All Skate! | Everyone Skate!

…except me.  I cannot roller skate.  I never have been able to roller skate.  I was always able to pretty much play any sport I wanted and do reasonably well at it, but roller skating was the one thing that was like liver.  Try as I might, I could never get it down.  

Like a lot of kids, I got a pair of roller skates like the ones pictured here for Christmas one year.  I lived on a big hill, so going down the street was a breeze.  It was coming back up that was the problem.  I would push and push and never get rolling.  So, I would sit down on the curb and take the stupid things off, run back up the hill, strap them back on and fly back down again.

Then, in the mid-sixties skateboards came along.  Like everything else, skateboards were different then than they are now.  They weren’t fancy fiberglas jobs with custom wheels and ball bearings.  You cut out a piece of board, took the wheels off of your roller skates and screwed them to the bottom of the board.  Then, you painted the board up with a Racing Stripe, Surfer’s Cross and/or Rat Fink and boom!  Down the hill, pick up the board, run back to the top.  Or, one foot on the board, motor back up the hill using the other foot… Surf City!

Then, the teenage years came along.  As everyone knows, the skating rink is a favorite gathering spot for adolescents.  The Rainbow Roller Rink was the one that was in the closest proximity for Walker, Southwest DeKalb and Lithonia High Schools.  A friend and I went to Rainbow one Saturday night, and I had forgotten the fact that when I attempted to roller skate, I looked like a mule going up a ladder.  Besides, I was a kid then.  Now, I was sixteen, invincible and played football, for Pete’s sake!  Surely I could handle something as simple as roller skating…

The guy in the video to the right looks like me on a pair of skates, but he’s better.  I have to give him credit, he tries to do a spin and falls.  I would fall for no apparent reason, and never once attempted a spin.  I was doing my best to try and stay upright.  The only time I did a spin was when some kid hit me and I did a 360 before landing on my butt.  

Girls from Walker were laughing and pointing at me.  Girls I didn’t even know from Southwest DeKalb and Lithonia were laughing and pointing at me.  When you are sixteen years old and girls are laughing and pointing at you, it is traumatic.  At least the girls from Southwest DeKalb and Lithonia wouldn’t laugh and point at me on Monday morning at school, like the Walker girls.  

A few times a group of us went skating at the old Igloo Ice Skating Rink on Roswell Road in North Atlanta.  I liked that better because nobody could ice skate, so nobody laughed and pointed at me.

Fast forward twenty years, and we had gone to visit family in Mississippi for Thanksgiving.  On the day after, we all went roller skating.  Again, time had blurred the fact that I could not skate.  I had learned to water ski my Senior year in high school, for Pete’s sake!  Surely I could handle roller skating…

Out on the floor there he was again, old Francis The Talking Mule trying to go up a ladder.  Only this time little kids were laughing and pointing at me, even my own eight year old daughter who was skating circles around me.  Literally.  My ten year old nephew flew between my legs on one skate, causing me to lose my balance.  Flailing like an octopus falling out of a tree, I went down on my backside.  Even my wife was laughing at me.  She could, because she was skating like Tonya Harding without a tire iron.  My daughter told me she was going to “teach me to skate” and tried to help me.  But after I body checked the wall, I figured I’d better pack it in before I broke something.  And I didn’t mean skating rink property, although that was a distinct possibility.  I limped over to the People Who Don’t Know How To Skate Safe Place and watched college football on TV.

Fast forward to the present time.  My eight year old nephew has a skating party on his birthday every year, and it’s coming up soon.  The rink is right around the corner from the house, and there is a hospital nearby.  I’ve hit a hole in one from 125 yards with a 56º sand wedge, for Pete’s sake!  Surely I can handle roller skating… Still Cruisin’!  –J.