I SEE A GIRL, SHE'S ROLLER SKATING
Cindy Maddera
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I don’t remember when it started or when it came to an end, but I remember the window of time where I lived on roller skates. I remember watching early episodes of Facts of Life and thinking that Tootie was the coolest character on that show. She went everywhere on her roller skates and she was cute, funny and clever. I wanted be just like Tootie. When I inherited my sister’s hand-me-down roller skates, I never wanted to take them off. They were white and I had made pink pompoms for the laces. I roller skated down our street on the rough asphalt. I roller skated in the garage on the very few occasions that the garage was clean and the floor space was empty. Mostly, I roller skated at the local roller rink. The closest roller rink was in Owasso. Rick’s Roller Arena was the place to be. Church outings, birthdays, school outings. Every Tuesday night was American Airlines night which meant that AA employees and children got in to skate for $1.
Mom would drop us off and we’d skate for hours. We’d speed skate, racing each other around the rink or dance along to the music while we skated. Of course, there would be boy watching and that awkward pre-teen couples skate where you hopefully ended up holding sweaty hands with a boy who could actually skate. We’d take a break in skating to play a few rounds of skee-ball and then jump back onto the rink in time for a game of Limbo. We all did the hokey pokey. When I said that to Michael, he said “You did the hokey pokey on roller skates!?!” and I laughed. It was the only time I ever did the hokey pokey. I didn’t even know the hokey pokey was done outside of the skating rink. Hard wood floors. Disco lights. Hits from the 70s and 80s. The slight breeze you generated as you swayed your way around the rink floor. It was all bliss.
It has been ages since I was on roller skates. Maybe it was my thirtieth birthday. I think I talked Stephanie and Cati into going roller skating with me. Cati was still little and I spent more time keeping her from falling down than I did actually skating. I was terrified she’d fall and break a bone. That was the last time I wore a pair of skates. That was fourteen years ago. The Cabbage is now at that age where she likes roller skating, so that was our family outing on Saturday. Her skating method is still a work in progress and she has falls, but she’s independent. She’s self confident enough to not need me skating with her and I had the time mostly to myself. I put on my rental skates and did a tentative run around the rink. It was an unsteady run and I knew something wasn’t right. I exchanged my skates for a size smaller and everything fell right back into place. I spent my first two or three laps tense and panicked over crashing into falling children (they were every where). Then I found an opening in the crowd, relaxed and just skated round and round and round.
Then I took a break to play skee-ball.