Everybody in New York City it seems, loves to skate. Ice skate, roller skate, and especially in-line skate.
What the heck is in-line skating, you ask?
Another way for me to break my fool neck.
I should never try to skate. I just plain stink at it. I’m a walker, a jogger, and I can even do a pretty good mosey. But when it comes to moving at high velocities on round wheels affixed to my shoes–man, you better get out of the way.
My skating career started in Andalusia. Now, Andalusia isn’t a hilly place, but somehow my grandparents managed to build their concrete driveway on the Mt. Everest of South Alabama. And so as a ten-year-old, it was my moral obligation to try to get myself killed on that hill. My grandparents helped.
Grandaddy Guy had a pair of steel roller skates that had to be laced onto the bottom of my sneakers. Who the heck invented these things? Talk about dumb. Out in the garage, it took all of my energy to skate around. The only thing that helped was occasionally hitting an oil slick where the cars were parked. Naturally, Grandmother insisted I limit my skating to this area.
But as any parent or ten-year-old can tell you, the lure of a suicidal hill is just too much for a young boy.
So one fine, hot summer day, I donned my Uncle Mark’s Crimson Tide football helmet, strapped an embroidered pillow out of Grandmama’s living room to my chest, and put on some gardening gloves. Then I sprayed those skates down with WD40 and climbed the hill of doom.
My grandparent’s neighbor waved hello as I put on my skates. I guess he thought I looked completely normal wearing a football helmet, part of a sofa, and a frying pan. He always was a little touched.
Once standing, I began to skate towards the precipice. The squeaking, moaning, scraping skates sounded like the banshee of Covington County. It took me 5 minutes to go ten feet.
But once at the hill, things changed dramatically. Suddenly, the wheels actually began to turn. I could smell WD40 burning. My speed was picking up, 5, 10, 15, 45 mph. The extra weight from Grandmama’s frying pan on my behind helped increase my speed. Wind whipped through the helmet. Sparks flew from the metal wheels digging into the cement.
Then a nasty thought crossed my ten-year-old mind: Egad, these skates have no brakes.
And since I was quickly approaching the end of the driveway, a decision had to be made. I could a. continue my decent and crash into the rear of my grandfather’s Buick, b. veer to my left and grab a pine tree to slow down, or c. veer right onto a gravel embankment.
Some choices, eh? Tragically, I chose “c.” Of course, being older and wiser, I might have chosen something else–anything else–but “c” seemed the thing to do at the time.
Steel skates and gravel. Need I say more?
After I recovered, I moved on. There were many roller-skating parties at roller rinks and such. Some daring parents even threw ice-skating birthday parties for my friends. I strapped those old metal skates onto the bottom of a 2×4″ and learned to skateboard.
Then, at about 14, I got tired of being bruised, battered, and bloody. Besides, “cool” high school students didn’t skate. Not that giving up skating made me cool. In retrospect, my mother giving up buying all of my clothes might have made me cool, but not giving up skating.
So it came as some surprise to me that the cool thing to do in New York City is skate. Go to Central Park on any given sunny day, and all kinds of people are skating to beat the band. They come in all colors and all sizes. Folks even wear real helmets. I must say I was impressed.
Actually, I was impressed enough to buy a pair of second-hand, in-line skates. Given my skating past, I should have known better. Shoot, given my skiing past, I should have known better. The technology was originally developed to help skiers. I can’t even use a Nordic Trac without having to call 911.
My first day in Central Park on in-line skates was filled with excitement. The threat of permanent brain damage always gets me keyed up. I certainly got closer to New Yorkers. Real close. I skated face-first into garbage men, hotdog sellers, innocent children, joggers, bums, and even a cute woman playing a guitar. You’d be surprised how quickly hotdog sellers help stop you when you’ve grabbed hold of their weenie cart and started down a big hill (those umbrellas atop the carts also create a parachute effect if you’re going really fast).
After a harrowing day of skating in the roller derby that is New York: among cars, buses, cabs, and grumpy hotdog vendors, I decided that if I wanted to live long and prosper, I should probably give up skating.
But you know, Andalusia, you never outgrow the need to do something stupid.