or it was in my imagination. Last night, my husband David and I ventured to Bryant Park’s iceskating rink. After three years of saying “we should go ice skating,” we were finally doing it. Yeah! It’s before the holidays, so there wasn’t this monstrous, forbidding line wrapping around the park, but there were other signs that maybe we should’ve turned back. I fell twice last night. For the first fall, I wiped out faceforward on the steps, with my gigantic backpack pinning me earthward, and bloodied a knee–and this was before I got on the ice. Uh oh. I am at an age where when I fall, I just lie there. I’m no longer easily embarrassed about looking foolish, and really, on some days, my spirit is such that I just want to lie down on the ground anyway. Once we got in, rented our skates, shoved our belongings into a locker the size of a gnome coffin (sorry gnomes), we were on our way! Luckily, there weren’t many people like me desperately clinging to the walls around the rink, so I had the area to myself. Eventually, I let go and went a couple of rounds on my own giggling with nervousness, observed a gray-haired lady drop down on her bum, and quickly, soon followed with my own tremendous fall. I pitched face forward thunderously, and got the wind knocked out of me. At this point, I would very much like to bawl like a six-year-old, but then I remember, I’m in public and I’m 34, so I just lay on the ice not moving, which I think made the staff nervous because suddenly a succession of three male employees with official yellow jackets were by my side and skated me off the rink. They were so fast! David even kicked one of the them in the knee by accident in all the eagerness to help. After I got interrogated by the EMT, I was free to sit on the bench, and tried to figure out whether I wanted to venture on the ice again. I’m all about the “get back in the saddle” and I didn’t want to disappoint my husband. Only when when David very kindly said “let’s go home. We don’t need no stinking rink” did we leave. He’s good to me.
I was on the ice all of ten minutes. Awesome.