Inline skating is scary

Back when I was fearless and stupid I bought inline skates for myself. Colin and I had seen sexy, skinny people roller-blading on the boardwalk at the Columbia River and we wanted to be skinny and sexy too. So we motored to our local sport shoppe and bought ourselves inline skates.

We lost all traces of dignity one afternoon in the parking lot of our apartment complex; with our feet stuffed into skates and pads on our elbows and knees, we slid and giggled and fell on our faces. We tore up our legs on gravel and asphalt, and gave up. Those skates went into a storage unit after he died and I've been planning to get rid of them for years now.

But I've recently taken up roller skating again. Granted, I skate on old-school skates, the kind that have the wheels side-by-side instead of all lined up in a row, but still. I can roller skate again. I should totally wear my inline skates.

So I send Mr. J down to the garage to get them for me, and suddenly I'm on those silly inline skates again. He had to hold my hand because I put the skates on before I went down the stairs (it was raining, okay? I wasn't going to sit in a puddle of water and put skates on!). I skated back and forth in a little five foot patch of parking lot that was covered by a roof and I didn't fall down at all.

I think I prefer side-by-side wheels versus lined-up-in-a-row wheels, but I'm keeping those inline skates, and one day I'll be good enough to actually skate on them without my husband holding my hand.