This is Joey Harding. He's Navajo, and as such, nature has endowed him with amazing capabilities that it hasn't given the rest of us. I've been good friends with Joey for a long, about 12 years or so. The first time I skated with Joey, me and Nick Graff saw him standing on a skateboard and staring at us as we rode down the street, so we stopped and talked with him. We invited him to skate with us. He was on a kmart board with japanamation dudes drawn on the bottom, so I didn't think he knew how to skate. But then he started ollieing all these drops where we were skating which really surprised me. But then, in the middle of our skate session, he asked what time it was, then got up in a hurry and took off. "Sorry guys, gotta go, I'm late for Dragon Ball Z!" That was my introduction to Joey, and I've loved the guy ever since.
Actually, funny cop story just came to my mind. Two of them. Both of them were with Joey. First off, you have to know that the St. George cops have some kind of personal vendetta against skaters, and they will pull their gun on you at the slightest hint of non-cooperation on your part. They're hard core and unashamed of it. So I have a million and a half cop runnins in St George in the 6 years that I lived there. I have 1 that I can remember in Provo in the 4+ years I've lived here. There's just a quick comparison to let you know what we were up against. So The first story, this cop rounded us all up and was super pissed that we were destroying St. George's beloved parking lots and sidewalks, as skateboards are known to just wreak havoc on pavement. Those silicon wheels will do a number on a parking lot where as a 2 ton truck pulling a trailer and dripping oil all over the place couldn't possibly do damage to asphalt. So the cop saw us skating somewhere and sat us all do. He was lecturing us pretty good about how much trouble we were potentially in depending on how nice he was feeling that day. Joey sat quietly the entire time and didn't seem to really care what the cop was saying. The cop, noticing Joey's indifference towards him, thought he'd take control of the situation and said, "hey, China boy, what's your name?" Joey answered in a very monotone, dry, emotionless manner, "I'm not Chinese." We all laughed at that, and the cop stood there feeling stupid on his bad judgment call. "Ok, what's your soash (short for social security number. the cop had asked all of us for our "soash" so he thought Joey would play ball. He underestimated Joey)?" Without changing his tone, Joey answered, "What's a soash?" Somehow, in his emotionless, dry response, Joey defeated that cop. We all laughed really hard, and the cop stared at the ground for a second. You could see the frustration and feelings of self-doubt on his face. He didn't take anyone else' info after that, and he just let us go another day, with our wax to destroy curbs and our broken arms to sue business owners. It was pretty awesome.
Ok, like 4 more cop stories with Joey just popped up into my mind, but I don't have enough time to tell them all right now. I'll stop there. But I will say just a couple words to remind myself of what they are so I can tell them another time. "Joey, run!" and a simple shake of the head. Welcome to the blog, Joey!
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