“Dear Teenage Boy At The Skate Park” Letter Goes Viral, And It’s Completely Awesome

As the Mom of a five-and-a-half year old girl (she would say five and three quarters and be really earnest about that, by the way), I love this story so much.    Mainly because I would’ve been JUST LIKE THIS MOM.  I would’ve taken my sweet girl to the skate park, encountered a bunch of swearing teenage boys, and there’s no way I would’ve wanted to leave, either.  I would’ve said the same thing as this Canadian Mom – “so what if it’s full of older boys….they don’t own the skate park.”

Instead of being run over by these teenage boys, one of them – about 15 years old – saw Jeanean Thomas’ daughter and started to give her tips on skateboarding.  It turned into an hour-long skateboarding lesson, and as it turns out, he’s somewhat of a skateboarding legend in the area named Ryan Carney, and he got a lot of flack for helping her little girl out.  But he didn’t care.  It was the right thing to do.

And to that, I give him a hearty Chick saaalute.

Because this is the good stuff, y’all.  And while there’s a part of me that gets a little sad when I think that this sort of story goes viral, because it’s NOT the norm these days – I try to remember that for every Ryan Carney, there has to be 100 or so of him that never go viral, right?

And that gives me renewed hope for humanity.