I USED TO FIGURE SKATE. Yes, true, it was a brief stint, but it always stands out as a defining period in my life. I had an awesome pair of skates that I got for a birthday or something, and some nice skateguards, too, that I often forgot to take off before I stepped on the ice. I even had a sweet bag to carry them in, one that was supposed to be for my rollerblades but it had my name embroidered on it and I couldn’t resist putting my figure skates in it.
I excelled at figure skating, I like to think. I passed every level and collected a badge reward to sew on the jacket I never bought. I used to pour over my skating report cards before putting them in the file folder that held my birth certificate and social security card. I made nice fishtails—those were my favorite, and in fact, I did them with the gusto of a over-caffeinated walrus. I did waltz jumps like a fool, and likened myself to Michelle Kwan when I did them. Tara Lipinski was my favorite, I had a book about her that I read on a weekly basis (or just looked at the pictures). I thought I did a hockey stop better than a hockey player. And seeing the great Zamboni charge around the ice, taking the tarnished white to a glossy finish, brought on a wonderful, most unusual sense of renewal.
One day I decided I didn’t want to do it anymore, simply because a coach (her name was MISSY, I’ll never forget) snapped at me. And I’ve never really skated much since then, and I’ve since realized that I would have never looked good in the spandex bedazzled suits, and my waltz jumps looked like shit.
But the badges and report cards are still in my permanent file folder.
2.
One summer when my family went camping, my brothers and I decided to catch every single frog in the creek and keep them for ourselves. We gathered together our ice cream pails and marched toward the water, where we crouched by the bridge for hours and captured approximately the entire amphibian settlement.
My parents decided that we had to go somewhere—and the frogs couldn’t come. So we placed our teeming buckets beneath a shady tree and went on the way. When we returned hours later from a muggy afternoon out, we discovered each catch belly up, motionless; frog stew.
The procession back to the pond was not to catch, but to release. And it was a sorrowful release.
III.
I could never reach the top of the refrigerator, but I tried. The only people that knew what went on up there were my parents. I once deemed it necessary that I find out what lie in this formidable space, and so jumped up along the fridge, fishing my fingers on its top. There were things up there alright! During one attempt I caught a rotary saw blade, and it slid and spun from the fridge’s heights, then clashing with my face. Bam!
I have the scar to boot.
Four
I was in first grade when I noticed a man walking his dog on rollerblades one day. It looked really cool, and he looked good, and thus, I wanted to try it.
Clover wasn’t quite broken in at the time. The sheltie pup was hardly a year old, and probably about the same age as me in dog years. My older sister had a really cool pair of roller skates that were splashed with soft pink and purple, four greased wheels and long laces. The combination of the dog and the skates were utterly irresistible, and I set out along the curvy concrete sidewalks one day, determined to be seen by the neighbors.
Clover and I got no more than three houses up from our home at No. 19, before I lost control and spilled in front of No. 15. It was a bona fide face plant if I ever saw one. I felt as though every thread of skin was dangling from my chin, and proceeded to skate, screaming, home. Never mind the dog that had escaped, that dumb pup could have been hit by a car for all I cared (the irony is, she later was). My mom was so dumbfounded at my dumb, spontaneous decision to take the dog for a walk on rollerskates that she did as any mother would do. She patched me up pretty good, my face littered with sympathetic band-aids, and set me up in front of the TV with a Squeeze-It. I watched a movie (a treat at our house) and basked in the glamour of being hurt, a survivor of the nonsense.
Clover died shortly after, when she ran into a nearby street and was struck by a car. Karma.
I vividly remember my siblings and I lined up in the bathtub, bawling out of control.
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