I limped down the sidewalk in considerable pain. Cars slowed as they passed, their occupants staring—and indeed they should—as I was bloody and torn. I wondered how many of them dialed 911, and did they report a crime or an accident?
From my appearance, it might be difficult to tell, but no crime had been committed. No one had attacked me. I hadn’t stolen the roller blades, and no one had forced me to put them on. And as far as I know, it isn’t a crime to make poor decisions.
Even so, there are consequences. My right knee bled from a gash across my kneecap. A crusty trail tracked down my leg to my blood-soaked sock.
An angry, glistening road rash covered my leg from knee to buttocks. Thanks to a grinding spill on rough asphalt, I had torn my shorts all the way to the waistband, exposing my raw backside to public view. An encounter with barbs on a chain-link fence had sliced open the palm of my right hand, as well as two fingers. I compulsively picked at tiny pieces of gravel embedded in my palm from the asphalt experience. The cause of my misfortune dangled by their laces from my uninjured hand: a pair of roller blades.
They were evil.
Cursed.
Beguiling.
How else can I explain why I had put them on in the first place?
In hindsight, this disaster was inevitable. As I approached forty, staying fit grew increasingly difficult, and I wanted another activity to squeeze into my schedule. The week before, I stopped at a thrift shop after work, and I noticed a pair of used rollerblades hiding behind some figurines. I hadn’t been looking for in-line skates, but I instantly found them quite appealing.
You may not understand my motivation for trying rollerblading for the first time at almost-forty, but you need to walk a mile in my shoes. I saw forty as the portal to Middle Age, from which there would be no return. When I looked in the mirror, I now saw my father. One day I Googled the appropriate age for men to start scheduling annual prostate exams. I began paying way too much attention to my daily bowel movements. I bought a five-year calendar so I wouldn’t miss my next colonoscopy. Queue the mid-life crisis.
For millennia, men have pretended we aren’t really aging. If we distract ourselves with sports cars, unusual hobbies, or younger women, we might fend off the inevitable until we’re too old to care anymore. A historical example of a man with a mid-life crisis is Ponce de Leon. At thirty-nine (a coincidence?), he became obsessed with finding the mythical Fountain of Youth, and slogged through hot, critter-infested Florida swamps while wearing sixty pounds of Spanish armor in his search.
All I did was buy rollerblades.
When I arrived home with my purchase, I went straight to the bedroom and tried them on, laced them tight and stood up.
A desperate grab for the nearest bedpost saved me from hitting the floor spread eagle. I eased myself to the floor with my legs splayed in the 10-and-2 positions, which is fine if you’re talking about Driver’s Ed class, but this wasn’t Driver’s Ed.
Ugh! Pulled something! I rolled into a fetal position, clutching the tweaked muscle. With some difficulty, I removed the rollerblades, hid them in the back of the closet, and hobbled in to dinner.
“What happened to you?” Cindy asked when she saw me shuffling to the table as if an invisible rope tied my knees together.
“Pulled a muscle, I think.”
She laughed. “Doing what, Old Man? Driving home?”
Ouch. Not the thing you want to hear when you’re suffering through an age-related crisis.
Over the next few days, I only skated inside the house. I reasoned that if I could get the hang of it on our hardwood floors, I could rollerblade with confidence anywhere. I only practiced when Cindy wasn’t around. With luck, by the time she knew anything about my new hobby, I’d be so magnificent that she’d mistake me for a twenty-year-old pool boy. I kept practicing and saw gradual improvement. Everything was going according to plan.
Then came the day of my maiden voyage. I imagined the euphoria I’d feel zooming along on Mercury’s wings, waving to the pretty girls as the wind ruffled my hair. Fabio on wheels!
Changing into a pair of gym shorts and a tight-fitting t-shirt, I retrieved my babies from their hiding place and carried them outside before lacing up. I suddenly realized I had forgotten to purchase a helmet and knee pads, but no worries: safety equipment is only important to helicopter parents and overly-timid children. Besides, when I was a kid, no one wore helmets, and most of us survived just fine.
One last tug on the laces and then I stood up, steady as an oak. I glided down the driveway with the grace of a swan, and a smile came unbidden to my face at the sensation. It was so smooth! I was so smooth! Fabio!
I completed a sweeping right turn onto the sidewalk and headed up the hill. I employed the same technique Olympic cross-country skiers use when ascending hills. They make it look easy on TV.
With my thighs screaming for mercy, I finally reached the top and paused to catch my breath. Turning right once again, I contemplated the next leg of my journey. The sidewalk before me sloped gently downhill for two blocks. It looked a lot steeper than it did the previous day when viewed through my car’s windshield. It must be an optical illusion; today it resembled the double black diamond run at Breckenridge.
Undeterred, I pointed my wheels downhill and pushed off. No worries, I won’t do anything too crazy on my first run.
I accelerated much faster than I expected. Again, no worries; I calmly pushed the toe of my boot forward to slow myself, but nothing happened. Idiot! Rollerblades don’t have a toe brake. As I continued to pick up speed, I realized I needed to do something–anything–to slow down, and I needed to do it quickly.
I bailed out and veered onto someone’s lawn. Going from concrete to grass threw me off balance, and I plunged headfirst into the turf. Spitting out a mouthful of fescue, I rolled over and sat up to take an inventory of my body parts. I discovered with relief that I had hurt nothing except my pride, and I looked around to see if anyone had seen my tumble. A curtain fell back into place across the street. Terrific. Mrs. Baines. The whole block will know all about it by dinnertime.
As I got to my feet, a small voice inside my head said, you should have bought the helmet and knee pads. Hindsight, always 20-20.
Rolling forward, I tried my brake, which I now realized was a single rubber knob mounted on the heel of one boot. Putting my brake foot in front of the other one, I pointed my toe toward the sky and applied pressure to my heel. To my delight, I stopped instantly. Confidence restored, I grinned and resumed my journey.
Again, I picked up speed, so I pressed my brake down as I had done just a moment before. But instead of stopping, the brake--with my leg attached—vibrated violently along the sidewalk as if bumping along a washboard. Instead of slowing down, I picked up even more speed despite my teeth-rattling efforts. Somehow, I stayed on my feet while my arms windmilled around me.
It was about this time that an adrenalin bolus hit my bloodstream. The world slowed down, and I saw everything with greater clarity. Up ahead, gnarled tree roots had cracked the sidewalk and crisscrossed the ground on either side—a rollerblading mine field. I somehow stayed on my feet as I maneuvered through the danger, while simultaneously noticing a white cat sitting on the front stoop of a house. It stopped licking its paw to watch me zoom past, favoring me with a strange look. Its face was expressive for a cat, and I could tell it was laughing at me.
Up ahead, a chain-link fence bordered the right side of the sidewalk. If I can stay on my feet until I reach the fence, I might just survive this misadventure.
My arms thrashed the air, my right leg vibrated like a jig saw, and I sent up a tweet storm of fervent prayers. Whether God answered to protect me from harm or to see how this fiasco played out, I don’t know. But I was still upright when I reached the fence, and I latched on with my right hand. Immediately, its galvanized barbs sliced into my palm and I yelped in pain, but hung on like a bull rider. Meanwhile, despite my death grip, my momentum continued to carry me downhill, and my body swung into the fence like a saloon door. The collision knocked the wind out of me, and an aluminum fencing tie sliced a scalpel-quality incision across my left kneecap.
I crumpled to the sidewalk and lay on my back in a daze. But pain soon spread all over my body, prompting me to sit up and inspect my injuries. The cut on my kneecap went to the bone and bled profusely. My right hand had several cuts, one of them deep. I’d need stitches for sure.
I tried to stand but couldn’t; my right foot had slid under the fence, which didn’t seem eager to let go. I pulled and kicked at the fence with my free leg, but it held me fast. I grabbed the fence with both hands and shook it in frustration, creating a rumbling sound resembling thunder. A woman came out of her house to roll up her car windows, but she somehow didn’t notice the grown man on the sidewalk next door.
A car drove past, slowing but not stopping. I waved with faux cheerfulness, and the driver drove away. I didn’t know the guy, but he wasn’t a lawyer. Otherwise, he would have given me his card.
Creating thunder and waving at a curious passerby had been the emotional cooldown I needed, and I turned back to the fence. Working it methodically with my hands and free foot, I quickly extricated myself. That’s always the way life goes: frustration begets more frustration.
I rose to my feet like an old man getting out of an overstuffed sofa, and stood motionless, undecided on my next move. I’d had my fill of rollerblading, at least for today. Hitting the fence had knocked the machismo out of me, and all I wanted was to go home and bury the skates in the back of my closet. Or in my backyard.
To get home, I had two options. One was to take my blades off and walk home in stocking feet, which would humiliate me if Mrs. Baines peered out of her window again. The other option was to turn onto the next side street, cutting off a half mile from my planned route. Because it was the shortest distance, I chose this option.
I tried to slalom back and forth to keep my speed down, but it soon became clear that I didn’t have the skill to do so within the confines of a 36-inch-wide sidewalk. Once again, I hurtled headlong down the runway, yelling like a first-time skydiver forced out of a perfectly good plane against his will.
I looked for another fence, a tree, an ambulance—anything that would bring me to a stop. The prospect of injury was preferable to the uncertain future that awaited if I broke the speed of sound. But there were no obstacles in my path, nothing that would slow me down.
And suddenly a theoretical physics question popped into my thoughts: If I travel fast enough, will I arrive before I leave? If so, I could get home before I put on the infernal rollerblades, and eliminate this entire experience.
Returning to the real world, I approached the next intersection, but was moving way too fast to make the turn. Thoughts of launching myself into the street filled me with fear, but no vehicles approached.
Reaching the corner, I tried to make the turn, anyway. I leaned into it with all my strength; it wasn’t enough. I launched off the curb and caught enough air to impress Tony Hawk, then landed on the double yellow line, bellowing like a cow in labor. Flailing my arms, I caught sight of my next challenge, and I despaired of making it home. At the bottom of the hill was the last intersection I must survive, and cars cruised through at regular intervals!
I really should have bought that helmet.
I had a life-altering decision to make, and I had to make it quickly if I didn’t want to end up like Frogger. A parade of concerns marched through my mind in a split second, among them:
1. I don’t know how to use my brakes;
2. I can’t steer worth a row of beans;
3. If I don’t stop right now—and I mean right now—some poor driver will soon have to clean my remains out of their grill; and
4. I really wish I had purchased some safety equipment.
Men sometimes face situations in which there are only poor options. Great men analyze the options and then make a tough decision. I am not a great man, but my desired goal was to stay alive. My tough decision was to stop any way possible before entering the intersection, regardless of the pain. The only way I knew to accomplish this was to slide. The more friction I created, the faster I’d stop, so I gritted my teeth, lowered myself into a crouch, and leaned back.
It’s difficult to describe the sensation adequately. When my hip touched down, the grit of the pavement ground into my skin. A burning sensation shot from my hip down to my knee as more and more skin contacted the asphalt. I planted my injured hand on the ground to stabilize the slide, and the road scoured my cuts like rough sandpaper.
Grinding to a stop, I didn’t look behind me, but imagined leaving a skid mark of raw hamburger in my wake. I called myself every name in the book for planting my flag on this mountain of stupid ideas. The ex-athlete in me realized I had performed a great slide—probably the best of my life—but I still paid a pound of flesh to pull it off.
Meanwhile, I lay in the road, much of my body on fire.
A car turned into the street and found me in its path. It stopped a few feet in front of me, the driver evidently not sure what to do. I made no effort to move out of the way. I wasn’t going to budge until I got those demon wheels off my feet. Maybe I would donate them to a torture museum, or let Stephen King use them as a writing prompt.
After I removed the roller blades, I struggled to my feet and hobbled to the curb. I tried to pick gravel out of my trembling hand, but soon gave up. There were too many injuries to count, throbbing cuts and glistening skinless patches that burned deep inside.
I had no fight left in me. I had tried something new and utterly failed. It wasn’t a feeling I enjoyed. I had been a fool.
When I reached the house, I went straight to the bedroom and hurled the rollerblades into the closet. Then I took a painful, stinging shower for the better part of an hour, as much to clear my mind as to clean my wounds. When I finally emerged from the bedroom, my temperament had mostly returned to my untroubled, pre-crisis self. During my self-assessment, I realized that sometimes you must play the fool to gain the proper perspective.
The world doesn’t end at forty after all, and I was thankful to resolve my mid-life crisis so quickly; I wouldn’t have wanted to miss dinner.
I never wore those rollerblades again. One go-round was enough. I gave them to my friend Rick, a buddy about the same age as me, who wanted to try rollerblading for some reason.
A week or two later, I swung by Rick’s house. He answered the door wearing my rollerblades, and he was all smiles.
“I’m getting better with these things.” He spun in a shaky circle to show me. “I think I’m going to try them out and cruise the park tomorrow. Wanna come?”
I should have stopped him. He was my friend, after all.
“I can’t make it, but hey, have fun.”
Sometimes, watching a buddy repeat your mistakes is good medicine.
Except for the guilt.
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