When Anthony Frank Hawk was born on May 12, 1968, his parents could not have realized that skateboarding was eventually going to become such an integral part of their lives. As Hawk readily admitted in his autobiography, he was a "hyperactive demon child" who regularly terrorized his babysitters, his teachers, and his parents. He was very bright, with an IQ of 144, but he was also frustrated and unfocused, and would frequently fly into rages. His father, Frank, a retired U.S. Navy officer and small appliance salesman, and his mother, Nancy, a homemaker and part-time business teacher, were equally frustrated about what to do with their youngest child. When Hawk was eight, his older brother Steve bought him, on a whim, a blue fiberglass hand-me-down skateboard, and his father built a skating ramp in the backyard. They hoped that skateboarding might be the outlet that young Tony needed.