a roller skating jam. (and rollerskates and rollerskates) girl meets boy on tuesday night, boy was high girl fly like kite. i went roller skating yesterday. yes, let the verbal and metaphorical challenges to my manhood rain down now. say what you want about roller skating, i don't care. maybe you'd compare voluntarily roller skating to sodomy -- which a friend actually did. this close minded "friend" of mine stated his preference to be sodomized rather than roller skate. i mean, is it that bad? i'm sure roller skate blisters can't really compare to the pain you might feel with option a-hole. but each man makes his own choice. ouch.

regardless of public (mis)perception about the nature of roller skating, i went last night, for the first time ever. i paid my admission, i rented totally uncool roller skates -- uncool because they were ugly rentals, not because roller skates are incapable of being cool -- and roller skated. and i think i liked it. who knew going around in circles could be so fulfilling? evidentally, a lot of people.

adult skate night attracts your average to super roller skater -- male and female. the average skaters stuck to their lines, put their heads down, and tried not to fall. the super skaters whizzed around the track, cut dangerously close to my personage, and made the averages jealous with their roller skating style and precision. some of the super skaters had routines all made up. apparently roller skating is a very popular couples event. they stepped, they shimmied, they moved their feet in synchronized time. these couples were sick. sick as in "*puke* too cute for words" sick and also sick as in "totally rad, tubular, and super awesome" sick.

i was really resistant to the idea of roller skating at first. i mean, what kind of adult male roller skates? in a rink no less? but i found myself enjoying the experience immensely. after the initial fear of killing myself -- much harder to do on roller skates than it is to do on ice skates -- i was ready to conquer the skating world. i might have said, at least once, that i wished my super hidden natural talent was to roller skate. sadly, the search for my super hidden natural talent continues, but i skate on.

in trying to rationalize my skate joy, i came up with a few theories. maybe i was just attracted to recreational activities popular in the seventies. nope. maybe i fit in better with tall lanky men who wore tight pants and had a je suis homosexual about them. um, i hope not. maybe skating is on the verge of a national comeback and i'm on the leading edge of the revival. highly doubtful. i didn't stop skating long enough to eat mozzarella sticks or drink slurpees, so it can't be about the food. so what is it then? where can my attraction to roller skating lie?

after a few bewildering laps around the rink, i figured it out. i like roller skating because it's a foreign form of movement. at my advanced age, rarely do you get to learn a new way of moving. i already know how to walk, i could precociously crawl from an early age, i know how to run/sprint/canter/trot. i've chosen never to learn how to skip. similarly, i do not know how to nordictrack. i do know how to hop on one leg and bark like a dog. i also know how to swim, bike, crabwalk, and backpedal. i once knew how to skateboard. i own and operate a razor scooter. i know how to ski, snowboard and sort of surf. i can still jump, however minimally. i, sadly, may know the electric slide. i know how to do all of these things. in short, i'm sort of a mini jedi master of movement. but i do not know how to roller skate.

like the sun rising in the east, the danky roller rink in linda vista unveiled a new form of locomotion. roller skating, as an activity and a lifestyle, promised to brighten my life and my day. i picture myself, after a summer of practice, flawlessly jumping curbs and swishing down the streets of our fair city. i want to conquer the eight wheels under my feet. i want to conquer the concrete world. i want to smoothly criss-cross my skates when i take corners. catch me because i'm falling. that's right, i want to be....a roller skater.