SKATELAND

Okay, this is a good one to leave everyone with for the weekend...My sister found this and sent this to me, and I thought that it was a good little read!!!

Southern Drawl
Skating rink remains cherished diversion of ‘80s generation
By Stacy Jones- Special columnist
Published Sunday, March 18, 2007
Every generation has its diversions.
My grandmother attended square dances held at a girlfriend’s house, unbeknownst to her stern Primitive Baptist father. My mother paid her dime for admission and a nickel for popcorn to see a Saturday afternoon matinee at the Coliseum or Pickwick theaters in Corinth.
Much of my generation, young teens in the mid to late 1980s living in the midst of a surging consumer society, scurried to the mall, but in most small towns, there were no malls. In our small Southern town, we had something better than the mall: the skating rink.
Many Saturday mornings -- and some Friday or Saturday evenings -- I donned a pair of ill-fitting, drab-brown rental skates, headed out under a swirling mass of colors cascading from a disco ball overhead, and skated countless circles around the Corinth skating rink, known then as Skateland.
A widely circulated e-mail thread reminds us children of the 1980s that we “remember going to the skating rink before there were inline skates.”
We tried to stay upright as much as possible on those four wheels, gliding -- mostly lurching -- along the concrete floor of the rink. I even took a six-week series of Thursday night lessons to learn how best to remain in an upright position.
We were taught to place our feet in a V-formation, move the left foot out, then the right, and alternate. It worked. I learned how to skate -- but not without a few hard tumbles on the concrete.
We were also taught that the best way to fall was to collapse flatly on our posteriors, because that’s where we possess the most padding. The problem was that I wasn’t blessed with ample filler in that area. An especially skinny, lanky kid, I fell as instructed and more than once bruised my tailbone. Once I fell on my bottom but also tried to catch myself with an elbow. That elbow smarted for weeks.
We tried not to fall too much and to maintain our composure when we did. It wasn’t the bruised body parts we were so much worried about as the bruised egos. You see, one of our main reasons for going to the skating rink involved attempting to attract the attention of the opposite sex.
At times, the skating rink made that endeavor perfectly easy by announcing boy-girl skates, which required girls to wait at one end and boys to skate to them to choose a partner. My friend Mindi, who often slept over at my house and went skating with me, and I felt an ambivalent wave of joy and nervousness when the DJ announced a boy-girl skate. We waited with sweaty palms for another sweaty palm to take ours and, speechless, skate around the rink with us in tow two or three times.
I remember the first boy with whom I skated. I was in sixth grade. He was an adorable blond-haired youngster. I traversed the rink with him that one day and never saw him again, but I will never forget him.
This young man, however, forged the beginning of many “firsts” at the skating rink. I kissed a boy for the first time at the skating rink. I was 15 years old, just shy of my 16th birthday, which coincided with the dating restriction my parents had placed on me, but after much pleading, they allowed me to go out a few weeks early.
His parents picked me up and took us to the skating rink. My exact memories of the kiss elude me, but I do recall that I had just finished chewing a wad of Double Bubble bubblegum and my beau had just finished eating a pickle, which I’m sure created an unusual taste sensation.
I developed one of my first crushes at the skating rink, and I know I wasn’t alone. Those six Thursday nights we took skating lessons, our instructor was a svelte, sandy-haired, graceful “older” man much too old for us at 27. We -- especially the girls -- hung on every word he uttered and hoped for the chance just to get near him. I try to imagine him now, in his late 40s, perhaps with less of that sandy hair and a wider mid-section, but somehow I cannot.
I lived out in the country and didn’t have cable at home, so I saw one of my first music videos at the skating rink: Michael Jackson’s well-choreographed “Thriller,” shown on a large-screen TV placed near the skate rental window. In fact, I was introduced to most of the music I knew from the 80s at the skating rink, including Madonna, Prince, Dire Straits, and one of my all-time favorites: The Cars.
It’s hard not to remember and cherish a place where I fell in love (or so I thought at the time), experienced my first kiss, and devoured globs of cheese piled on tortilla chips in a tasty dish known as nachos. All of this, while the air pulsed with tunes that fabricated a soundtrack to our lives composed of one of the most memorable, ground breaking, and outlandish decades of pop music.
I know the members of the current generation have their own particular pastimes, and I don’t fault them for that. However, those of us who are 30-something, even 40-something, ought to take them to the skating rink, though, at least once to give them a little taste of what our lives once used to be.
While there, request Madonna’s “Material Girl” or Prince’s “Purple Rain” or Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” or the Cars’ “Drive.” If you’re really brave, go for a Michael Jackson song. Tell the kids you remember when Michael Jackson was cool and everyone wanted to be like him, and float into your best “Moon Walk” rendition.
They may act at first as if you are passé, but I’ll bet you’ll find them later in their bedrooms at home attempting to secretively practice the signature move themselves.
Remind yourself that despite other contentions, youth for the most part isn’t wasted on the young. Some of us seize it for all it’s worth. The problem is that there just isn’t enough of it.