  actual things spoken by members of my family today "wow, there are a lot of shoes in here! "--my mother, after walking into a gigantic shoe outlet store "ok, who wants to be handcuffed!? "--my 10-year-old nephew, screaming, after opening up some army toyset my dad bought him in a futile effort to get him to settle down "holy shit, i can't believe he's going straight for the half-pipe! "--my dad, as we stood and watched my nephew try out his skills at a nearby vans skatepark. we essentially spent the whole day there, where there are empty swimming pools and ramps and railings. i'm sure all these things have official names i don't know despite my love for all things x-games (they start august 16, yay!). he fell a lot, which i expected. what i didn't expect was how he kept trying and falling and trying and falling. there's no way i would ride a skateboard into a 10-foot deep swimming pool. unless there was water in it. then, maybe. there's an eight-year-old girl who hangs out at the skatepark who is an absolute prodigy. i've seen her there before and i was pretty excited when i saw her arrive today. i could watch this kid skate all day.
in ten years, she'll be on the circuit or whatever it's called. seriously. i wish i had been that good at something other than masturbating when i was eight years old. the girl is my idol. and, my nephew is totally in love. 
