Rollerskating? Me?

[feste_sylvain]

mizarchivist held her birthday party at a roller-skating rink. When I first heard about her going to this rink, and others in my greater community (saugussk8: join now!) going with her, my reaction was a general "Hope they have fun. Good for them".

Because I hadn't been skating in any form since November of 1977, when my girlfriend (Amy Allen) and her friends (Wynn and Margaret Welch) convinced me to go to a rink for Roller Disco.

Before that, my previous girlfriend (Sally Hand) had gotten me to go roller skating once.

And before that, I had given up trying to ice-skate after seven years of my ankles refusing to support me. I was a klutz, sure, but I was a klutz with spindly ankles, so no amount of practice was going to help.

But tamidon asked me whether I was going to go to mizarchivist's party, and something in me said "Yes", so I said it too. What's a thirty-year gap between skating? We had sent our daughters to a local rink for skating lessons (which they didn't exactly take to), and my elder, alyveritya, has her own in-line roller skates and likes to go to skating parties with her friends. So hey, I should try it again.

At first, I was awkward as all get-out. alyveritya just zoomed around the rink. My younger did not fare as well, but she never gave up. It's as if stubbornness runs in the family or something.

For a good deal of the first hour, I was frustrated. I wasn't exactly enjoying myself, because I was spending every second on the rink trying to keep from falling. I'd get going, I'd start to build up a rhythm, and then one of my legs would shoot out from under me, or my center of gravity would get behind the wheels, and I'd have to rebalance, reconcentrate, and try to get moving again. Yes, I hit the floor a few times, once so spectacularly that several people asked whether I was okay.

But every now and then, I was gliding. The air whipped past my sweaty forehead, my body was in a racer's crouch, and it all felt utterly exhilarating! (Then alyveritya would go zooming past me again.) At one point, shadesong tried to hold my hand as we skated, but I'm afraid I still needed it for balance. dbang looked like she regularly skates for fun, and she was agog (not aghast) that I hadn't skated for thirty years.

A few people were able to dance to the music as they skated, and some were skating backwards. I am nowhere near there. I'd like to be, but I'm just flat not. A couple of my falls, I'll be feeling in the morning. tamidon took a nasty fall that she'll be feeling right along with me.

But I think I want to do this again. I may even want a lesson or two, now that I believe I'd benefit from them. The motion, the speed; this was fun I never had when I was a teenager.

And my ankles are fine. My knees are another story, but that's something which isn't going to get better with age anyway, so they can just deal.