I Haven't Done That Since...

So today was, um, not my niece's birthday but we celebrated it today. She wanted to go skating. Roller skating - you know: in a rink with bizarre carpet on the walls, smelly skates, bad expensive food, and white trash as far as the eye can see. (Yes, speaking as a long-standing bit of white trash myself, I'm going to leave that last sentence as it stands.) There was actually a man there dressed in red Coca-Cola pajama-bottoms. Yes, my children are being raised in a community where people think that is an appropriate thing to wear in public. 

So we went skating. I didn't know such things as roller rinks still existed. No joke, the last time I went roller skating they had Janet Jackson's "What Have You Done for Me Lately" on pretty heavy rotation. Actually the music hadn't changed all that much. Ok, Miley Cyrus, the High School Musical gang, and other bits of Disney detritus were a major feature. But they played a mix of recent popular stuff with some good. I was feeling so nostalgic I actually said to my daughter, "Do you hear that? It's Kool and the Gang! Let's hit the hardwood!"

Roller Skating is difficult. Much more so than I remember. Balance has become a stranger to me over the past 20 years. That and falling is much more painful (and easier to come by) when your center of gravity is a good two or three feet higher than it once was. My feet feel like I've been walking on hot coals while very short people hit my ankles with croquet mallets. The soreness in my arches extends to my hips. And the bruises, sheesh. My coccyx may very well have broken off on one of my unexpected trips to on-my-ass. And once I caught myself with a hand and I think there might be fewer bones left in my wrist  now  as a result. 

But the kids I think managed to suffer more than I. I was lucky enough to fall relatively few times. The girl fell maybe a conservative 500 times. I thought she was seriously hurt a few times. And she has a lovely greenish bruise on her elbow to prove it. But she didn't give up. Which is just a wee bit amazing. I rarely get to see much tenacity in my kids (except when it comes to giving up on things or refusing to try new things). But she stuck to it 'till she had developed confidence and balance. By the end she was talking about going skating for her upcoming birthday. 

The boy, however took a different tack. He fell a handful of times, gave up, and spent the rest of the time scrounging for tokens to feed into the ski-ball machines. I seriously only gave him 50 cents. Yet by the end of the evening he had earned enough tickets for about six worthless prizes. Yes, that's my little entrepreneur, or my little thief - I'm not sure which. 

And just like in the 80s, I found I could skate much better by the end of the night. I finally remembered how to do that crossover thing to turn in the corners. I was embarrassing myself bopping along to the rhythm of the music and only losing my balance every now and then. Visions of Xanadu danced in my head. I was beginning to fancy myself almost as good as the skate-dancing set - but not quite. By the time we made our wobbly-legged way out the front doors, I was actually a little reluctant to leave the smells of stale nachos and foot fungus, the thumping of popular [sic] music, and the denizens poor oral hygiene.