Sunday, June 8, 2014

I'm ready for a weekend at Bernies

I was pretty cool in high school. If you don't believe that, just ask me. I'll tell you.

I wasn't very cool in college, I took it way too seriously which is a mistake I hope my children don't make.

I was cool again in my 20's.

I was both uncool and then too-cool in my 30's.

I forgot about it in my 40's, that is, until recently.

Recently I've begun to look and feel middle-aged. I cannot express how much this sucks. For some reason I thought I was immune to it, mostly because I want to be immune to it, and because I hang out with some beautiful people, barely hanging on to their youth by their fingernails.

Anyway, last weekend, I learned that no matter what, cool cannot be re-accessed from middle age, at least not the middle age I'm sitting in, the one that is completely dictated by being a Mom. Everything I do is doormat-related and done for other people because this is my phase in life. I think that people in their 50's or 60's get cool back, once the kids are gone and they can take up more selfish interests.
I'm not there and if you're reading this, you're probably not, either, with the exception of my parents because I make them read everything I write.

They're cool.

Anyway, last weekend, I slammed into the Wall of Middle Age at sound-barrier-breaking speed.
Saturday afternoon, I took Hannah (age 10) and three friends to Skate Inn. I was prepared to sit there for a couple of hours, catch up on Words with Friends (a middle-age person's game) and watch the girls skate.

After watching them for a while, I noticed several parents out there and me, always the no-nonsense, structured parent... who never has any fun, content with making fun happen for everyone else and taking joy from that... Me... (ahem) I, thought I'd do something CRAZY... and skate. Have some fun. Live a little. Surprise my child with my carefree attitude (she's never seen this, mostly because it doesn't exist) and my finesse at roller skating.

Finesse, I say... major skill.

Boy oh boy oh boy did I skate many a mile at the Starlite Skating Center in Clanton. I was good. Really, really good. So good, in fact, that I had the fancy tennis-shoe style skates courtesy of Santa Claus and the 1982 Sears Wishbook.

Yessir... this skating experience will open me up to all kinds of fun stuff in the future. I've had an attitude adjustment. A little shift in thinking will enable a major shift in quality of life... but like every other great idea I usually have...

this was not to be.

Not the case.

It backfired.

On a large scale. (Of course... I'm no small-timer at failure.)

Or at falling.

Which is what I discovered was happening as soon as I stepped into that rink... and when I say "into" I mean "into." There's about a four inch step into the rink, which I handled quite gracelessly in front of a man sitting with a baby. When I stepped down to enter that rink like a former roller girl that I thought I was, my right foot when sailing while my back one made my body do some kind of side flip. I grabbed the step in front of the man with the baby with both hands and laid there, mangled looking for a second, doing a mental body check of potential broken bones and since I didn't have any, well, why not try it again?

It was that step that screwed me up. I haven't skated since 1986 and the problem was the step. I will eliminate that step this time by sitting on it with both feet on the floor, push myself up and then skate like a boss.

That is not what happened, like, at all.

What happened was I pushed myself up and like you see in movies, my torso went first while my arms did the windmill. Then the arms went out front (mummy-style) in an attempt to correct the torso and this action made me fall flat on my ass, with my hands breaking my fall and my fall (nearly)breaking my hands.

If physical pain trumps the humiliation of such an action, then you might be severely injured. The first order of business was getting myself off that floor, which from my perspective seemed to be a large task given the fact that standing was not an option, so, I basically crawled over to the side, pulled myself up to the bench and removed the skates.

My carefree skating experience ended up being not just painful, but record-setting as the shortest skating session in history. And to add insult to injury, it cost money to do this.

So, I had two more hours to sit there, in agony, and reflect upon my experience. My phone didn't work in there, so I couldn't even play my old-peoples' game.

Anyway, ice and ibuprofen work miracles, nothing was broken, most of the pain was in my hands, wrists, elbows, shoulders, and neck since I'd used my arms to cushion the fall, thus protecting my spine, which I guess is some kind of innate automatic process that you're body does without thought. (Which is pretty cool if you think about it.)

Anyway, the following day was dreary, I was pretty sore, and in an attempt to feel better, I went to Old Navy. I got some shorts, a shirt, and a pair of sunglasses that, I was happy to see, looked just like the Vuarnet's I had in college. So awesome. The style was nearly identical.

So cool.

Anyway, I forgot I bought them until later that night, so in my excitement I went to the bag, pulled them out and put them on.

Hannah died laughing.

"What? What's wrong with them? They look so good!" I said.

"MOM! They're AWFUL! Scott, come here.... LOOK AT MOM'S GLASSES!"

Scott walked over to observe my Vuarnet-style specs and said "Hannah, they're not awful. They're perfect for Mom's weekend at Bernie's."

"WEEEKEND AT BERNIE'S, THAT'S HILARIOUS!"

"Yeah, and she's going with the Fresh Prince of Bel Air as his date."

"I don't get what's wrong with them." I said to the room-at-large.

"Mommy, did you look at them in the mirror? Did you?" They're HIDEOUS!"

She's now pulling me by the hand to the closest mirror because I'm still wearing them. My hand is very sore from the fall and hurts as I'm being pulled. This entire experience is an exercise in complete humiliation and I knew I was firmly planted in middle age when I looked in that mirror
and thought I looked so hot.

My children went on and on discussing my plans at Bernie's with The Fresh Prince and all the "cool" things we were gonna do.

Know what? They don't know everything. I'm cooler than they think I am and that's fine because kids don't want "cool" parents. They want the structured, firm, stick-in-the-mud that I am.

Now I have to go because my yellow princess phone is ringing and I think it might be the Fresh Prince.



We're going away for the weekend...

1 comment:

  1. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I just discovered you and enjoyed this post and the previous one as well. Please keep on writing. We all need a laugh and your descriptive phrasing had me laughing out loud. Of course if I'd tried the rollerskating bit, well, let me just say, it wouldn't have been pretty.

    ReplyDelete