Last fall, Cathy Carroll, a mother in Bend and a former colleague of mine, wrote me she was on a mission to change skateboard culture in Oregon.

Her cause: She wants skaters to wear helmets.

Generally speaking, the ends of the age bell curve, the very young and those over 35 or 40, tend to opt for helmets. Skaters in their teens and 20s — the majority — don’t bother with brain buckets.

“I can’t be passive anymore regarding how the culture doesn’t support wearing helmets. I’m seeking ways for this to change. It obviously can’t be legislated; it needs to be peer based,” she told me.

Fortunately, although Cathy’s son has had some significant slams that required doctor visits, he’s never sustained a head injury. It’s hardly a stretch of the imagination to think about other possible outcomes from a bad fall, and Cathy’s concern about the lack of helmets is not unfounded. People have died from head injuries incurred while skating. In 2021, a 13-year-old in Washington died from a subdural hematoma four days after he hit his head. According to KING5.com, doctors said he’d have survived had he been wearing a helmet.

Cathy even had a plan to try to get skate companies on board to change attitudes. With the way everyday life intervenes, not to mention skating’s DIY, nonconformist ethos, born long before the X-Games and Olympics came around, Cathy hasn’t made much headway. But she still sees the importance of helmets.

Losing one’s head protection

When her and husband Thor Erickson’s son was younger, he and his friends all wore helmets. After all, in Oregon, it’s the law for kids under 16. (Cathy asked that I not name him her son. The stigma is real.)

Sometime in middle school, they stopped wearing them, she said. Again, not all skaters eschew helmets, but opting not to wear them absolutely puts Thor and Cathy’s son and friends in the majority. If you’re in Bend, take a glance at Ponderosa Skatepark next time you’re driving by on Wilson Avenue and count how many helmets you see.

We could waste the entirety of this space trying to discuss why things are this way. Accurate guesses at reasons for not wearing a helmet may include “They’re uncomfortable,” “I’ve never hit my head,” “YOLO” (you only live once) and that old chestnut “Don’t tell me what to do because something something freedom.” My daughter Lucy thinks people don’t want to look dorky.

That’s cool, yet it remains a fact that depending on the severity of a direct hit to the noggin, a helmet could save one’s life or greatly reduce harm. If you’re cynical like I am, you don’t bother trying to convince anybody that something as small as an unseen pebble could send even Tony Hawk flying — and not in the way he’s used to.

It’s really difficult to change the heart of a culture. I wear a helmet at just about every ramp, bowl or skatepark I ride. Yet even my pro-helmet stance goes bye-bye when I’m street skating on curbs, a discipline where the board is rarely more than a foot off the ground. Unless I’m skating alone and being paranoid, I’m wearing a beanie or ball cap instead of a helmet.

See what I said there? “Paranoid.” You have to be at least a little concerned, hopefully needlessly, to see the value of a helmet.

Bend skateboarder Jason “Suddy” Helzer, owner of No Class Skateboards, with whom I skate frequently, told me the spot he’s skating and how hard he’s going at it dictate whether he wears his helmet. I often wear one skating places he doesn’t bother to. And I always worry a little when he doesn’t.

Voice of experience

I used to have the same policy. Fortunately, I bothered with a helmet in 2008, during a weekend trip to Lincoln City’s epic, 40,000-square-foot outdoor skatepark. Built by Dreamland Skateparks, it’s among a handful of skateparks that helped put Oregon on the map. Among the park’s features is a covered bowl, helpful given the frequent rainfall at the coast.

When it started spitting rain, we moved to the covered bowl. Though it has a roof, the lack of walls allowed for the light rain to moisten the smooth concrete, and unbeknownst to me until I hit it, there was a wet spot on the upper, vertical reaches in a back corner of the bowl.

At maybe 8 feet up the wall, I lost traction. It felt like I hung in the air a second, Wile E. Coyote-style, before I came crashing down on my tailbone, my back and finally, my head. It was the hardest slam I’ve taken in my now-41 years of skating.

I was 40 then, and well aware that at my age, any age, a helmet is advisable. It came in handy that day. Feeling like a half-squished bug on a windshield, my first impulse was to cry and crawl out of the way. A couple of older guys — older than 40, anyway — told me to just stay put for a second.

“Your helmet saved you,” one of them said.

That’s a long way of saying I feel for Cathy. Her concerns are valid.

I was almost certainly concussed. I couldn’t turn my head for two weeks and went to my first and last chiropractic appointment. I learned that whiplash can cause tinnitus, and that constant high-pitched mosquito squeal in my head has been with me for 14 years now. One does adapt to tinnitus — it’s that or go bonkers — but I hate when it comes into my awareness, as it has just now because I’m writing about it.

As permanent injuries go, I’ll take it. I was lucky.

I now take no chances on wet concrete. I’m sometimes the only guy in a helmet during a session with my friends. Our individual goals change every time we skate. Some want to master a certain trick or relearn an old one. Others want to figure out a new line or height carving around a familiar bowl.

I’m the same way, but skating regularly is so necessary to my sense of well-being and sanity, my main, overarching goal at any sesh is to be at the next one, too.

My helmet is the closest thing to a next-sesh insurance policy I can get.