Stage Presence of a Skater

When discussing identity in children it is important to think of how individuals present their identity.  Until discussing this in recent classes I had not thought much about my own "presentation of self", especially in my youth.  Goffman discusses the importance of shared symbols.  Examples I can remember from my childhood the relate to the use of symbols are many.  One such example was was both my friends and my essential obsession regarding skateboarding, and "action sports" more generally.  During most of elementary school my friends and I would skateboard or ride our bikes outside, inside we would watch the X Games or play Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.  We would build our own ramps and design unique games to play with various tools of the trade: wood planks, rails, skateboards, bikes, roller skates, and the like.  Not only did our play revolve around these things, our dialogue reflected it.  Aside from the common "dude" and "rad", we delved deep into "Action Sports" culture and jargon discussing such intricacies as lazer flips and the superfluousness of risers.  This knowledge allowed us, in some cases, to verbalize our thoughts with more ease by using the aforementioned genre as a may hodgepodge of metaphors and comparisons to the world we were discovering.  Along with that I had to assume some personas, similar to Goffman's idea of performers on a stage.