Nostalgia can be painful if abused. It has a tendency to bring about feelings of euphoria, invincibility and recklessness. Limit your exposure to the volatile past and you should be safe, though. Doses of reality should return any overdose victims to the current time.
This past weekend, I was coerced into reliving one of someone else's past glories: the exciting world of roller skating.
Ah, the simple pleasure of strapping low-friction wheels to one's feet and trying to continue to maintain one's balance in a sea of children half your height and age as they zoom in circles and arcs around you as though you were a signpost on a street corner.
A small group of us went and, mercifully, the kids more or less treated us an non-entities.
Luna returned to her roots and was keeping up with the kids in about 6 minutes. She zoomed around the rink as though very little time had passed since she last skated. Forwards, backwards, fancy stops. She had little trouble with it all. Muscle memory is apparently strong when it comes to this sort of thing.
As Luna zoomed around gracefully, Lyons walked gingerly on his skates, trying to maintain his balance while not attempting to move all that much. He stumbled slowly around the edges near the carpet where he occasionally stepped off and stopped himself with a table and sat down to catch his breath from the exertion. After an hour or so, he began to coast a little longer and begin to look as though he was actually skating. He did, however, refrain from falling even though he looked ungraceful.
I was somewhere in between them. While backwards was out of the question, I picked up momentum enough to race with a few of the older kids once I was used to the skates. Stopping was little issue, as I either needed to step off onto the carpet and slowed quickly as I went towards the aisle or I fell unceremoniously on my backside when the floor transitioned from tiling to the old wooden floor which ran only up one side of the ring - much like a bowling lane - trying to avoid other skaters, who, at least, had less skill than I did.
Several hours of this and Lyons decided that he had had enough. Judging from his physical condition, we all agreed that maybe we should move along to other activities including beer and young ladies in short shorts.
None of us woke up sore the next morning, but my cell phone left a well-formed bruise on my pelvis where I martyred myself falling face first onto the floor avoiding a small child that had tripped over some Skittles® that were scattered around the rink.
Another excursion into the world of nostalgia is forthcoming. Armed with a bit more practice, as we have been skating 3-5 miles a day in the park nearby, we plan to go out again and prove ourselves.
We're going skating, wanna come?
Currently Playing: [ Kiss : War Machine ]
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Monday, July 18, 2005
Receptive audiences...
Bells, flowers, limousines and tuxedos - it must be a wedding.
The joy of having both good friends and aesthetically pleasing offspring is that I get invited to weddings, where my daughter gets to toss flower pedals at unsuspecting revelers in the crowd to distract from the nervousness of the bride as she comes down the aisle.
The bridal party for Jennie and Scott shooed me away, whisked my child off for the weekend and made her up like a living Barbie doll, giving her limo rides, little odd jobs with arts and crafts, and letting her eat all the small strawberries instead of cutting them up to go in the cheesecake topping and all those things that make a small child happy in a crowd of busy people.
When I arrived on Friday night, she had already impressed the families enough that there were groans and moans that there was thought, perhaps, that she should sleep that night, as the next day was planned from nine in the morning until late at night - which, as is always the case with an afternoon party, turned out to be early Sunday morning.
On Saturday, I saw her briefly after breakfast before I was ordered to go shower and dress, myself. When next I saw her, she came popping out of the limo like a cork from a champagne bottle and busied herself with primping and preening the maids and the bride. She sat with us through the ceremony, and then jumped back into the limo for pictures and running on the beach.
She returned to me with tales of crabs and windmills, ate a delicious buffet of varied palates and then wandered off into the crowd to blow bubbles at the dancing guests for the rest of the night.
Accommodations were provided for guests at the The Orleans Inn, a historic hotel nestled into a cozy corner of Cape Cod. The feel was homey and cared for and the reception was held on the first floor and in the back deck. Which was good, as the wine and beer was flowing and the music was playing until the wee hours which made a journey longer than a flight of stairs out of the question.
Sunday was a quiet brunch with some of the older crowd (since most of the younger were not awake until later that day), small talk and then a relaxing drive back home.
We returned with new friends, old friends with new contact information, and 3 large beach pails with flower arrangements that filled the kitchen tables by themselves - they made packing the vehicle a much more interesting time than I had anticipated.
The joy of having both good friends and aesthetically pleasing offspring is that I get invited to weddings, where my daughter gets to toss flower pedals at unsuspecting revelers in the crowd to distract from the nervousness of the bride as she comes down the aisle.
The bridal party for Jennie and Scott shooed me away, whisked my child off for the weekend and made her up like a living Barbie doll, giving her limo rides, little odd jobs with arts and crafts, and letting her eat all the small strawberries instead of cutting them up to go in the cheesecake topping and all those things that make a small child happy in a crowd of busy people.
When I arrived on Friday night, she had already impressed the families enough that there were groans and moans that there was thought, perhaps, that she should sleep that night, as the next day was planned from nine in the morning until late at night - which, as is always the case with an afternoon party, turned out to be early Sunday morning.
On Saturday, I saw her briefly after breakfast before I was ordered to go shower and dress, myself. When next I saw her, she came popping out of the limo like a cork from a champagne bottle and busied herself with primping and preening the maids and the bride. She sat with us through the ceremony, and then jumped back into the limo for pictures and running on the beach.
She returned to me with tales of crabs and windmills, ate a delicious buffet of varied palates and then wandered off into the crowd to blow bubbles at the dancing guests for the rest of the night.
Accommodations were provided for guests at the The Orleans Inn, a historic hotel nestled into a cozy corner of Cape Cod. The feel was homey and cared for and the reception was held on the first floor and in the back deck. Which was good, as the wine and beer was flowing and the music was playing until the wee hours which made a journey longer than a flight of stairs out of the question.
Sunday was a quiet brunch with some of the older crowd (since most of the younger were not awake until later that day), small talk and then a relaxing drive back home.
We returned with new friends, old friends with new contact information, and 3 large beach pails with flower arrangements that filled the kitchen tables by themselves - they made packing the vehicle a much more interesting time than I had anticipated.
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