Stereotypes: Skaters

As I walk through my high school on a late start many students are paying more attention to me, staring even. I walk to my locker and put away my carver board, basically a larger skateboard. My friends come up and are surprised as I put my board away and ask me why I would ever do something like that. I ask what, and they tell me "why would you skate?". Skating has been a hobby of mine for about the past year or two and I use it as a past time and a motive of transportation. I asked my friends and some of my acquaintances what they thought about skaters and their responses varied only slightly. They would say druggies, dangerous, drugs, mean, cocky, and rebels. I was surprised by their answer but then again they were surprised I was a skater. A certain stigma comes with being a skater and many people only expect something bad to come from someone who is a skater. The city of Chicago believes does not allow skaters in the business districts which is a great deal of Chicago. This is due to their belief that skaters were driving of business. I found this frustrating because not everyone who is a skater is a rebel or fit the stereotype. If anything, I am the exact opposite of the skater stereotype; I am the drum major of my school's marching band and I am also an Eagle Scout. Yet when I walk around school with my carver board people look at me differently and my friends were completely caught off guard when I told them. My parents began to worry that I was getting into drugs when I first started skating but I wasn't. People began to perceive things about me just because I was skating around even though it was just a hobby of mine, it did not define who I was or my personality. There are nearly 11.08 million skaters nation wide and yet this stigma seems to follow skaters. It is a shame that people fall back onto stereotypes because it is easier to do than learning who a person is even if that stereotype does not fit them. People must learn to stop listening to stereotypes and learn who people really are at their core.