vision. Since I do not need the light, I come to skate at night.

“Well, I understand,” said the cop. “As long as you don’t cause any trouble, I’ll tell the other officers to leave you alone.” I shook hands with him, and he got into his car and drove off, leaving us to continue our night skate session. From then on, I ventured out at night to the park as the only skater who didn’t require light to skate.

That fall I made the front page of the town’s local newspaper, and that summer I made my first appearance in a magazine.

Now we come to me in the present day.

HERE AND NOW

Today I am on the summer staff at Camp Barnabas, and I love serving the campers. During that one day of the week when no campers are there, though, I tear down the hills and the tennis courts on my skateboard. While not at Barnabas, I attend Missouri State University. I skate all over campus, from class to class, with my blind man’s cane held out in front of me. I don’t usually skate with a cane, and don’t need it to skate, but it makes others aware of my blindness as I skate, coasting down the side- walks and weaving between students and staff. For an English paper, I wrote on skateboarding, and called the library for the blind, asking them to send me any book they had in Braille on the history of skateboarding. A week later, “The Concrete Wave: A History of Skateboarding” by Michael Brooke was inside my mail box. Mr. Brooke left his e-mail ad- dress in the book, so I decided to contact him and tell him in a nutshell the story I have just told you. Michael took to my story quite well, and decided he wanted it in his skateboarding magazine.

Not long after that, I began working with Troy Churchill, who gave me the board I am riding now, and Scott Imbrie of Original Skateboards, who gave me my first longboard, which I am now quite fond of.

I have appeared in the Missouri State University newspaper and am well known across campus as The Blind Skater. At night, when the campus is silent, I put on my headphones and pump out Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, The Who and other classic rock bands, while I skate through the darkness.

Now I stand upon a six-foot quarterpipe, my board positioned over the edge, preparing for the drop in. In front of me lies a par- adise of wood, metal and concrete — a world where gravity is de- fied and put into action at the same time; a world made up of slopes, ramps, drops, rails, angles and straight shots. But it is dif- ferent for me. I have taken the sighted world, the world of the skateboarder, and combined it with the world of sounds and shadows, the world of the blind. I have turned it into a world that only I know, a hybrid of both worlds that is my day-to-day life. I bring the voices of my two grandfathers to mind as I prepare to drop in: the voice of my Poppy — “You be careful on that skate- board, boy; you’ll bop your noggin” — and the voice of my Gran Don — “I’m proud of you, Cam; keep skating.” With these in mind, I stomp down on the board, shooting down the quarterpipe, into my own world.

There have been many successful blind people. There has been Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder. There have been blind men who program computers and even climb mountains. And then there is me. I’m Cameron Black, and I’m the Blind Skateboarder.
The End (for now...)

If I may, I would like to take just a few more minutes, to thank those who have influenced or helped me in my life and with my skateboarding.

Angel Black: My dear mother, who has always been able to per- fectly mix nurturing with encouragement, taking care of me and yet supporting me as I go out into the world.

Todd Black: My awesome father, who has always used tough love, but has never stopped loving me as his son, always pushing me to do my best.

Alexis Black: My sister, who also uses the tough-love tactic, but has always looked after her little brother.

Melton Demastus and Don Black: My two grandfathers, who have encouraged me as far back as I can remember.

Cayle Newton: My longtime best friend, Cayle, standing at 6 feet 5 inches and 250 pounds, now deems himself too big to skate any- more, but sits on the side of the halfpipe playing his guitar as I skate.

Corey Calvert: My other longtime best friend. Out of all the pro skaters in this world, I will always choose to skate next to Corey Calvert.

Derrick Jeffries: Derrick is a faithful best friend and is never afraid to push me to do better; he believes in me, and many times has used the phrase, “That sucked. Do it again.”

Emma Rodgers: Behind every great man, there is a great woman, and behind me is my girl friend Emma, with her constant support, encouragement, inspiration and love.

I thank you all for your support, and I look forward to seeing what is in store for the future.

With that being said, I’m going for a skate.