The Twilight Zone

Episode 8,005: Time Warp at the Local Skate Center

"You're traveling through another dimension -- a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's a signpost up ahead: your next stop: the Twilight Zone!"

*Insert creepy music*

I went to a surprise birthday party the other night at a local skate center. My experience in the past with skating centers have been pretty much all about middle schoolers, thumping poor quality music, chili fries, and the limbo. The party was for a friend in her early thirties, we thought it would be fun. So I entered the skating arena and it NEVER occurred to me that what happened next would have happened:

I walk in the door and I am the ONLY person in the entire place UNDER the age of 65. All of a sudden I was being stared at by a bunch of old people. I stood practically frozen as I watched the live DJ spin polka-ish tracks that were remakes of things like "Matchmaker, Matchmaker" from Fiddler on the Roof.

Now I must clarify, these people were not just moseying around with canes, oh no...if any of you have ever watched ice dancing in the olympics then you can imagine what I saw. These folks were dancing on roller skates! The fox trot, the tango, the waltz and all sorts of other things. They were magnificient! A friend came in and he just stared at the floor and made a very appropos comment:

I am going to get schooled by a bunch of old people.

Yup, basically. There were eight of us that ended up being there for the party. We kept being referred to as "young people" all night. People kept coming up to us, touching us, telling us stories about everything from WWII to fertilizer, and telling us that we MUST come back. Many of the women were in little ice skating outfits. Now before all of you start gagging, you must know that most (unfortunately, not all) of them were in awesome shape and had really nice legs!

I cannot skate very well, I can't stop and I can't turn. This makes for an interesting and very tiring experience. I would be skating around and a white haired gentleman would come up, skate circles around me and then take my hand. He told me that I should come for a lesson! We would skate around and then just like at an old-fashioned dance the DJ would call a dance. My favorite was when he would say in a low voice, "Couple's dance" and the lights would go down and all the couples would get on the floor! We would dive for the side because we knew we couldn't cut it.

The highlight of the evening was when they called the birthday girl out onto the middle of the floor and they all joined hands and skated in a big circle around her singing "Happy Birthday." It was straight out of a weird, but funny emotive movie.

I think it was one of the best nights of my life and there were no chili fries or the limbo involved.

Doo do do doo do do do doo