Way way way back in the day when calculator watches were over $100 and I wore my Knightrider pleather jacket with style, we’d spend the weekends at Spinning Wheels, our local roller skating rink. This was the place to be. This was where we could wear our Rick Springfield jean jackets with patches sewn all over them and play StarWars video games before anyone even knew the jedis were planning on returning. This was when you were cool if you were allowed to do the late skate from 9-12 rather than just the 5-8 sessions, and this is where young love blossomed. My first case of a flirting happened there, and my first couple skate was to Phil Collin’s “A Groovy Kind of Love”.

Several days ago now I relived those experiences. Our department chair invited everyone to SkateLand near my house here in Chandler, AZ for roller skating. This was also my daughter’s first skating experience. She had two pair of skates in the garage. One from a garage sale and the other from her third birthday, and neither of which she’d ever worn. The garage sale ones will fit in another year or two, but the others fit just fine since they screwed on over her shoes.

We got to the rink an hour late, but that was ok. At first it was really odd for me since they were playing Cindy Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”. Claire’s a girl and looked like she was having fun, but then they moved into some contemporary noise that made my ears hurt (am I getting old?). I didn’t recognize half the music, and we spent half the night moving slowly around the rink with Claire or taking turns going fast. Two hours was definitely enough, and we weren’t begging ourselves to let us stay for the late skate. We headed home to crash.