For some people, there are always hobbies they find and can’t continue because of some outside factor but still love with all their heart. Sometimes they’ll forget about it for a while until something sparks it again and it’s all they can think about. That’s how I am with ice skating.
When I was itty-bitty (maybe five?), there was this book about a girl who was learning to skate and I wanted to be like her so badly. So my mom signed me up for a free skating lesson at the mall and off I went. I don’t remember slipping at all and just had a lot of fun zooming around on the ice. Afterward, I asked my mom if I could get lessons and maybe pursue it as a sport, but, unfortunately, my mom said no (now I know it’s because skates and performance-wear are hella expensive, especially when I was still growing and would constantly need replacements when they got too small).
It became a thing that I would do maybe twice a year if I was lucky, though some years I completely forgot about it. Back when I still needed to be in summer camps while my parents worked, they signed me up for an ice skating one and I was ecstatic. One week of just being on the ice for a couple of hours and learning the basics again was heaven for my eleven-year-old self. But of course after that, I completely forgot about my love for skating again. I’d go a couple of times as I got older (I remember for my fourteenth and fifteenth birthday I went skating with friends) but I’d still always forget about it.
Two years ago, my friend lent me his copy of Yurii! on Ice and I wanted to go skate with all my friends so bad. Half of them were just as excited as me and the other half were terrified of splitting their heads on the ice or getting their hands run over by skate blades (both of which are only extreme cases of injury; the most that could happen when you’re careful is just ending up with sore ankles and bruises). Because of the hesitance, we didn’t end up going and again, I forgot about skating.
Two of my friends (one of them being my friend who lent me Y!oI) started dating in December and went skating for a date. Naturally, as the good friends we are, the rest of my other friends and I crashed their date to zoom around the ice. It was a lot of fun lapping most of them who were still learning to skate (and maybe “accidentally” running into them) and just getting to be on the ice again after a good three years. But of course, history repeats itself and I completely forgot about it afterward.
However, back last month, I found this fanfic on Twitter (no, I won’t be sharing it to save myself from embarrassment) about ice skating with a couple of videos attached that had skating performances. It kind of just hit me as I was reading it that I had stopped growing, was an adult, and had a job and ended up having a “holy crap I can buy my own skates and go whenever I wanted” moment.
I looked up skates and added a pair to my wishlist, saving a chunk of my paycheck to go towards them. At the tail-end of February, I had saved up enough money to buy them. Now I’ve got a pair of white skates sitting in their box as I look up rinks that’ll be open during the warmer months. Sometimes boredom will strike and I’ll just sit in my pjs with them on (I just really want to go skate but because of COVID you need to make reservations).
A couple weekends ago, I persuaded a couple of my friends to go on an overly formal ice skating date with me (and to celebrate one of their birthdays), part because they all enjoy skating, part because I wanted to break in my skates. We got two hours on the ice, and there was barely a moment where I wasn’t zooming in loops around the rink just vibing to my music. It’s always fun stepping off the ice after skating because your body’s so used to just gliding around that walking on normal ground feels strange.
I’m nowhere near professional; the most I can do is skate on one foot for a couple seconds. One of these days I’ll actually try and teach myself how to do more complicated things (like toe loops and spins), but I’m more than happy that I just get to skate more frequently now that I have my own pair of skates to use whenever it so pleases me.
