Dancing Queen

Every Saturday afternoon of my fifth grade year, there was one place where I could usually be found—Circus Skate.

By no stretch of the imagination could I ever be described as an athlete. There are way to many instances involving me tripping over first base, swinging and missing, and being pummeled in the head by wayward soccer balls to report. The list is long and by any commentary, my athletic skills would be described as lackluster.

But on the smooth, slick floor of Circus Skate, wearing my rented brown skates with broken laces and orange wheels, I was a dynamo. I don’t remember where or how I learned to skate, but man, could I skate. I could easily put my peers to shame with my spins and my speed. Now I’m skating forward; now I’m skating backwards. The transitions were smooth and the technique flawless.

I loved skating so much that regardless of the weather, I’d grab my tape player and skates, along with my beloved Bon Jovi Wanted Dead or Alive cassette tape, and go out into the carport to skate, perfecting my skills while avoiding the oil stain in the middle of the concrete slab. Whoa, we’re halfway there…double-spin…Whoa-oh! Livin’ on a prayer…toe-stop turn. Bon Jovi really knows how to fire a gal up.

I skated because 1) I was good at it, and 2) I loved the way it made me feel. Maybe I liked being on skates because I could never run fast. But on skates, I could fly. I was fast, agile, and usually, graceful.

Confession: I don’t like doing anything that I’m not good at. Not one thing. I don’t enjoy a good challenge, and I don’t like falling on my face while trying to do something—literally or figuratively. Thus, with success a probable guarantee, my passion for skating continued.

Circus Skate was a world all its own. There were video games, lockers, dark “make-out” corners (which I was way too young to really understand), cold pizza, flat cokes, disco balls, and spinning lights. And large circus animals on the walls pirouetting on shiny skates. I especially liked the hippo wearing the pink tutu.

The bathrooms were the skate-in variety with no doors, and the walls were carpeted, which I could never figure out. Why would you carpet the walls, unless it was to cushion people as they crashed into them? Maybe it helped, because my friend Courtney once broke both her wrists after skating into an uncarpeted wall at a church lock-in.

Soundtack: What else? Bon Jovi, "Livin' on a Prayer"