Skating, Unscathed

My wife is the eldest of thirty cousins. They range in age from 26 (my wife) to 10 months old – 10 boys, 20 girls. The day after Christmas, as a gift to both the cousins and their parents, the older cousins took all the rug-rats rollerskating. Five of us above the age of 20, corralling upwards of 25 pipsqueaks on wheels. If this sounds like the recipe for disaster, you're probably right. But if you've ever met my wife, you know she's crazy enough to handle it.

As we entered the sheet metaled warehouse that was the roller rink, I was bombarded by early 90's decor – space scenes muraled across the walls, jagged graffiti-esque lines scralling around the rink with chasing lights causing seizures among the faint of heart. An overwhelming odor of shoe spray and floor wax flooded my nostrils. The din of children laughing, wheels rolling on hard wood, and teen pop Bieber trash overwhelmed my ear drums. As my senses adjusted to this new reality, I began to acclimate myself to the new surroundings. I laced up my tan skates, tottered to the edge of the rink like an unsteady child on newly discovered legs, and circumnavigated a few tentative laps.

As I gained confidence in my wheeled abilities, I began to notice the other skaters around me. Although I hadn't seen these people before, I realized that at every roller skating event I'd been to in the last decade, I'd seen the same archetypal skating entities:

Roller Derby Girl

Jet black skates with canary yellow wheels. Striped stockings that end just below the knee, covering her muscular calves. Black hot pants that read,

“SLAMMAHGIRL”. Black jersey and matching wrist-guards. Braided brown hair tied neatly behind her head, and a determined grimace that makes my nervous to be skating on the same hemisphere as the determined amazon.

She skates with a force that commands any novice roller to be wary of he elbows and hip checks.

Grandpa Glider

Do you remember the days when a teenaged couple would go out for sodas at the local diner after a rousing skate at the local rink? White-walled tires and Brilcreem were the standard in the 50's and, for some, it hasn't changed. There is something endearing about the 60 year old couples who are still using the skates from their courting days.

Besides the gray hair and arthritic hands, you can spot these soda shop skaters by their classic skating style. They dreamily glide 'round the rink, kicking their heels back while neatly tucking one hand behind their back. An heir of propriety exudes from a geriatric skater – evidence that they were taught to skate in an age when skating was an art form akin to dancing a waltz or a polka, and it is their sole duty to perpetuate this graceful sport with all their might.


Hockey Star

This guy is the masculine foil to the Roller derby Girl. He's in workout pants and a hoodie, brought his own roller blades, and means business. If the rink would let him, he would bring his hockey stick on the floor to let everyone know he means business.

Although this Gretzky skater is more comfortable on the ice, he can skill cream any amateur on wheels that dares to stumble in his path. As rink rules frown on the practice of flattening children during an open skate, he generally prefers to leap over fallen munchkins, which is preferable, although still frightening for all parties involved.

The speed skate is Mr. NHL's forte. He barrels round the wood floor with the tenacity of a bull, trying desperately to prove the masculinity of his wheels against the more effeminate skaters who might defame his blades.

Homo-Erotic Inline Speed Skaters

As a bi-annual, recreational skater, you are bound to get lapped. It is just something to come to terms with. When you are passed by a skater, you think little of it. But when you are passed by two skaters, crouched for speed and wind resistance, the latter awkwardly grasping the gluteus of the former, you cannot help but feel emasculated.

Completely in-sync, these men share the intense love of skating with the Hockey Star and Roller Derby Girl, but do so in a more graceful manner. Each is in-tune with the movements of the other, arms and legs swinging in unison, focused on navigating the screaming teens and ancient lovers to beat their last time trial. Even their breathing is in-sync as they stream through the masses with balletic grace.

They are so focused on their craft that not even the scathing disdain that comes from the Hockey hooligans can break their composure.

Solo Skater Savant

His custom skates are freshly polished. His wrist-guards are monogrammed. He skates to the beat of a very different drum.

Objectively this man is an incredibly talented skater. Throughout the skate he practices tricks and gyrations that would make figure skaters cringe, seemingly for his own amusement. I would dare say that he was completely unaware of any other presence on the wood that day.

Contorting your legs into bizarre, cartoonish poses while on wheels may be a sign of virility and Casanova-ism in some cultures, but I do not believe that is the case in my own. It was sometimes painful to watch this character groove, slightly off-tempo, to the top 40 musical stylings that blared throughout the rink. I can only imagine that this was a cardio regimen prescribed by some new aged yogi, as he at times resembled Shiva the Destroyer, his arms and legs undulating in a meditative fury.

Passive-Aggressive Teen Bieber Freaks

One of these teenie boppers was having a birthday and, to her chagrin, her mom picked Orbitz Skating Emporium as the destination for her party. Mortified, she refuses to show that she is having fun. With her cadre of screaming airheads, she screams the immortal lyrics of Ke$ha and Justin Bieber at the top of her off-key lungs.

The unfortunate side affect of these squealing ladies, beyond my loss of hearing, was that, in the throes of musical ecstasy, they lost all ability to navigate. These pre-teens morphed from shrill 90 pound drama factories to a herd of moaning water buffalo, incapable of breaking away from the pop-drunk group think that drove them around the rink with ferocious blindness. Woe to the unaware skater who happens in front of this all-consuming ball of prepubescent power.


Uber-Serious Skate Ref

Every sport has rules. Every rule needs enforced. Every enforcer needs a weapon. Give a 22 year old a whistle, striped shirt, and a pair of used skates, and watch them turn from Playstation addict to keystone cop in two seconds flat.

It doesn't matter if you are wearing plastic Playskool skates or professional skate stars, you will receive equal wrath from these skating sheriffs. Do not stop. Do not push. Do not have fun on this roller rink.

There is a certain level of animosity that exudes from these enforcers towards any of the more proficient skaters in the rink. It is as if the ref's are once great remnants of Derby teams, Hockey squads, or speed skating duo's that, due to injury, have become washed up and are forced to relive their glory days as haggard sentries of the rink. They look down their noses at those of us who just skate for fun, and envy the wheeler who can still stand among the pro's. They are trapped in a purgatory of failure and disdain, bearing the scarlet letter of a referee's stripe. The whistle is a badge of honor. Their wheels will forever spin to serve.

Skate On, Sundance

I left that roller rink shorter, sorer, and more aware of a bizarre niche of American culture: the 21^st century roller rink. I will still enjoy a good skate now-and-again, but will exercise caution the next time I venture onto that wooden floor. It's a vicious world that shows no mercy on the faint of heart.

Skate with caution.

The Only Thing to Fear...

Annie and I helped pass out candy at a friends house this Halloween. This family has one of the most elaborate front yard horror displays of any I've seen. A graveyard with an unearthed coffin, a butcher shop resplendent with various dismembered appendages, A body hanging from a noose that, when activated, will jerk and kick for its lack of life. It is thorough, to say the least. I agreed to play a part in their terror filled production, along with a few of their other friends. One man was the butcher, carving up arms, legs, and heads. There were people portraying all the horror favorites – Jason, Freddie Krueger, and Michael Myers. I was given a generic goblin mask and told to mill about, jumping out when candy grabbers passed my way. I begrudgingly tried this for a while, but after feeling very awkward and completely not scary, I eventually opted for a more subtle approach. I sat myself down against a hay bale and did my best dummy impersonation. Sitting as motionless as possible, I waited for a group of ghouls to pass my way, then I slowly turned my head, following them with my rubbery eyes. I didn't make a sound. I didn't move any other muscle. I just watched. What I saw was very interesting.

Pre-teens resembling rejects from the Insane Clown Posse came up to the display and shouted,

“Hey! Gimme some candy!”

Sitting next to the candy cauldron, I turned to the terse carnies and clarified,

“Excuse me? What did you just say?”

“You heard me. Gimme some candy man!”

I was having some trouble wrapping my brain around the brazenness of the young mans demand. I pushed him for a more appropriate request,

“I would argue that you've known what to say in this situation since you were old enough to form full sentences. You make the proper request, and I'll give you some candy. That's the way it works.”

The punk shifted his weight, obviously annoyed. He finally muttered those three key words, and I graced him with a packet of sweet tarts and a sucker. As he swaggered down the driveway, I contemplated chucking a jawbreaker at the upstarts head. Maybe the candy would live up to its name. I restrained myself.

A little later, A man bedecked in a white dress shirt, tall socks and a kilt came by with his son who, in a miniature ninja suit, could not have been over two years old. They stopped at the bottom of the driveway and the dad gave his son a nudge toward the house. The karate kid took one look at the labyrinth of horror that lay between him and the candy at the top of the hill and became petrified. At first, he simply turned and began to move on to the next house. When his father insisted he make this trek, alone, he began a more adamant denial. As he begged his dad to let him pass this house by, the father finally proposed a compromise – they would go up together. The virile Scotsman took his sons hand and began the ascent. But the son was not interested, even with his father at his side. He dug his heels into the driveway and began wailing his disapproval. That is when I grabbed some candy and started down the driveway. My intent was to give this poor child the candy he deserved after all the trepidation he was experiencing. As I approached, his face turned from discomfort to sheer terror. Realizing my misstep, I quickly removed my mask and crouched down to assure him that there was nothing for him to fear. I gave him the chocolate peace offering and bid the nervous ninja farewell.

A while later, a mother and her daughter came by. The girl was dressed as a nondescript witch, and the woman was masquerading as a worn out mother. This child was probably around eight years old, and at the sight of the butcher shop, she was very nervous. When Freddie stepped out of the shadows, she jumped and clung to her mothers leg. But she successfully reached the candy cauldron, treated, and began her way back down the driveway. She was still uneasy as she navigated the frights, but when her mother commented on the scariness of the house, the little girl just turned to her mother and reassured her,

“It's not REAL, Mom!”

After the trick-or-treating was over, we all went inside for an amazing smorgasbord of chili, cornbread, pumpkin seeds, popcorn, and cake. The inside of the house was almost as meticulously decorated as the front yard. Garlands, little Halloween cityscapes, candles, and rubber bats. In the corner was an old witch in a rocking chair which, if you got too close, would start rocking on its own. The witch would cackle, her eyes would glow, and finally her head would lift up from her shoulders. One of our friends' brothers was at the party with his two eighteen month old twins. These two children were incredibly inquisitive, unafraid to talk to any of the other party goers, and as rambunctious as can be. Toward the end of the night, the father decided he should get a picture of the two children on the lap of the hideous animatronic witch. As he sat the little boy on her lap, the child began wailing and squirming for his life. He gave up on his son and attempted to get the little girl into the witches maws. Same result. They quickly retired the photo opportunity and released the children back into the fray of the other kids. Watching this exchange left me with some thoughts.

Are we afraid of goblins and ghouls from inception? Is there something inherently scary about the mask that Michael Myers wears, or the Freddie Krueger ensemble? Why were the twins so afraid of the witch? At less than two years of age, had they been exposed to enough to identify a witch, let alone correlate one with fear? When does a child learn to step back and separate the fiction from the fact, and say,

“It's not REAL, Mom!”

And when is it fair to expect your child to strike out on their own and face their fears? When can we expect a healthy amount of rationale to guide us through life? I would argue that it never fully works for some, afraid to face any amount of uncertainty or risk. And for others, the fear reaction is still dormant, causing uninhibited carousing and risk taking, almost to a fault. I think that the majority of us fall somewhere in between. Hopefully we can help guide the next generations through the labyrinths of their own fears, shaping them into cautious, yet bold individuals.

Pumpkin of Shame

I would like to think that I've always been an ingenuous person. Chalk it up to my time in the Boy Scouts of America, my agrarian heritage, or my tenure in Future Problem Solvers (yes, that is a real program in American schools). I've always looked at problems with a technical eye, and known that there is a solution out there, one that I alone could remedy. This drive for ardent individualism has not always resulted in the most flattering of outcomes.

One October, at an age when I was probably old enough to know better, I decided that I was going to make my own costume for the Halloween season. I don't know why, but I chose to don the visage of one of the holidays' most iconic items – the pumpkin.

It would make sense that any normal child would call upon their parents to help them fashion the costume of their fancy, but not me. I built my costume in the basement, refusing my mother entry into my workshop. I began simply – with a cardboard box. Cutting asymmetrical ellipses into the appropriate faces, I created holes to extrude my appendages and create the main element of my costume. The next step was to decorate it.

I found some pale orange paint that looked to be at least a decade old, a sickly sherbet, and began slapping it onto the box. Emptying the bucket with only 2/3 of the box coated, I was forced to find an alternative source of orange to complete my task. I could have asked for a trip to the hardware store to acquire more paint, but in my attempt to keep this craft project secret, I opted for another solution. I pulled out my trusty Crayola markers, located the orange and went to work. While this seemed like a great option at the time, in retrospect, it makes me blush, even now. The shipping info from the box was still evident under the valencia scribbles, making it look as if I was on my way to FedEx. But this slight imperfection did not phase me. I pulled the black marker from its sheath and added the necessary accents to my creation – vertical stripes, and of course, the appropriate triangles and jagged lines to denote the tell tale jack-o-lantern face.

To cap off my creation, I took a smaller box, lopped off the bottom, magic marker-ed it green, and slapped it on my head. Suiting up in a blaze orange sweatshirt and viridian sweatpants, my costume was complete. I, the cubist pumpkin, was ready for the world! Picasso would be proud.

I cannot imagine my mothers internal reaction to the bizarre attire I'd created, but to her credit, she was supportive of my choice to wear homeless housing as a Halloween habit, and sent me off to my first public engagement – a Halloween dance at the Argyle school gym.

Argyle is a small town that feeds into the same community school as Donnellson. The population of this meager metropolis is well under that of even Donnellson's one thousand citizens, and that includes the farms that fall within the surrounded area. Argyle didn't have much - a gas station, a post office, and a handful of side streets. The one thing that Argyle did have was a little league baseball association that put on the best dances in the county, every month at the old Argyle high school. What was so great about these dances is that they were open to elementary students - 4^th grade through 8^th grade. They were amazingly well attended, with hundreds of students at each dance. And the Halloween dance was one of the most anticipated events of the year.

I entered the dance that night with a bit of trepidation. I was not self conscious, only excited to see my friends, as well as those popular students I wanted so badly to be my friends, and to finally get a non-familial reaction to my cardboard creation.

I was met with a myriad of reactions. The woman who was taking coats and money at the door reviewed my costume with a raised eyebrow, smiled and let me pass without a word. Once I entered the fog filled gym, I fumbled my way to the corner where my friends normally congregated. Along the way I got reactions ranging from laughs and smirks to glares and outright looks of disdain. I brushed them aside and found my friends. That is when I heard,

“What are you wearing?”

“Is that a joke?”

“Ummm...Nice costume?”

As I looked around at the store bought monsters, superheroes, and ghouls, I realized that I was a different sort of frightening. I came dressed as the embarrassing friend in the cardboard box. The comments and looks I'd gotten as I confidently strode across that gym floor suddenly came flooding back, and everyone seemed to be staring straight at me. I was mortified. Desperate to avoid any further scrutiny, I bounced my boxy self back across the crowded room, seeking asylum in the concessions area. While there were fewer of my classmates in this room, the concessions area was tiny, so it seemed even more packed, and the florescent lights focused every detail of my shoddy craftsmanship into stark clarity. At this point, I just wanted to contract my head into my box and turtle my way out of this situation. But my mom wouldn't be back for another two hours – an eternity in elementary time. I determined that the only option was to scrap the carapace of my crappy costume and try to ride out the rest of the dance in my sweatpants. Not flattering by any means, but at least I'd be inconspicuous. It was much easier to shrink into the shadows when your silhouette was not so geometric. Or three foot wide. I rushed to the coat check lady,

“I need to store my...box. With the coats?”

The lady seemed confused. She studied me a moment, then asked,

“Why would you want to do that? The costume contest is in an hour. You have to have a costume to win the prizes! Go back and dance with your little friends!”

I balked. I didn't give a scratch 'n' sniff sticker about her stupid contest. I knew I wasn't going to win squat in this box. I had to think fast to convince this PTA dropout that I had to remove the dreaded pumpkin from vision before it sabotaged the rest of my elementary school career.

“It's just really hot in there...and crowded. I don't want to ruin it before trick-or-treating tomorrow night! Can I please put my boxes in the coat check? PLEASE?”

It may have been exasperation. It may have been pity. Whatever her reason, the woman begrudgingly took my cubist costume and shoved it into the coat room. For good measure, I hollered,

“Careful with that. It's...expensive!”

Then I rejoined my friends. They seemed relieved that I'd ditched the vegetable garb, although I doubt that my pumpkin really degraded any of our chances of making contact with the feminine gender that night. I spent the rest of the night trying to convince people that I was dressed as Pete Stoyanovich, kicker for the Miami Dolphins.

After what seemed like days, my mother arrived and I was relieved of the shame of that dance. When asked why I wasn't wearing the costume I'd worked so hard on, I could only reply,

“Um...I didn't feel like it.”

The next evening was even more difficult than the dance. I knew how people would react when they saw me in the box – the same way those kids had reacted at the dance. That self awareness was brutal. But it was the day of trick-or-treating. There was no time to call an audible on the costume now. And how would I explain it to my mother – that the costume I'd worked so hard on was a scarlet letter, publicly denouncing me as a 4^th grader with horrible taste in costumes? So I did what I had to do. I donned the dreaded decoration once more, and took my walk of shame – my plastic pumpkin pail in one hand, my pride in the other. We walked for blocks, my sister, my mom and I. Every look from the candy patrons we approached seemed to pity, persecute, or propagate the idea that I was a sad little man in a sad little box. The only consolation was that, despite their looks, they did not withhold any sweet delectables from my bucket. So I kept my head down, let my sister do the talking, and collected my bounty.

At the end of the night, I had survived, despite my fears and resignation. I ran into a few classmates, who may have thought nefarious things about my costume, but dared not say anything with our parents present. In the end, I made it home with my candy and my pride. I ate my fill, got ready for bed, and lived to see an new day. And from what I remember, there was little jeering the following day at school.

I can only hope that I am the only one who remembers what I wore that Halloween. Lord knows I've worn worse in recent years. But at least those costumes were bad on purpose.