With your shoes on, you put your foot on the obvious place, then adjusted the strap around your ankle and buckled it. The key fit on the little post that stuck out of the side in front of the wheel. Turning the key tightened the clamps around the sole of your shoe, and you were ready to skate.
You always kept the key on a cord around your neck, because you would most likely need it before you got home. It was impossible to tighten it enough to keep the skates on very long. When they got loose you could slip off the skate and fall. It was rare to skate without scraped knees.
I got my first pair of roller skates when I was 18 months old. I
probably couldn't
actually skate then, but I could stand up in them and walk
. I skated a lot when I was in elementary school.
Our
Girl Scout troop
went to the roller rink on Saturday afternoons. We wore
shoe skates there--they didn't fall off. E
ventually I learned to skate backwards, stop
,
do various skating steps,
and do
an arabesque. I loved to skate.
The last time I roller skated was a long time ago.
I learned to ice skate after we moved to Wisconsin, and it seemed very similar to roller skating. There was a short learning curve. For my 60th birthday I got roller blades and learned to do that too. But not anymore.
No comments:
Post a Comment