Rink of Despair

            If you live in Canada, you have to learn to skate.  That was my parents’ reasoning anyway.  Rink-oriented social situations would arise, they assured me, and I had to be prepared to uphold yet another of life’s many social protocols. 
            As the son of a recreational hockey player, my destiny seemed clear:  I was to don one of the identical uniforms and be given my number, my movements governed by the lines ingrained into the ice.  As my father tells it, he’d driven me to the town-sponsored indoor arena, dressed me warmly, tied on my skates, fastened my helmet firmly in place, and taken me out to the middle of the rink, when he said, “Okay, Robert, let’s go!” 
            I looked up at him, baffled, and asked, “What are we doing here?”
            “We’re here to play hockey,” he responded.
            “I don’t wanna play hockey.”
            In retrospect, Dad says, he probably should have consulted me first.
            During my first lesson, we were immediately instructed to skate rapidly back and forth across the ice in a straight line.  I’d barely manage to bump myself against the boards at one end before the others were already halfway back across the ice.  I became convinced that I, through some structural flaw, lacked the natural skating ability that was shared by everyone else in the world.  I was put into a newly founded beginner level, but to no avail.  Fortunately, there was another option that would allow a young Canadian male to meet his society’s norms.
            I was put in figure skating.
            Wednesdays and Saturdays, I was sent to that frozen wasteland.  I made fruitless attempts to jump the height ordered by my instructors, lifting one sore-toed foot shakily off the ice upon command.  Our progression was awarded with the coveted shiny stickers that we bore on our helmets as marks of our achievement.  I would look upon the multitude of gleaming two-dimensional figures decorating the helmets of the other students and hang my own sparsely adorned head in shame.  Several months of this would eventually earn us badges signifying our graduation to the next level of difficulty. 
            Classes would begin as I joined the other skaters in ineffective “warm-up” circles around the perimeter of the frigid rink, my skates straying out from under me as the blades caught in the ruts previously carved into the ice by others.  Despite instruction, I had the glacial grace of a giraffe, unable to stop suddenly or squat as instructed without my thighs bursting into flame.  They would be extinguished by the sub-freezing water that would soak into my snow pants every time I bruised my shivering skin against the unforgiving ice.  I searched for another young skater who shared my woes, only to find myself alone in my sanity among children who said it was “not so bad.”
            Then one day, while my class was lining up to practice stopping ourselves before we bumped into the boards, a four-year-old boy who was barely taller than my waist bumped into me.  This proverbial straw on the camel’s back proved more than adequate to reveal my pathetic lack of balance.  I landed hard on my butt and burst into tears.  One of the instructors squatted next to me.
            “Robert, what’s wrong?” he asked.
            It certainly wasn’t the first time I had said it, but this one stands out in my memory as the one that arose from the bowels of my soul: “I HATE SKATING!”
            “Well if you hate skating, then what are you doing here?” he asked.
            I made no response.
            I eventually earned a level two badge, which signified my ability to stop, skate backwards, jump, and balance on one foot.  My parents considered this an acceptable level of skating acumen for a citizen of Ontario and allowed me to stop attending classes.  When we were given days off school for skating trips or on family holidays when “everyone” was going to the rink, I could have enjoyed the frozen-toed monotony but chose not to.  My parents, friends, and loved ones seem to feel that I satisfied the requirements for my Canadian socialization, so as far as I’m concerned I’ve hung up my skates for good.

Robert Douglas Norsworthy is from Goderich, Ontario.  He is a first year student at Western in the faculty of Arts and Humanities who plans to obtain an Honours degree in English with a minor in creative writing.  His creative writing experience includes membership in the Writer’s Guild at St. Anne’s Catholic Secondary School in Clinton, Ontario, attending the Robert McKee Writing Seminar in New York, and taking 1000F with Professor Elan Paulson.