Ice, Ice, Baby

My Old Man and I had to turn down an invitation for a night of child-free bowling and beer drinking with some good friends last Saturday night. I had agreed to chaperone the annual ice skating party at school, and I would've felt like a heel backing down at the last minute. But, as is usual with chaperoning events such as dances and lock-ins, I was not especially excited.

Okay, maybe I was a little excited. I spent many days and evenings in my Wisconsin girlhood on the ice, both indoors and out. Every park in my Northern hometown had a rink during the winter months, and our local indoor rink was a hot spot for teenagers who'd already seen the movies at the two movie houses in town. (This was back before the mega-plexes hit small towns - it was a huge deal when a four screen theater opened up toward the end of high school.) I loved ice skating back then, and even had my own pair of white ice dancer skates with plaid flannel lining. (Where did those go?)

But even though I put "ice skating" on my list of Things to Do on the Prairie when I moved back to the Midwest after my LA stint (as careful readers will recall from my last post), in actually I haven't skated much since I've lived here. In fact, it had been almost ten years since I'd put on a pair of skates.

So I was a little excited. But I wasn't prepared for how much fun I was going to have. Chaperoning the skating party was a fucking blast! First of all, there was just the old exhilarating feeling of whizzing around the ice, the cold breeze pinking my cheeks and the fear of landing hard on my ass adding excitement to my every skate stroke. Then there was the vibe. It was so wholesome and cute and friendly! Everyone looks cute on ice skates. The wobbly people look cute. The confident people look cute. And all the kids were being so nice and congenial. Seniors were holding hands with freshmen, girls were holding hands with girls. Boys were even holding hands with boys. The dorkier kids all seemed really comfortable on the ice, and many of the cool kids were fairly unsteady - there was something so sweet about seeing that reversal. And watching the abler skaters advise and help steady the less able skaters was heartwarming.

I ended up skating the whole two hours of the event. The next day my thighs ached with the exertion, though at the time I was feeling no pain. As I left I was concocting plans to return with O. to teach him how to ice skate, and wondering whether they make strollers with blades instead of wheels so that Roo can come along too.

And today, the first day of my five-day Thanksgiving break, in between lunch at my mom's place and a trip to the bank, I popped by the ice rink and skated by myself for about 45 minutes. I just had to go back and get some more of that wholesome-ass fun.