I can’t skate

photo credit: stevendepolo

Confession time: I can’t skate.

Bombshell, eh? It’s not that I’ve never strapped skates on, it’s just the last time I did so, I was in Grade 8. By my calculations, that was nineteen years ago. We had a neighbourhood skating rink when I was growing up in Guelph, and I would go to skate when I was a kid. But I distinctly remember stopping by plowing full-bore into the snowbanks that surrounded the rink. Saying I could skate would be like saying PopoZão is a subtle pop masterpiece.

Given the Canadian cultural identity surrounding ice skating (in full view this fall with the CBC mash-up hit Ice Capades Battle of the Blades), its something that I don’t really advertise. I feel like any white Canadian boy who was born in the late 20th century has the common experience of playing hockey. Me? Not so much. I don’t think I’ve ever played a proper road or ice hockey game. I can count on one hand how many NHL games I’ve seen from start to finish. Wayne Gretzky means more to me as being born in the same city than as The Great One. Icing is something on a cake, not a rule of the game. I don’t know what the lines on a hockey rink mean. I don’t care if a loonie was melted into centre ice at the Salt Lake City Olympics. You’re getting my point.

So when friends and family begin talking about hockey, I’ve learned just enough to make the right kind of sounds to escape detection—”Man, Don Cherry really hates European players” and “The old Alabama criss-cross!”¹ are two handy ones. I still don’t know what Lays chips have to do with the game, but since Mark Messier was a spokesperson, I assume there is some connection yet to be made clear to me.

Regardless—why am I disclosing this? Because I think I might be interested in learning to skate.

photo credit: fightingtheboss

Harbourfront Centre is offering Adult Learn-to-Skate classes and I’m tempted to give them a try. For a couple of reasons. The obvious one is because I would learn how to stop without the use of snowbanks. I’m also curious about the meeting other adults who, like me, were not born in a pair of skates. But I also feel like I might be missing out on something. Heather and I are going to NYC for a few days in December. How fun (and memorable) would it be to do a few circuits of the Rockefeller Center skating rink? And while that is a clichéd one-shot deal, it would always be nice to have another way to be active during the winter. And it’s only a short leap, then, to this:

photo credit: Entrtaner

No, not rollering myself, but deciphering the complex cultural rules behind another sport. Why only chicks?

1. actually, this is a reference to a hockey move that I’ve made up [↩]