Adolescent Effusive

Rink Therapy

I woke up this morning with one sock, tank top obscenely askew, a severe lower back ache, and the undeniable urge to take a crap.
These are all the results of an AMAZING day yesterday.
I woke up at seven, thought it was a school day and exclaimed, "Yes! No English for me!" Then I realized that it was the morning of the Math B exam and hopped in the shower.
I pulled on my Spotlighters hoodie over my wet hair and headed out the door. I hiked up to Mrs Flynn's room and smirked indignantly at her, "Yea. In spite of your crappy teaching methods, I'm still able to take the exam."
I took the exam with nary a hitch and made my way to the payphone and called for a ride home. I ran into Jeremy who was posing like he was in an American Eagle ad (collar popped, jeans ripped, hand in pocket, leather jacket and hair that's too long), trying to snatch up a middle school girl.
Nick ended up coming home with me and we ate soup and enjoyed each other until practice at noon.
Somehow, practice was highly tolerable. I think it was largely due to the fact that I completely shirked my minimal responsibilities and just sat with Alex for the entire practice. He's so comfortingly awkward. I was telling him about Jacob and how my hair used to be so long it would get stuck in my buttcrack when I was in the shower and about the acclaimed Jonah Richmond, and he somehow found all of it rivetting. I think two of the main reasons I like him is that he laughs only in appropriate spots and has never ever ever gotten in my personal space.
Also, Carissa Bailey...I love you.
I came home from practice and didn't do much until seven, when Chris drove me to...THE RAINBOW ROLLER RINK! We arrived to find a bunch of "teens" (Im not sure how many were actually 13) smoking and cursing and bearing mohawks and cute little cleavage. I told him I was scared to go in by myself and asked him to wait with me until my friends arrived.
We got out of the car and started to head towards the door, when I saw a girl in a lime green mini skirt, a jacket reminisent of ABBA fashion, and crackwhore makeup, a boy wearing a skintight denim outfit that "hugged his curves nicely" who also bore shiney braces, and a girl with a Peter Pan mask of black makeup around her eyes, a really short dress, fishnets, and argyle socks.
"Oh. You can go now, Chris. My friends are here."
I approached them in my acidwash jeans, polo dress, Freddie neckerchief, and side ponytail secured with a hot pink pleather scrunchie. We immediately burst out laughing, admiring each other's skating garb and laughed at how seriously everyone else was taking themselves.
We rented rollerSKATES, not blades, and were surprised to find how much more difficult having a wheel on each corner of your shoe is as opposed to having four down the middle. We rented some grungey lockers and got our skate on.
Everyone was whipping around us in their blades and turning around to point and laugh at our outfits. This only encouraged us. Dave danced like a madman on his skates that gave him 4 inches and 8 pounds, Mandi continually flashed her swimsuit bottoms at little boys, and Nakita and I just laughed and tried not to fall over.
There were probably about 100 kids there, and Dave, Mandi, Nakita, and I were four of the maybe 12 people with skates on. The rest were dancing and picking up kewt boys.
Some kid who kept cutting me off all night skated over to me and said, "Hey. Where y'all from?" "Grand Island." "Sorry to keep cutting you off like that." "That's okay. I'm a slow skater." "How old are you?" "16" "How old do you think I am?" "....15?" "I'm 20. I just came back from Iraq."
He continued to tell me about how his girlfriend of 6 years dumped him when she found out he was going to Iraq and how he was certain that he would come back and here he is.
He asked me if Dave was my boyfriend and I said, "No. But I've had the same boyfriend for a year." and then he asked if Mandi and Nakita were single. And I was like, "I'm honestly not sure. I don't keep up with that stuff."
He continued to intrude upon my skating time for quite some time, asked if me and my girls wanted anything to eat (to which I replied, "No, we brought our own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.") and hounded me for information about Mandi and Nakita. I finally told him, "They're not taken, but they prefer the single life." He then moved on to a group of 12 year olds who were not skating.
I don't know if it was the scrunchie, Mandi's bright blue eyes, Dave's total lack of inhibitions, or the flesh being scraped off of my foot by the exposed screws in the bottom of my skate, but last night was the most alive I've felt in...who knows how long. I was chugging along on my skates that had a tendency to vere to the right, staring up at the lights that haven't been cleaned since the last time I was there (six years ago), listening to the horrible ghetto fabulous music, and something clicked. I looked over at Nakita who had someone else's blood on her shirt from a mosh pit, Dave who was chasing some little boys with his "monster claws" extended, and Mandi who was throwing her head back in laughter and had this profound sense of belonging. I was out with kids I always thought would never find me interesting enough to spend time on and I didn't have any security blanket. No Sarah, no Keight, no Jacob, no one to catch me if I fell. I was making new friends all by myself, without the aid of people who know me better than I know myself.
We left with sore bodies and blisters the size of semi-ping pong balls and got into Dave's tiny red car and left with Jump On It blaring out of the windows, laughing with the satisfaction that we don't have to go home to our crack-dealing dads or to our baby's daddies.

posted by M.Jazz @ 11:51 AM