Smackie the Frog

Kelly gets these ideas in her head. I’m not sure how it happens. Sometimes it involves horses. Sometimes dogs. And sometimes it involves taking roller skating lessons. Earlier this week she IMed me and asked me if I wanted to take roller skating lessons out at Rollercade in South County. And since I’m a sucker, I agreed to go along. How bad could it be?

Well it turned out to not be “bad”. But it definitely turned out to be really weird. First off, apparently the name of this group of wannabe skaters is the “Rollercadettes”. I guess that means I’m a Rollercadette now. It makes sense though, because the group is made up of me and Kelly, a 65 year old man, and then about 10 girls aged 8-13. That didn’t make it awkward at all.

Then there is the teacher. He is a really fancy guy. I think he is trying to relive his days of of roller skating excellence through us. Which brings up another point. He’s trying to teach us how to be really fancy. Like, proper leg technique and transferring our weight all dancily. And I really just want to skate around in a circle. But that’s okay. I don’t mind learning how to be all pretty.

So overall, I had a pretty good time. It was quite different to skate on roller skates as opposed to inline skates. The skates feel much more “stable” in a way that was unexpected. It really felt like they wanted to just keep going straight, making turning a lot more difficult. But a large portion of my skills transferred, and I was at least able to go pretty fast.

But then, after skating, the weirdest thing happened. There is free skate after the lesson, and the crowd that showed up was… let’s say “interesting”. It was mostly these strange middle aged guys who showed up to join the rollercadettes. I’m talking super creepy. And yet very very good at skating. Scarily good at skating.

And as we were leaving I sat down to take my skates off, and one of them sat down next to me, randomly and out of nowhere, showed me a rubix cube, and said “Do you remember these?” Then he spent the next 5 minutes telling me all about solving a rubix cube. It was so weird, and so awkward. I still don’t really understand what happened, but I’m scared to go back because I’m pretty sure he’s going to be there, and I don’t ever want to go through something like that again.

Oh Kelly… The things you sucker me into…