You’re supposed to call it in-line skating, because Rollerblade is the registered trademark of Rollerblade Inc., just as you’re supposed to say facial tissue instead of Kleenex. But let’s be honest here. They’re not roller blades, they’re not in-line skates; they’re roller skates. Maybe they don’t have metal wheels, pom-pom laces, or a key so you can extend them over your sneakers, but they’re the same thing. And they are everywhere. Suddenly the world’s a roller rink.
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I hate roller rinks. Roller rinks were the bloody coliseum of my adolescent sexual frustration. I was a gawking gladiator with more acne than armor. Like a Christian thrown to the lions, I was eaten alive, night after night. I tried. I skated my heart out. I’d come home with big watery blisters on both my feet. I ruined my knees trying to limbo lower. Still the pretty girls eluded me like chimeras in the mist. I was a teenage roller-rink pariah.
I know, fun is fun and it looks like fun. And maybe my problem is still a certain amount of sexual frustration, but what scares me is that the boundaries between adolescence and adulthood seem blurred. The rules of the rink now apply to all of us. We’re all supposed to go around the same way. The cutest and the fastest still win, and the rest of us are just obstacles to be dodged or pushed over.
