Ice Skating

This past weekend, Alice asked if I wanted to go ice skating with her. At first I wasn’t sure if I did, but then I went the old “South Park” route and asked myself, What would Brian Boitano do? Well, that’s a no brainer – he’d ice skate - so I went.

What I hadn’t anticipated was the overwhelming number of children. 80% of the people there were under the age of ten, and at any given point 20% were sprawled out on the ice. Initially, I thought I’d just be skating around in circles, but it was instantly an obstacle course, trying to avoid fallen children. I felt like I was on a battlefield, doing my best to march forward as people beside me dropped to their knees. Hearing the screams, I had to push forward, ignoring the wounded. At one point, a kid half my size knocked me over after hitting me hard from behind, skating off as though nothing had happened as I lay facedown on the ice. Such are the casualties of war.

Experiencing that terror, I’m changing my stance on figure skating: It’s a rough sport. There’s pain, blood, and tears. Though everyone tends to demonize Tonya Harding for the Nancy Kerrigan incident, it seems to me that she was playing by the same rules that everyone else does while on skates.