Skate Connection

The last time I went roller-skating was the best day of my life. I didn’t know it then. I didn’t even know it shortly thereafter. In fact, one could argue that to this day I still do not yet fully appreciate that day. What day was it? I have no idea! Boys don’t remember silly little things like that. What I can tell you is that it was 2001…I think. Okay, what I can definitely tell you is that it was late October. That much I know for sure. Because the last time I went roller-skating was on a blind date. Yeah, that’s right, I said it. It was a blind date. And the theme of that blind date was Halloween which inherently tells me it must have been late October…I think. At any rate I was set up by a girl in my FHE group in my singles ward in Provo, UT whilst I was attending BYU. That’s Family Home Evening for all you who don’t speak “Mormon-ese”. There was a group of at least 10, and we all met at this girl’s house. That’s the day I met this nice young lady named Angie. She was taken with me right away, I could tell. I must admit though, I did have an unfair advantage, but that’s another story entirely. Hint – it had something to do with a retro 70’s shirt I had procured from a friend for the evening (cut me some slack it was Disco Night at the rink…but then, isn’t every night Disco Night at the roller-rink?). At any rate, I’ll leave that story for Angie to tell, but don’t let her fool you, she was hooked from day one.

Let’s bring this full circle now. It’s been just over 7 years since that first night. We’ve since been through 2 graduations, 2 job promotions, 1 job retirement, 5 moves (1 really big one), 3 apartments, 1 condo, 1 home, 2 kids thrown in there somewhere…oh and there was a wedding in there somewhere too. And finally, last night we got back to where it all began, at the roller-rink.

It was a Ward Activity so that was fun, and by fun I mean free. And it was obviously the first skating experience for both Austin and Luke. Well, not so much Luke, but we’ll get to that. We had our neighbor kid, Peter, with us as well. Here’s Austin and Peter with their skates on:


After they walked me around a little bit…

I was ready to be on my own, thus freeing them up to go have fun. I was really surprised how quickly both of them caught on. Much quicker than me, I can tell you that much.

Here’s another one of Austin’s friends. His name is Jared:

And finally, here’s what Luke did all night:

Notice that he has no skates on. He wanted absolutely nothing to do with the skates. The closest we ever got was getting him to take his shoes off (notice no shoes either). Now, herein lies the problem. Having no skates on actually made him the fastest one in the entire building. No one could catch him because we were all in skates. And once he realized this, he had a fantastic time running all over the building, from the video games, to the middle of the rink, and back again. His favorite thing to do was run the length of the rink (right down the middle that is) with his head flopped back, looking up into all the flashing lights, and cutting off countless skaters as they tried not to plow over him. Luckily everyone there was in our ward so no one really cared.

So there you have it. That was our first family roller-skating adventure. Who knew so many years ago that one little blind date would result in all the fun we’ve had. Happy 7th Rink Anniversary Angie! Now go blog about that awesome shirt I was wearing. Everyone’s dying to hear the story now. Don’t forget the part where you totally fell for it!