Skating

One of the biggest payoffs in parenting is doing all those things that you loved doing when you were a kid, that you could never get away with as an adult without your children as cover. I’m talking about ROLLER SKATING. It would look pretty sketchy for a 39 year old man (that’s me) to just show up at a roller skating rink on a Friday night, solo. Make that really sketchy. That’s why I had Owen and Errol.

I hadn’t been roller skating in about 23 years until this last Sunday when Owen took us to his first skating party. There’s a lot of things I haven’t done in 23 years; collecting baseball cards, drinking RC Cola, smoking crack, and roller skating. It was at Skate Haven that I began my descent into my past. Skating isn’t what I remembered (I’m probably not what it remembered either), and it’s a little harder to skate with a four year old clutching your legs and screaming, “I’m scared, Daddy! I’m scared, Daddy! Go faster!” And we did, and he was scared, and my back ached, and my arms burned, but he was also happy, and we kept going, around, and around, and around, and we both loved it.

Surprisingly, the highlight of the party wasn’t catapulting around a skating rink with a screaming 44 pound, four year old, inches from a $500 co-pay, it was skating with Errol. When did Errol learn to skate? You might scream, gentle reader. Why, from his skate therapist, I might reply. But this was no ordinary skating. Let’s just call it “skate therapy”. Since four wheels are no worse on the floor than two, the proprietors of Skate Haven (why would you do that to yourself?) allow strollers and wheelchairs on the rink. So there we were, the two of us, hurtling around the rink at full daddy speed with the lights flashing, the music pulsing, and the wind blowing in Errol’s hair. I couldn’t see Errol’s face, but I heard from all the parents and paparazzi that Errol had a huge grin on his face all the way around the rink (or might that have been a look of fear?).

So now I know one more thing from my past that is best left in its place, and one more thing to add to Errol’s list of favorites. I’m sure it won’t be our last trip to the skating rink, and that’s just fine with all of us.