Skater Hater

Ice skating at Nathan Phillips Squares: it's one of those winter pastimes in Toronto that evokes certain experiences from my youth--awkwardly shuffling across the rink while wearing three layers of bulky clothing Mom made my put on; runny noses and scarves damp with exhalation; sipping hot chocolate through a coffee stir stick and scalding my tongue and hands and soaking my mittens because the cup was so overfull....

One year in high school, I sprained both ankles within the same month, and they were never the same afterwards. I didn't dare trust myself on the ice with weak ankles. And so I gave up ice skating.

Yesterday was the first time I'd gone in more than fifteen years. As I stepped tentatively upon the ice rink at City Hall, the memories all came back, along with a few new experiences.

Old news: frozen toes, ill-fitting skates, that feeling of burning in your fingers as you try to lace up your rental skates tighter, soggy laces, soggy everything else, no place to sit, an overcrowded rink with the consistency of a hard-packed snow cone, crappy radio music from the local top 40 hits station, and douche bag show offs.

New news: skate rentals at $10 for 2 hours (20 minutes of which was spent waiting for the Zamboni to clear the ice), shooting pain in my lower shins and hips, a real fear of falling and hurting myself, the urge to push aside all the children stumbling in my path and threatening to trip me up, and the urge to punch the douche bag show offs trying to scare you into falling.

I'm not sure I had fun: every round I made, I had to stop to rest my shins (what the hell is that pain?) and I didn't get my customary hot chocolate and chip truck fries and gravy reward at the end. I didn't even get a good workout--just a lot of strain on parts of my body I don't use very often.

Would I do it again? Sure...if I had my own skates and ice rink that had the consistency of linoleum when skating on it, and the buoyancy of a mattresses when I fell. Someone should get to work on that.