Stayin’ Alive!

With Cristin gone to ladies weekend in Delaware I was left to wrangle the kids to a birthday party at the Carousel Roller Rink in Fairhaven. I showed them some videos of figure skaters during breakfast and they practiced some moves in the living room and they immediately declared extreme proficiency. Spending 60 hour weeks for seven years tackling the same problem for my Ph.D. probably gives me above average perseverance but these figure skating lifers are in a whole other category. At this point the girls have absolutely no sense of what it takes to be good at something but I think I prefer it that way. There is still a chance that they will come to know that there is a right time to quit even if we have to bring an outside consultant like Uncle Jon or Aunt Mo to teach them this lesson as neither parents have that skill. When we got to the rink everybody was putting on their skates and I initially shunned the plastic over-the-shoe skates but quickly backpedalled when I saw the consequences of putting two toddlers out on a hard floor in the real thing. These plastic skates have adjustable friction which goes all the way from somewhat slidey to basically like wearing shoes. For myself, I had the choice of skates (4 wheels) or blades and for reasons unclear I chose skates, perhaps to fit the ambience of cheese pizza, top 40, and disco lights.

The ladies both did well and Phoebe pushed herself reasonably hard and all the kids including the birthday boy were having such a good time that everybody ignored the first three announcements about cake. I have taken the ladies back to a wednesday free skate and Cristin has promised to join us when she has time. She claims to have extensive roller skating experience so this is a good place for me to get an additional test of her assertions of youthful glory. So far she is 1/3. At my hands she lost quite badly at both tennis and hungry hungry hippos. I gave her the 1 for lacrosse since she appeared skilled the one time we threw the ball around. There are also claims of prowess in field hockey but the only person needing a set of lungs in that sport is the ref so it is hard to discriminate abilities. I hope the Carousel survives. I ran some back of the envelope calculations during both of my trips there and their margin is a little worrisome. For parents like us though it is a great deal and a very fun family activity that works just as well in wintertime and we are fortunate that the rink is less than 10 minutes away.