Roller Skating

Do you remember back to when you were a kid. One of my memories is skating. We did not have a roller rink in our home town of Verndale, Minnesota. When we went skating we had to drive to Wadena.
I started skating when I was about ten. At ten years old I would pull myself along the railing. I hated coming to the end of the straight-a-way because I had not learned to turn. All the good skaters would make this graceful turn at both ends of the rink, but I would have to rely on the wall to keep myself from falling down. So, when I came to the curved portion, I would follow the wall to the square corner. I would stop and realign myself along the end of the rink. There were often other skater stopped here to visit. They were out of the way of the main flow, but usually in my way. I was a skinny little runt, so I could squeeze through if I was patient.
Okay, so now I got to the second straight-a-way. Here I had to time getting into the flow without getting smashed into by some big jock that was skating backward or something. Those big jock types were always skating backward in front of the cutest girls. Man did I want to know how to skate backward.
Eventually I got a little better. I could go full tilt all the way around the floor. The only thing I had to be careful of, was making sure both skates were in contact with the floor all the way around the curve portion. If I did not have enough steam going into the curve, and had to lift a skate, it was only the outside one. You know, the one foot push and coast stroke.
Some times the mean announcer would call for everyone off the floor. Once we were all off, he would announce a reverse skate. Crap. What was a guy to do. It was so unnatural to turn clockwise after learning to turn counter-clockwise. I had to try though. Those guys that were able to skate backwards and flirt at the same time had no trouble at all. If there was jealousy before, it had just gone another notch higher.
I never did like having to skate reverse, but I did get a lot better at the turns on the end. Eventually I was able to maintain a good speed and keep putting one skate in front of the other. I was so proud of myself when I learned this. The down side to a good night of skating for a boy was when they announced couples only. I paid good money to be able to skate. But no, only those that had a partner could skate. I just had to sit down, how boring.
Then one evening, someone planted an idea in my head. Why not ask a girl to skate? Who me? Are you crazy? Tell me more. Why, it is not that hard. Every girl here wants to partner skate more than you do. You see, you go up and ask them if they would like to skate and at the same time be heading to the floor. That way they will answer yes. It takes the tension away if you make it seem natural.
But wait just a minute. How do I skate with a girl? Do I have to hold her hand? What if our skates bang into one another? So, you do not want to skate with a girl? Why yes, but how? So my friend explained that you take ahold of her left hand with your own left hand. And then you start skating nice and slow. The girl will match your skating pace and you put your right hand behind her back and take ahold of the inside of her right elbow.
It was amazing how the couple skates changed from dread to something to look forward to. It was not that you were discouraged from skating as couples during an all skate. It was that, well, during an all skate, us guys were seeing how fast we could make the turn at the ends. It was a big thing to make our skates growl from the force of the fast turn.
Those were some really fun times.
I wrote this earlier with plans to publish it on the 27th, but discovered letterboxer, Lady B, is a roller skating instructor from Beaverton, Oregon. Lady B is coming to a letterboxing party at my house tonight, so I moved the publish date up in her honor.
Kayak Bandit ‘(*!*)’