That Big Kid Ellen #27: Rollerblade
I am so thankful that rollerblading made a come-back during the COVID era. Because, ice cold hot take, rollerblading is super effing cool.
I mean, if you didn’t have a crush on one of these two guys, can you even call yourself a real straight, White, Millennial woman?
At some point in my young childhood, I owned a pair of purple and pink, overly-plasticized inline rollerblades. Rollerblading came pretty naturally to me (odd for a tall kid) since I took ice-skating lessons on the regular (#midwesterner), and I remember loving to skate around my neighborhood or on our local bike path. Getting there was usually a bit of a challenge since the road I grew up on is cobblestone (NOT ideal for shredding blades), but I still loved the feeling of picking up speed and feeling the strength of my own length propel me forward.
My most engrained memory with rollerblading comes from my 13th birthday party: My first official boy-girl party in 7th grade. I had a thing for skaterbois back then (thank you Avril Lavigne), and ended up dating the class bad boy. Let’s call him Frank (his name was not Frank). Frank was mean to everyone, except me. So, naturally, I dated him.
Note: The term “red flag” didn’t really exist in 2001.
My relationship with Frank was complicated, not just because he wasn’t well-liked — or because the extent of our relationship was just telling other people we were dating but never actually going on any dates — but because I had a long-standing crush one of his best friends. Let’s call him Ernie. (His name was most definitely not Ernie.) I had liked Ernie for years.
I had already shot my shot with Ernie previously, and while we had exchanged a couple highly-personalized Valentine’s Day cards in the past, he had politely let me know that he was not ready to have a girlfriend… and then almost immediately started dating another friend of mine. Oh to be a pre-teen.
Dating Frank was a bit of a revenge move on my part, but I was also flattered, in a very tragic romance sort of way, that I was the only girl that Frank was nice to. He wore black t-shirts with obscure emo band album covers on them, spiked his hair with Elmer’s glue, and probably liked to etch his name onto the wooden desks with a switchblade (speculation). I was taller than him by a couple inches, awkward, and extremely nerdy, which makes for a great opposites-attract-rom-com moment, but this was the real world, and we were doomed from the start.
It just so happened that my 13th birthday fell during the two or three weeks that Frank and I were “officially dating.” I invited all of my friends, girls and boys, to a roller rink in the next town over. It was my first experience with roller skates instead of blades, and I was a bit wobbly but could still hold my own. Frank and Ernie both showed up. Drama!
Everything was going well until the DJ decided that it was time for a couples skate. Every teen girl’s fantasy!
I made eyes at Frank — the kind that said, “please ask me to skate with you in front of everyone but also don’t because how embarrassing but also do because I already wrote about it in my diary but also don’t because my mom is watching but also do ask because then my life will be complete but also don’t because…”
He asked me to skate.
We held hands and made slow circles around the rink. I don’t remember the song that was playing, but it was cheesy and romantic and I’m sure quintessentially late 90s/early 2000s. Frank and I didn’t say a word to each other the whole time, our palm sweat co-mingling, legs a little unsteady.
The end of the song was nearing and Frank turned to face me, saying something quietly. I couldn’t hear him over the music, so I obnoxiously screamed, “what?!” back at him. I’m sure my voice cracked. He said again, “Can I kiss you?” and before I had time to respond, he leaned towards me and tried to kiss me on the mouth.
Which, like, how romantic?!
But no. Because I’m Ellen.
I didn’t have time to process his question at all and ended up turning my face away from him at the last second. His lips skimmed the side of my face, which in turn surprised me and I let go of his hand. Because I was taller than him, he had been using my hand to support himself as he reached upwards to kiss me. With his balancing pillar removed, Frank started to sway, lost his balance, and fell flat on his ass.
I tried to help him up, but in trying to save face in front of all of his buddies, he swatted my hand away and got up by himself. He zoomed off to our group’s table, leaving me to finish the lap pathetically by myself. By the time I got back, he had already told everyone there that he had tried to kiss me… and that I had pushed him down. All of the boys consoled him and I’m sure said some equivalent to “bros over hoes” before chest bumping each other (again, speculation).
I decided that somehow that story was less humiliating than what actually happened, or I just panicked, and decided to tell my girlfriends that he was a terrible kisser and I pushed him because he tried to use tongue. Embellishment was the name of the game, it seemed.
Both of us somehow became heroes among of the peers of our same gender.
I remember eyeing Ernie to see what his thoughts were on the whole fiasco, maybe he saw me in a different light after I supposedly stood up for my womanly independence, but he was intently staring at a friend of mine. Somehow that hurt more than Frank’s betrayal.
Thankfully, I wasn’t the kind of girl that that made a scene and ran into the bathroom crying. I let the party come to its natural conclusion, and then cried later when I was in my room alone like a dignified teenager. There are multiple angsty diary entries from that day in various colors of jelly pens.
The Monday afterwards, back at school, I could feel that things had shifted during our lunch period. I remember wandering outside after eating to play basketball with a couple of friends during recess. Someone gasped, and I turned to see a giant circle of a dozen or so 13-year-old boys moving towards me in unison on the blacktop like some smelly, pube-y murmuration with shared consciousness.
When the circle reached me, a couple of the boys stepped aside to allow Frank to ungracefully emerge from the center of the mass of bodies.
“I think we should break up, Ellen,” he said, and then was quickly re-digested by the throng of boys, running back to the middle of the circle and letting the boys that had let him out swallow him back up. It was highly choreographed and just so freaking bizarre that I just stood there slack-jawed and let it happened.
I eventually shrugged my shoulders, not really caring about the absurd and public breakup with Frank (because I was still actually crushing on Ernie), and kept playing basketball. WhatEVER [fingers making a W in the air].
Fast forward 20ish years, and I haven’t put on a rollerskate or rollerblade since!
I asked for a pair of rollerskates for Christmas in 2021, wanting to hop on the wave of Millennials learning how to rollerskate on TikTok, but I ended being too terrified to put them on.
My body was bigger, weaker, and not as agile as it used to be, even compared to just a couple years earlier, and I chickened out every time I went to try them out. I had gotten knee, elbow, and hand pads to make sure that I wouldn’t break my body too badly if I fell, but it was still utterly intimidating.
Once we decided that we were leaving Austin for good, I knew that a goodbye party at a roller rink would be the perfect send off, and I could force myself to try out my skates with friends around to support me.
I invited folks that I had met throughout the 9 years that I lived in Austin, and honestly, the turnout was way better than I expected. One of my favorite things to do is to bring together people that I love and watch them interact with each other. There’s nothing better than creating connections for others — literally one of my reasons for living.
This party was no exception. I had old co-workers 5+ years ago meeting up with folks that I hadn’t seen since the beginning of COVID. I even met one of my current co-workers for the first time ever even though I had been at my job for a full year! My heart was so very full that I started to second-guess leaving Austin and leaving my community behind.
I just really love my people 🥰
Rollerskating wasn’t quite as self-affirming, but I did end up having a pretty great time. I laced up my skates as tight as they could go in order to support my weak ankles. I could feel my nervous system panicking before I even stood up in them. I was sweating profusely, and it knew it wasn’t going to be pretty.
I death-gripped every object on the path from my seat to the rink, trying to figure out how to skate on the sticky carpet. I finally got the hang of it right before I transitioned onto the smooth surface of the rink itself. Why do they make them so smooth?!
My confidence grew as I slowly propelled myself around the first lap without any incidents. I could feel my legs figuring out which muscles needed to work to move forward, and I could feel my core figuring out which angle I needed to be bent over at in order not to tip over backwards. Falling backwards on my booty became my fear. I’d convinced myself falling forward would be better (not sure if that’s true).
I had multiple friends join me for slow laps around the rink. I had others that went off and did their own thing. I even skated around with my husband, and he didn’t make up some lame story for his friends when we wobbled and bobbled together. Success!
All in all, I’m glad I conquered adult rollerskating, and it’s kind of become a thing that I’m determined to get really good at. I went skating at the Santa Cruz roller palladium within the first month of moving here, and it was equally as fun albeit a little smellier (lots of high schoolers). I’ve even tried them out in my driveway, seeing if I can gain up some confidence in smaller movements. I would love to be able to skate on the ocean-side pathway near my house, but I have a feeling it’s going to take a while to get to that point!
It feels really great to be back to writing here, but I wanted to mention that if you made it this far, you’re the perfect candidate to sign up for my newsletter on my website ellenguthrie.com. I’m going to be transitioning all of my blog posts there over the course of this year, and I’m going to start sending out updates about my writing journey as a whole. I hope you’ll check it out!
