Skateboard Antics Are Child’s Play for This Whiz Kid

Wearing black skin-tight pants, a tank top with a peace sign emblazoned on it, and fluorescent arm and kneepads, Dusty Wade zoomed on his skateboard to the “oohs” and “aahs” of passers-by along the boardwalk in Pacific Beach on Friday.

With his hands behind his back and his head held high, Dusty maneuvered the board from side to side in a motion known as “butterflies.”

He reached a curb, popped the top of the board up, then down; he touched one foot to the ground for momentum and then he was off again. A hot dog and nachos vendor yelled hello as the brown-haired board master whizzed by. Dusty smiled and waved.

What’s so hard about that? Well, try it like Dusty, when you’re still 3 years old.

This phenomenon may possess the youngest set of legs to ever balance atop a moving skateboard. Such records are hard to verify, although a network news team recently highlighted him for his skateboard prowess at such a tender age.

His parents, Carl and Christine Wade, acknowledge that their boy is definitely a neighborhood whiz. Everyone on the boardwalk seemed to know his name, and even strangers stopped to watch the little tyke skate.

“I believe he was blessed to do that,” Christine said. “Every child is blessed in a different way. Some can draw, some can memorize. He’s an athlete.”

Dusty is shy in talking to people, and he isn’t the sort of youngster to brag about his accomplishments. Asked how one learns to skate, he said simply: “You put your foot on it, and start skateboarding right away!”

His mother helped him: “He was born here (and) he’s always seen people on wheels. I believe he thinks everyone has wheels.”

An only child, Dusty taught himself to skateboard at 18 months. He found a board in front of the family driveway and carried it to their second-floor apartment in Pacific Beach.

But, even for a master on wheels, learning took time--one month. The youngster started in his family’s apartment by resting one knee on the board and propelling himself forward. Then he braved one foot on the board and ventured solo, without falling, his mother said.

Then came the street test. Watching other, taller, skateboarders breeze by, Dusty wanted to join them, but his mother was wary. Maybe he wasn’t quite ready. But the boy was undaunted. He just kept asking his dad to take him downstairs until his father agreed.

His mother watched him go down the hill in front of the family’s apartment, and he didn’t fall. “That gave me the confidence to let him go outside,” she said.

Dusty got so good that he inspired his 37-year-old father to take up the sport. Although Carl does a few butterflies now and then, his first time on the pavement was less than graceful.

“Oh man, I almost killed me and him,” said the elder Wade. “He was much smaller, and I picked him up. We were going up the hill, the board cut out from under me, and I fell on top of him.”

Dad got a few scrapes, but Dusty wasn’t hurt. “But I went home,” Carl said, and didn’t try the board again for another six months.

Not Dusty. “The minute we got home, he wanted to go back outside,” his father said.

“He skateboards every day, six hours a day” Carl said, amazed at his son’s discipline. And enthusiasm, so charged that Dusty skates rather than watches Saturday morning cartoons.

Dad’s false start was short-lived, though. “He wanted a partner to skate with,” Carl said. “As little as he was, he was intimidated by some of the people out here. He wanted me to be out here with him. He just felt better and more relaxed.”

After a trip to Venice Beach last month--to scope out some of the other folks on wheels--father and son set out to build a ramp from discarded blocks of wood and a sheet of plywood.

The ramp is now decorated with surfboard stickers such as Local Motion and Surf Street Mechanic. And now Dusty can practice his “fakeys,” that easy rolling motion on to and off the curved surface. He almost always wears a helmet and has learned how to fall gracefully by bracing himself with his hands and keeping his head up.

His talents have not gone unnoticed. The short piece on the network news broadcast prompted a series of telephone calls, Christine said. Even Hollywood called.

And the 33-year-old mother wants what her son wants. “I want to be a professional skateboarder,” he said.