Roller Skating

As any good Mom of the 80's would do, I took the kids roller skating today. They have a nice little class for 2 to 6 year olds on Fridays at our local rink, Skate City. I was worried how the kids would do since neither of them has been on a pair of shoes with wheels before today. How many times would their feet slip out from under them... causing them to fall flat on their bottom? Well... never fear... the back inside wheel is locked in place by the rental skate attendant so it doesn't spin. This helps the kids maneuver around the rink without too much slipping. As they progress in their abilities, you can ask the attendant to free the wheel and off they go. Some of the kids were really fast, but most of them were at the ability level of Sanjay and Priya so it was going well.

About 1/3 of the way into it Priya told me she was done and a little while after that I look out at the group of kids in line for the limbo and I see Sanjay crying, but trying to hold back his tears. When I went out to get him he said he was crying because he couldn't find me. Once he was sure I wasn't leaving, he was back out there skating around and again was fighting back tears. This time Priya noticed, so she went over grabbed his hand and skated with him to the edge of the rink to meet me. He was finished... said it was too hard for him and since the class was almost over we removed the skates and got ready to leave.

From both of them, I was getting the vibe that this wasn't as much fun for them as it was for me. My dreams of reliving those days at Skatehaven as a schoolgirl with my kids more than 20 years later... down the drain. How fun would it be for us to all go skating together on Hannah Montana night next weekend?? I even got out my skates (yes, I still have my roller skates from 8th grade) and dusted them off hoping for a little time on the rink today. Well, perhaps all is not lost... as we were walking out of Skate City, Sanjay says to me, "Mom, that was so fun be'cept I cried a little bit"... and Priya concurred asking when we're going back and when I was going to skate with them.



This is what it looked like in motion...