{"id":809,"date":"2012-08-27T05:06:11","date_gmt":"2012-08-27T05:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/?p=809"},"modified":"2012-08-27T05:06:11","modified_gmt":"2012-08-27T05:06:11","slug":"1981-for-a-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/?p=809","title":{"rendered":"1981 for a Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Ok, how much fun is roller skating? I just got home from taking my son to his friend\u2019s birthday party at the Sunshine Roller Skating Centre<\/a>, and while he took off his skates after five minutes, it turns out I still have a need for speed.<\/p>\n

As soon as I laced up my clunky four-wheel skates, I was transported back to the days when going skating was the height of my week. It was a great age, when hearts were won and lost in the glitter of the roller rink\u2019s disco ball.<\/p>\n

You could tell how serious a relationship was just by watching the couple skate. \u2018Just friends\u2019 would skate side by side. Holding hands was serious and if you saw a couple doing the double hand hold (which required one partner to skate backwards), they were practically prenuptial. A late night \u2013 i.e. 8:30pm \u2013 rendezvous in the darkened corner of the rink was likely to lead to making out.<\/p>\n

Or so I was told. I personally never made out at the roller rink. My most romantic moment came the night the only other person I knew at the rink was the cutest, most popular boy in my class. He didn\u2019t know anyone but me, so we ended up talking a lot that night.<\/p>\n

Then it came time for the sadistic slow skate in which\u00a0the girls would line up against one wall with the boys opposite them across the rink. The courageous boys had to skate the length of the rink to ask a girl to skate, and if she said no, it was public humiliation for him \u2013 but double for any girl left standing on her own.<\/p>\n

I usually didn\u2019t line up for the slow skate because I was pretty sure no boy would ask me, but on this particular night, when they called for the slow skate and I sat down to wait out the horror, the cute boy said, \u201cAren\u2019t you coming?\u201d Not only did he ask me to skate, we HELD HANDS! It was magic.<\/p>\n

It was a different time. None of us had cell phones or PlayStations or tattoos and there was no such thing as the internet. When I was very young, I used to go skating with my family. What did my parents do while I was out skating? I have no memory of them. I only remember being lost in the thumping music, singing as loud as I wanted while I skated as fast as I could.<\/p>\n

There was no such thing as a person not knowing how to skate back then. If you couldn\u2019t skate, how would you ever get a boyfriend? How else would you learn to fall with grace and humour and then get back up again? How else would you figure out what to say to get the DJ to play your favourite song?<\/p>\n

I was usually successful with \u201cIt\u2019s my friend\u2019s birthday and she loves that song \u2013 could you please please please play it?\u201d but then I didn\u2019t have cleavage to work with like I do now. Ok, today\u2019s DJ couldn\u2019t have been older than 16, which makes him particularly susceptible to cleavage, but he stopped the music mid-song to play my request – that NEVER would have happened in 1981.<\/p>\n

Maybe\u00a0the Sunshine DJ\u00a0was just showing respect for the elderly, but I don\u2019t care. There’s about a 30 year gap between the ages of 10 and 40 in which most people worry about looking like a dickhead in public. Thankfully, my window recently closed which means I could skate fast and rap along with Labyrinth as loud as I wanted.<\/p>\n

The best part of today, though, was that \u2013 after two hours of running around in his socks and jumping on the bouncy castle \u2013 my son decided to give skating one more try, and now he likes it so much he\u2019s having his own birthday party at the same roller rink in a couple of weeks.<\/p>\n

Yay! 1981, I\u2019ll see you again soon!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ok, how much fun is roller skating? I just got home from taking my son to his friend\u2019s birthday party at the Sunshine Roller Skating Centre, and while he took off his skates after five minutes, it turns out I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[286,284,285],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=809"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":811,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809\/revisions\/811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}