I’ve got a brand new pair of roller skates. You’ve got a brand new key…
OK, maybe I don’t have brand new skates... yet. I took a trip down memory lane last night and visited a place I spent way too many Tuesday and Friday nights in as a tween: Skate World of Troy.
It’s the place that I hung out with friends and just hoped beyond hope that that boy, the one with the curly hair, would ask me to skate during the ‘couple’s only’ song. It didn’t happen much but when it did I’m sure it made my pink diary with the key lock.
But I loved roller skating! I even practiced with the speed skating team and learned a few of the tricky jumps.
Ever since we saw the Detroit Derby Girls last year, I’ve been itching to get back in the rink. Last night was the first time I strapped 8 wheels to my feet in over 20 years and you know what? I still love it.
Skate World looked exactly the same: shag carpeting, disco balls, and space invaders were all intact.
Yeah, I tried rollerblading when they first came out and it just wasn’t the same. It was… work. Exercise. Roller skating, on the other hand, is easy and fun. It’s joyful.
Go ahead; call me a dork, old fashioned, or just plain weird. I don’t care. It took me a few minutes to get my old groove back but once I did I felt like I could have skated all night to Lucky Star, YMCA, or some god-awful song by Eddie Rabbitt.
I learned a few things on my little roller skating outing:
- My husband has never been roller skating. How do you marry a man and not know this very important bit of information? Apparently, it wasn’t that big in England.
- Who would have thunk it but roller skating is still popular! I thought we were going to pull into the parking lot and see tumbleweeds. It was adult night at the rink and it was hopping! Young adults, senior citizens and everything in between, they were all skating their socks off. I was flabbergasted.
- Revisiting the activities that you loved when you were young not only lets you reminisce, it also makes you feel just like that kid you used to be. Seriously, I had a blast and felt a few years younger.
While I’ll definitely be doing this again, my husband said he’d rather go ice skating. And, for the record, he didn’t skate last night. For me, ice skating is one of those activities that was fun as a child but is painful as an adult. I’ll take the wheels over the blades any day.
As the cold weather heads into Detroit, it’s time to find those inside places to have fun and exercise. I think I’ve found mine.
Some of my friends skated at the old Ambassador rink, which is now Leon & Lulu’s, and others skated at Bonaventure. I’ll stick with Skate World as it holds all my youthful memories. Did you have a favorite roller rink in the Detroit area?
So, what did you love doing when you were young that you haven’t done since?
Photo credit: Flattop341 on Flickr.