Rule number 11: Do not bother children when they are skateboarding.

Summer vacation was fantastic. My family got a foreign exchange student from Spain named Alejandro, who was awesome to have around.

    My family also went to New York and Washington DC with Alejandro and had a great time there.

    Another thing that we were able to do is float down the Ashley River. Me, my brother, and two friends of ours got a standup paddleboard, and four tubes that were tied to the paddle board. Two of the tubes were pretty good. In fact, they were pretty nice for Walmart. One of the other tubes was a tiny toddler tube with a rainbow on it, and the final one was a giant yellow duck. While we were floating down the river we saw a six foot alligator. To see if the gator was following us we sent the rainbow tube back to see if the gator took it. (It didn't.)

    Another highlight of the Summer was the platform. When Alejandro was here, our friends took us out on their boat where we found a rope swing and wooden platform. The rope was strong, the ladder rungs to get up were great, and the fifteen foot high platform itself was one of the sturdiest I've ever seen. We had a blast jumping off the platform and doing tricks.

    A couple days later we were hoping to find a path from a neighborhood near my house to the platform. We were able to find it and in the next week we went there a ton and had a great time.

    Then, one day, we went back and found that the platform was broken. The screws were still there and some ladder rungs were as well, but other than that it had been destroyed. A pile of boards sat on the river bank. I was so mad. Who would do that? Now, instead of a bunch of teenagers jumping into a river, they were sitting at home on their video games like a bunch of morons. All because someone thought that 'it wasn't safe.' Before I continue, let me tell you. The platform was completely safe. I only hit my head a few times, and I'm fine. Plus I only hit my head a few times.

    So we did what any sensible teenagers would do. We decided to rebuild the platform. A few days later it was half way done, and a lot sketchier. At this point you hand to walk across some two by sixes stand on the edge of them with a foot on each, and jump off. A bit harder to do a backflip off, but we still managed.

    Some teenagers that we had talked to suspected that the group who had torn down the platform was the same group who had previously put nails on the dirt road to the platform, popping car tires.

    We have had a great time jumping off the sketchy platform since then. But a couple days ago, we went to find that it had been torn down yet again. We will build it again, but it all comes down to one thing best explained by Jordan B. Peterson.

    In the book Twelve Rules for Life: An antidote to chaos, rule number eleven is: Do not bother children when they are skateboarding.

    In this particular chapter, Peterson tells a story of when he worked at the University of Toronto and there were several boys who skatboarded around there. They would grind down the long plantboxes and would often fall and scrape themselves up. But that was the fun part. The risk was why they did it. They wanted both to experience the thrill of danger, and to prove to themselves that they could do hard and dangerous things. Then, the university put up the 'skatestoppers.' These were small steel brackets that blocked the skateboarders from doing their tricks.

    Today, many teenagers are doing bad things. They are doing drugs, smoking, and who knows what else. What if they had something to do instead of all of those things. It could be something fun. What about jumping into a river?