The X Games, Only Smaller

The tail of the board smacks the edge of the ramp and launches into a spastic flurry of flips, its Day-Glo orange wheels whirling on their tiny axles before bouncing off the hardwood floor.

We’ve just witnessed a disastrous 360 kick flip at the “most deadly skateboard park in the world,” Lukas Miller announces in his ESPN2 voice.

Paramedics!

Actually, we’re in the tidy family room of the Miller home, where Lukas, 7, and his brother, Zachary, 10, live with their parents. Future babe magnets both, the boys are now focused on skateboarding: the magazines, the videos, the X Games and the miniature skate parks that, at least on this block of Solana Beach, have surpassed Pokemon as a playtime phenomenon. They’ve got a little picnic table, a bench, a conjoined half-pipe and stairs, all purchased or jury-rigged from household debris to take a grinding from their Hot Wheels-scale skateboards.

Finger-boarders since the minis went big in stores last spring, Luke and Zach have mastered the pro skaters’ moves. Hardflip. Heelflip. Tailslide. Crooked grind. 50-50 Impossible Out. So their fingers, as limber as guitarists’, are really itching for a challenge, which explains the mini half-pipe and stairs atop Mom’s armoire. Standing tiptoe on a chair padded with a telephone book, the boarders crank their game up a notch.

Lukas’ kick flip does a death-spiral, then Nigel Grey, 10, who is visiting from the neighborhood, pops a melon grab down the stairs. Once his board clears the railing, he jumps off the chair and runs, meloning the sofa, the massive marmalade-colored cat, the coffee cups on the counter--nothing is safe. Lukas’ board cruises across a plastic laundry basket. When the wheels snag on a “window,” the imaginary skateboarder plummets--to his demise, naturally.

Meanwhile, Nigel is about to melon a chair when Zachary’s downed fingerboard digs into his bare heel. He yelps and does a one-footed dance as the trio migrates to the backyard, where their toys will crash and burn into the potted plants. “Real skateboarding is way better than finger boarding,” says Zachary. He politely refrains from adding, “Duh!”