Skating with disaster

When my daughter joined the Brownies I thought, "This will be an easy gig. I'll drop her off at the weekly meetings while I nip off for a browse through the bookstore or a quick pint. There'll probably be some camping come summer, but I'm an old woodsman, so it'll be a lark."

What I hadn't counted on is that things have changed radically with scouting since I was a lad–especially in the distaff organisation. Now they not only get their merit badges for woodcraft, but for field trips. The first one was to a movie day where the girl scouts commandeered an entire multiplex so the Brownies could run riot in their jammies without inconveniencing the general public. I figured it would be great. The wife and I would drop the daughter off, go have a coffee, and get some shopping done. Nope. Somehow we got sucked into the festivities and before I knew it, I ended up sitting through Planet 51. If you haven't seen it, you are blessed above all Creation. If you have, then your life can only get better from here.

On Saturday, we had the second field trip. This time to a roller rink. This was not a good thing because the Szondy family is utterly hopeless at any sport that does not involve firearms, edged weapons, sails, or horses. My daughter had never been on skates in her young life and the wife and my only time on the things was ten years ago when we bought each other in-line skates for our birthdays and sent them back promptly after the wife broke her coccyx and I had to avoid hitting a tree by landing flat on my back. Thank God for heavy jeans and leather jackets or I'd be paying for a skin grafter's yacht now.

It was with this memory that we drove to the rink in Everett, which had been taken over by hordes of girl scouts, parents, and assorted teenagers. After the typical logistical nightmares of such a situation and my doing battle with a series of lockers that ate my coins without actually locking, we put on our skates and the first thing I thought was, "Who in his right mind ever thought that nailing wheels to your shoes was a good idea?"

And that was while I was on the carpet. On the rink itself all I could think was that the wood looked very, very hard. We took our first tentative steps and soon we developed our individual styles. My daughter, being the lightest, closest to the ground, and least prone to breakage, fell down a lot, but soon discovered how to propel herself while remaining upright. She was the slowest child on the rink, but she could go in more or less a straight line. The wife also managed to remain upright, though this was because she was trying desperately not to fall on top of our daughter. I can't give you the fine points of how they were doing because I was otherwise occupied. At first, I tried to simply stand in one spot, but that didn't prove possible because every time I tried to balance I started to roll somewhere. Then I discovered that the wheels on the skates weren't aligned, so my legs started to splay as I tried to coast. This was not good.

But it could have been worse.

And it was.

I soon found that the only way I could balance was to lift one foot briefly, coast for a fraction of a second, and then switch to the other foot. This kept me from falling down, but I also discovered that this was HOW YOU WENT FASTER!!

I sped up and, not knowing how to slow down and unable to coast, I kept speeding up more. Since my auxiliary balancing method involved wild flailing of arms, I cut a less than dignified position. Facing death square in the face, I wondered if this would turn out to be a Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton episode. As I crashed into a set of heavily armoured speakers, I settled for Harold Lloyd.

The next hour involved me rocketing in eccentric circles around the rink. I swerved like a Spitfire with a busted tail as I tried to avoid other skaters. When that didn't work, colliding with the wall was generally my other option. I gave up on flying into the seating area after my one attempt ended with my involuntarily molesting a woman.

Fortunately, most people knew I was coming by my continuous shouts of "Oh, God! Oh, Jesus!" I must point out here that those were not in any way taking our Lord's name in vain. Let's just say that a lot of promises were made out there.

As to how my family was doing, they were pretty much a passing blur as I shot by like a terrified comet. The only other time I was so scared was at that very same rink on that very night when I was in the gents trying to use the urinal while on skates. Being so frighteneed I'd pee myself gave the situation a certain irony.

Unsurprisingly, the wife and I contrived to sit out most of the last hour of the skating while we nursed a couple of bottles of water and speculated whether anything on the snack bar menu was edible. Meanwhile, my daughter was having the time of her life as the management turned down the lights and organised a Hokey Cokey contest and a race. In true Szondy tradition, she was dead last by a wide margin, but didn't care.

Next up: Sky diving blindfolded and slathered in barbecue sauce into an alligator farm.

Can't be worse.