The Ass Capades

If humans were meant to ice skate, we would have been born with steak knives on the bottoms of our feet. I don’t care how easy the hockey players make it look; we should not be teetering around on sharp objects, be it stiletto heels on some Jimmy Choos or blades on the soles of ugly boots. My children, who can barely walk down stairs and are still incapable of riding a bike without training wheels, agree with me when it comes to ice skating. We don’t ever think about it. In fact, we don’t even watch figure skating on television. But last weekend, we had to overcome our discomfort long enough to attend a birthday party for one of my daughter E’s friends, with mixed results.

When you go ice skating in winter, you should expect a crowd at the rink. I didn't know that, so I was quite surprised at how many people would turn out in crappy weather. I had to drive around the parking lot four times before I could snag a space. I took the girls inside only to see masses of people everywhere, but not in any real sense of a line. It looked like the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, only everyone was wearing sweat shirts. We finally found the party room and put down our stuff before rejoining the jumble of people waiting to rent skates. I had to help both my daughters get on their skates, which is scary as the mom because what if those blades sliced off my fingers? But I couldn’t share my fear of getting cut, just as I couldn’t share my fear of skating itself.

So I booted them and myself up, and then I had to pretend to be brave and wobble my way back to through the throngs of people to rent a PVC ice walker thing for my youngest daughter, S, to use. It looks a little like a goal cage, only it is less sturdy and has no net. You use it just like a walker, and it shaves across the ice, making snow cone piles while the user hangs on for dear life. I coerced S into tottering over to the ice rink. My other daughter was already baby stepping her way around the rink with her friend, who is an experienced skater and didn’t really understand the reason we were all so scared. S and I got to the doorway of the rink, and against her will, I got her to step one skated foot, then the other, onto the ice, while we both clung to the walker. She just stood there. I showed her how to march on skates, just like she would on land in regular shoes. She just stood there. I showed her how she could hold onto the walker and glide a little. She just stood there. I told her how the people behind her were trying to get off the ice and she needed to move. She stood there some more, and then she began to cry. I pleaded with her to try just one lap around the rink, and if she still didn’t like it, she could take off the skates. She yelled something at me that I couldn’t hear because of the crying, and stood there, unmoving.

I thought for a moment about how much I don’t like to skate, how scared I am of falling, and why, exactly, I continued to try to convince her to make an effort. When S doesn’t want to do something, there is no reversing her position. So, fuck it. I wasn't going to break my arm to get her to skate

I finally got her to move back to the gate and get off the ice, then forced her to stumble back to the benches to take off the skates. She glared at me through her wet, clumpy lashes, as if this were all my fault. I stomped back to the counter and got her shoes for her.

“You are going to have to sit by yourself or with one of the other moms while I help E skate,” I told her. She sat on the cold bleachers, and I trudged back to the ice to look for E.

Meanwhile, E had been balancing her way slowly across the ice, and had yet to complete a full lap around the rink in the time it took for S to freak out and get pissed off. I took the walker with me in case E wanted to use it, which was a lie. I wanted to use it, but I also wanted to use my daughter as my cover for using the walker. I convinced her to hold on to it and let me hold on to her so she wouldn’t be scared. Ha. We made a few laps around that way, like the Polar Express out of control, only we never crashed. Every time we passed where S was sitting, she would glare harder at us. I am surprised she wasn’t able to melt the ice.

I left E to her own devices to check on S again, who wanted to know how much longer she had to sit by herself. “Until the skating portion of the party is over,” I told her. “I am going to go around one more time and then I have to stop because my feet are killing me.”

She started to quietly cry again, and I rejoined E, who wanted to try holding my hand while I continued to hold the walker in my other hand in case she needed it. I don’t know how anybody was able to skate around us, with the human chain we had formed on the ice, E with all the grace of a newborn giraffe and me like her Hobbit mother. After two more laps like that, I left her again and went to take off my skates. S was going on and on about how it was the worst party she has ever been to, how much she hates skating, and how she is never going to do it again. I inspected my feet for water blisters, of which there were three, as well as the inflamed tendon along my right ankle. I kind of agreed with her at that point.

We walked back to watch E’s progress when I noticed someone helping her across the rink. She was crying and moving slowly, so I rushed over to the doorway to try to help her off the ice. But before she could get through, a large, and by large I mean a really super fat woman, got off the ice right in front of her. Her backside was pretty much in S’s face, and her pants picked that moment to fall down below her buttocks. She stood there, trying to get her other foot off the ice with her bare ass in my kid’s face. The woman didn’t seem embarrassed at all; she just hiked up her jeans over her rump as if it happened several times a day. S was delighted. She laughed and laughed, her eyes all twinkling. You would have never known she had spent the last hour sitting on the bench like she was in the emergency room instead of at a birthday party.

E, it turned out, had been kicked in the back and knocked over by a wayward dad who didn’t feel the need to stop and offer assistance, but just left her sprawled on the ice. Her back hurt, so, ironically, we put ice on it, which seemed to help some. Luckily, it was time for the other party guests to remove their skates and eat some cake, which was the only reason S wanted to come in the first place.

I doubt any of us are ready for another foray onto the ice anytime in the near future. But I did find it amusing how E started off happy and ended up miserable because of another person’s thoughtlessness, whereas S started out miserable and ended up happy due to a large naked ass. I guess it wasn’t a total bust.