--- title: Skateboarding Video 41-year-old Man description: A 41-year-old New York City stay-at-home dad has been posting videos of himself learning to skateboard every day. canonical: https://time.com/4378075/skateboarding-dad-youtube/ author: Ashley Hoffman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-06-22T17:40:56.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:33:38.160Z og:title: This 41-Year-Old Stay-At-Home Dad Skateboards Every Day to Prove He Can og:description: "This right here is my mid-life crisis.” og:url: https://time.com/4378075/skateboarding-dad-youtube/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: This 41-Year-Old Stay-At-Home Dad Skateboards Every Day to Prove He Can twitter:description: "This right here is my mid-life crisis.” twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # This 41-Year-Old Stay-At-Home Dad Has Been Skateboarding Every Day to Prove He Can by [Ashley Hoffman](https://time.com/author/ashley-hoffman/) ## Ashley Hoffman Jun 22, 2016 5:40 PM UTC by [Ashley Hoffman](https://time.com/author/ashley-hoffman/) ## Ashley Hoffman Jun 22, 2016 5:40 PM UTC A 41-year-old New York City stay-at-home dad has been posting [YouTube videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/bjaegerthomas/videos) of himself learning to [skateboard](http://time.com/4246251/french-bulldog-pup…) every day, and he’s been steadily improving his skills. “I never thought I was cool enough when I was a kid to skate. Once I reached my 40th birthday, I decided I didn’t really care about cool or uncool anymore, so I bought a board,” Ben Jaeger-Thomas told TIME. Before 40, the stay-at-home dad who also does [voice acting work](http://jaegerthomas.com) had never stood on a board, so skating has been a ankle-whacking, board-kicking and life-alteringly “Zen” ride for him. “This right here is my mid-life crisis,” Ben Jaeger-Thomas said pointing to his board in a video of day 2\. The skater dad’s been at it for more than a year, twisting and sailing over hurdles in parking garages and tracks all over New York City. Most of his videos don’t have more than 200 views, but his followers have been supplying some killer tips that helped him tackle increasingly ambitious skateboarding tricks. Throughout his quest to be good at skateboarding, it’s been mostly tumbles, but if you stick with him, it’s pretty satisfying to see him finally nail a pop shuvit in today’s video (spinning the board under your feet, and then rolling away.) Revelation: it takes a dad a long time to master the [ollie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ollie%5F%28skateboarding%29). “I love both how it feels to just cruise around as well as how it feels to land a trick you have been working, hours, days, or weeks to land,” he said. “It has given me a place to go and be expressive, to be young. To not be a dad, or an actor, or responsible, a place to just be… When you do something for the first time as a young person, it feels amazing and it is awesome.” Most of the skaters where he rolls are thirty years younger than he is, but like them, he hates authority, is fearless, and has [free time](http://healthland.time.com/2012/06/15/stay-at-home-dads-no-more-angst-these-guys-love-what-they-do/?iid=sr-link5) during the day. Watch [today’s video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14-sOzwJgDY) and all 76 others below. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4378075/skateboarding-dad-youtube/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4378075/skateboarding-dad-youtube/"},"headline":"This 41-Year-Old Stay-At-Home Dad Has Been Skateboarding Every Day to Prove He Can","datePublished":"2016-06-22T17:40:56.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:33:38.160Z","description":"He's finally looking smooth (sort of)","url":"https://time.com/4378075/skateboarding-dad-youtube/","keywords":["Newsfeed","viral","Videos","Funny","Dad"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Ashley Hoffman","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/ashley-hoffman/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4378075/skateboarding-dad-youtube/","name":"This 41-Year-Old Stay-At-Home Dad Has Been Skateboarding Every Day to Prove He Can"}}]}] ```