When I was fourteen years old, my friend SW and I went through
a skating phase. Actually, at the time,
most of America was going through a skating phase. Everyone had inline skates and was
rollerblading everywhere. SW and I were
not extreme skaters. We weren’t skating
in abandoned swimming pools or sliding down rails, but we did like to pull off
the odd trick, like jumping trash cans at the high school or skating under the
parked cargo box in the parking lot of our school (for which I was rewarded by ripping
my back open by not skating low enough under it).
But growing up in Houston meant that some days during the
summer were just too hot and humid to be outside skating. On those days when the temperature reached
triple digits and felt 10 degrees hotter than it actually was, we would go to
the ice skating rink instead.
It was on one of these occasions that I found myself gliding
across the ice like a newborn foal; knees wobbling, ankles bending at
impossible angles, feet struggling to stay on the edge of the edge of the
blades of my skates. I had almost
mastered the art of traveling around the rink without having to desperately
clutch at the wall. What I hadn’t
mastered was how to stop. I would get
going at full steam, the top half of my body bending in the opposite direction
from the bottom half, arms flailing in all direction to try to keep me upright,
and then wham! I’d slam full speed into
the wall and fly over the top of it into the stands. Not to be deterred, I’d climb back onto the
ice and go at it again.
While this exhibit of how not to skate was going on around
the perimeter, there was a beautiful young girl skating like an ice princess in
the middle of the rink. She was adorned
in a light blue leotard with sparkles around the neckline that looked like ice
bursting down her torso. She skated with
a grace and elegance that belied her age.
I stood with SW along the wall transfixed by her. I had never seen anything so beautiful. And as she spun and leaped across the ice, we
headed off to join the less elegant and graceful assortment of skaters doing
their best to meander around the outside wall.
I was doing pretty well, having fallen enough to lose
feeling in my backside, and I was getting a little cocky. Everyone knows that the moment you get cocky,
that’s when it will all fall apart, and that’s exactly what it did. I hooked my toe pick on the ice, keeled
forward, and face planted into the ice.
As if that wasn’t humiliating enough, I fell right in front of another
skater, knocking her feet out from under her and sending her landing down right
on top of me with an oof! As I rolled
over to see if she was okay, I looked directly into the deep brown eyes of the
skater from the center ice.
She smiled a brilliant smile down at me and asked if I was
okay. I stammered out something unintelligible,
and she laughed. Then she said something
I will never forget. “If you wanted to
meet me so badly, there were easier ways to do it.” I blushed.
I turned white. I blushed
again. She laughed again. God, I loved her laugh. “I guess you want me to get off you now.” I’m not sure exactly what I said, something
like “If you want to,” but I know what I was thinking at that moment…”Stay as
long as you like.”
We did eventually untangle our limbs from each other. She was even kind enough to help me back up
again and then held onto me until I got my balance. When she was confident that I was going to
stay mostly upright, she gave me one more smile and then skated away toward the
exit. I rejoined SW to tell him about my
encounter, but I was only three words into the story when I felt a tap on my
shoulder. I turned and there was skater
girl again. She handed me a piece of
paper, smiled, and skated off again. I
opened it to find her phone number and name written in perfect cursive
inside. It wasn’t the easiest way that I
have ever met a girl, but it definitely left an impression on me.
