- Oh my God, no!
No!
(intense music)
How do I get up?
Ah, I forgot to stop!
This is gonna be harder than I thought.
(upbeat music)
I'm an instructor
and I'm gonna learn how to roller skate.
I am kind of just a clumsy all around person.
I've always been the skinny, lanky kid.
I thought I'd challenge myself
to be able to do something I'm not good at.
No, No.
And show my family and friends,
and any stranger in the park that's looking,
what I accomplished in seven days.
Step one. We need to acquire some roller skates. Boom.
I borrowed them from a friend,
so honestly thankful they're a little scuffed up,
because they're about to get a little more scuffed up.
If you know what I mean.
I haven't looked at a pair of skates in years.
I opened a wikiHow article
that explained how to rollerskate.
Walk like a duck.
Step three is walk like a duck.
Okay. I don't know how much I trust this.
I learn by doing, so I was just like, screw this.
I'm just going to freaking learn this on my own.
Let's see.
(Tucker crashing onto the floor)
(laughing)
No. Okay. Maybe I should go back to the article.
Okay. Here we go, here we go.
How do you stop? Oh my God.
It's on the front. It's on the front.
I wanted to skate in the garage
just because it was the flattest ground I could see.
No!
And then I saw the ramp,
and I realized if I could conquer that ramp,
I could do anything.
It'll be good. Okay.
(blowing raspberries)
Fully fell on my ass and I still have a bruise actually.
Okay. Can we just look at this?
I'm sopping wet.
Oh my God.
It's been maybe, like, fifteen minutes.
No, no, no, no.
This is gonna be harder than I thought.
Tony Bravo is another talent resident
here at Buzzfeed with me, a fantastic roller skater.
The epitome of beauty and grace.
So I thought, why not learn from the best?
(Tucker and Tony shouting in excitement)
- Hello, hello, hello, hello.
Hi, I'm Tony.
I've been skating since I was pretty young.
I started off skate park skating,
and now I've been doing a lot more groove skating,
flat ground skating and stuff like that.
- She's just such a warm presence.
Even though my abilities were quite limited,
she was just so encouraging.
- There you go. There you go.
(Tony clapping hands)
There you go.
(Tucker barks excitedly)
I see you brought
absolutely no protective gear with you, Tucker.
- Not an ounce.
- That is a no, no.
First day, I really wanted Tucker
to get comfortable using his toe stops,
because learning how to stop is very important.
(Tucker grunts)
And bring that--- There you go!
- I mean!
- Let's just try to move forward.
Lean your body out.
Push your-- Oh!
(Tucker and Tony laughing)
Not quite like that.
Okay, let's try a different one. Let's try a different one.
He did really well on the first day. I was so shocked.
Keep those knees bent. There you go.
He was not holding back at all,
which made it very exciting.
(Tucker shouting)
- So I definitely got to my car that day.
I was a little discouraged.
I really hope that I improve.
(laughing, whimpering)
Oh, it was a big reality check.
Damn, you're gonna have to put in some work this week.
Um, okay.
Can the final performance just be me going straight?
Honestly I'm on a rampage.
So day two was this solo journey for me. I realized, Hey,
I have an agenda today.
I have to master the standing up on two legs,
the going forward
and the braking.
And did I do it? No, but I tried.
How did we get up?
Look at that toe stopper, hold on, let me come closer.
I was like burnt rubber.
Okay, maybe I'll do another half of it.
No I won't, no I won't, no I won't, no I won't.
Okay, day two has adjourned.
I'm exhausted. I'm very sweaty,
but I am getting more confident and I'm proud of myself.
So day three,
I was really excited to show Tony my new ability,
but Tony had the brilliant idea of taking me to a skate park
instead.
- Okay.
- I'm ready.
- You have things that's not the correct helmet
or equipment.
That's a bike helmet. The second day at the skate park,
we got a little bit more comfortable with learning how to
skate on an incline,
stag your legs and just follow that momentum toe stop.
- Okay, a little toe stop.
- Really dig in.
It takes people so long to learn how to pivot and you're
just doing it.
- I think it's more me falling over, but.
- So Tony sat me down and told me that
my roller skates were (bleep).
- I knew in my mind, without a doubt,
we needed it to head over to Pigeon's and get him some
upgrades.
Pigeon's Skate shop, one of my favorite spots we went in
to go get Tucker some protective gear and some actually.
good skates.
- Am I in an art gallery or a skate shop this is so
beautiful, honestly.
- For you, we're looking at something like this.
They look so good on you.
You already look like such a better skater.
- Okay wow.
- Shake your head a little bit. Yeah.
That one. That one's not your size.
We're going to need a size down.
- I'm dead. If I wear this I'm dead.
I mean, this one, I hit a car, the car's dead.
So I got a black helmet to match the black skates and the
black pads. I'm kind of mixing things up.
This is a new skate, new me.
Hello, first of all, thank you for having us.
- Your welcome. I'm so excited for you
to skate in some really good skates.
- Perfect.
Are you kidding me?
I was completely elated when I got the gear.
I felt like now I could tackle the garage ramp without fear
of losing my life.
Okay so, outfit check.
Here we go.
Oh (bleep), oh (bleep), oh (bleep).
I did the fricking garage ramp. It wasn't graceful,
but check mark.
Wow. I'm on top of the world again.
Okay. Let's get around.
I'm feeling good except tomorrow because I'm starting to
learn like the actual routine.
Now I am a little scared because that brings a whole set of
new challenges.
Okay. It's day five.
I just got to the park and obviously as soon as I started
driving here, it starts raining very hard in LA.
What?
- So today I want to get you a little more comfortable with
some fancy stuff. We'll practice.
A couple of spins.
- Tony taught me the spins, which I felt good about.
I mean, we are spinning in unison.
We're spinning together and I didn't fall.
It was a wonderful time.
Unfortunately, the hill was another story.
Right now, we're about halfway up.
There's a small child that I'm about to absolutely destroy
right now.
Just kidding. Okay.
Guess we're going.
Oh my God, no, no.
Oh, (bleep) me.
Oh my god, I'm totally good.
Thank you. I mean, if I got on the first try,
that's not fun.
I fell. That's not what we want for the final performance.
Should we take five or maybe like five days.
- When I saw Tucker fall and he looked a bit discouraged.
I knew it was time for just a little, a little pep talk.
How are you feeling?
- I'm fine.
I am just kind of concerned because that was halfway
up the hill and it didn't go as planned.
- Right, I,
I could totally understand you feeling a bit discouraged.
You need to cut yourself some slack though.
You're dealing with some wet terrain. It just rained.
- It was the pep talk that I needed because it instantly got
me back up on my feet to do another attempt.
- Bend your knees, put, stick that butt out.
- Unfortunately that attempt also did not go as planned,
but, oh I forgot to stop.
Okay. And so routine wise,
- So you're going to come down the hill.
You're going to come to a stop using your toe stop and we'll
do a couple of nice little spins at the end there.
I think you got this though.
I'm like fairly confident in you.
- Fairly, fairly.
So after the low point of day five,
I knew that on day six,
I had to get my confidence back up or
this final performance was not going to be good.
He did it.
He did it. Yeah.
Can we truly cut back right now to me going down that
fricking hill the first time.
Guys, sorry.
I am screaming in public right now,
but I am so impressed with myself.
I did a fricking lap around my neighborhood and I didn't
fall.
I'm going into tomorrow, feeling confident,
feeling excited and more than anything else I'm going in
tomorrow,
not feeling clumsy. Which is a true first for me.
Day seven.
I'm waking up in the morning and all I can think about is
the performance.
Let's do this, uh.
There were people waiting for me when I got to the park,
I could tell though, they did not have any confidence in me.
- I just hope, you don't, fall and die.
- I'm still very scared for you.
- Are you excited?
- I'm super excited until you have to go down the hill,
then I'm scared.
- I told you, I said she was going to be scared.
- I know, that's why I shouldn't be here.
- Oddly enough, that didn't affect me.
I knew that I had been working towards this goal and I knew
that I was going to accomplish it.
If I could conquer this, I can do anything.
It's hard to put into words,
how many emotions I was feeling.
- Beautiful.
I was so, so proud of Tucker.
I knew he had it in him from the beginning,
but it was really great to see him believe that he could do
it as well.
- Weave 'em, weave 'em.
- Oh my God Tucker.
- Tony is a miracle worker.
This experience gave me the confidence I needed to pick up
new things that I'm scared to do that I have previously not
done out of fear of embarrassing myself,
put yourself out there,
try something new because you know what? This is our life.
So stop caring about what other people think about you.
You clumsy person own it.