Skating Season…You Ready?

Skating…it is the season for skating. As a small girl I would look forward to my local rink opening up and we would go weekly. I like to think I was fantastic but truth-be-told I was mediocre and I never did figure out how to stop.

MEH

My cousin, sister and I spent way too many weekends watching Nancy Kerrigan, Tonya Harding and Elvis Stoyko battling it out. This was pre-scandal and honestly I didn’t really care at the time. Sore loser Tanya Harding was still triple-axeling her way to my heart. She was bad-ass. *

Fast forward to 2012 and my two oldest were 3 & 4 years old. They were going to be the next Oksana Baiul and Wayne Gretzky. They were going to be so into sports that involved skates and my husband and I would be happily waking up for 5 AM skate times to build their skills, oozing Canadian pride.

I found a local skate school and after much research we packed up our family of 4 and headed out to fill-out the forms. I mean I wanted to make sure that this school had what my kids needed to become the sports heroes they were destined to be. We eagerly handed in our forms. Just handed over what seemed like a lot of money but DREAMS!

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The school was adamant that we understood the no-returns policy. Did they not understand that I was going to be at the rink all the time? Oksana & Wayne baby…Oksana & Wayne. They would end up paying us to stay there…right?

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After buying each kid a new pair of skates and a helmet we were so ready to tackle wowing the other parents and coaches, oozing confidence from every pore.

Arriving early for our class my husband and I did a quick scan around the locker room. All tiny little beings with their frantic parents, we still thought we had this in our pockets. We managed to hype the kids up to believe that they would be the best thing since sliced bread as well so we were like peacocks spreading our tails…sigh.

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Walking up to the edge of the ice we patiently waited behind all of these kids who were ahead of us. One-by-one the older teachers skated up to the little door and grabbed a kid. One-by-one the kids in front of us effortlessly let themselves be guided around the rink. I just knew I picked the right skating school, the other kids were transitioning seamlessly from the concrete to ice.

And then came Darius’ turn.

He put one–just one– skate onto the ice and proceeded to drop in a prone position. Full out laying on his stomach and he is a very big kid so the teacher couldn’t just glide him along like the others. He decided to take a breather and come off of the ice. We went into full pep-talk mode. He could do this.

Emma was next. Somehow the same scenario mentioned above happened except she managed to almost jog two steps before dropping. What was happening. I was now whispering harshly through clenched teeth for her to get up and get to skating. I was all kinds of bad mom. They were not being like Oksana and Wayne AT ALL!.

We stayed the hour and it was like this every single time they had their chance to go on the ice. They were cold and miserable but I persisted that we kept going.

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Week two was worse. The moment we put their skates on and they saw the ice they both started to cry. By adding the tears and snot running down their face to the fact that we were in fact in a large igloo with an ice floor. you can imagine that no one was particularly happy. Adding insult to injury was the fact that their helmets had some cage contraptions on them so we couldn’t easily dry the tear/snot mixture from their face with out it spreading and freezing over.

Even I was SO over my Oksana and Wayne dreams at this point. It was not my idea of relaxing and I was not exactly being wowed with their progress. Neither could actually stay upright for more than 2 seconds and Darius did not go further than a foot away from the door.

I was dreading the next 4 months of lessons because “no refunds” was driven to me before I even handed in my cheque. It was after this class, when we had finished changing the kids back into normal shoes and scraped the layer of tears/snot off of their face that we got pulled into the office. I was so defeated  embarrassed at this point that I didn’t even make eye contact with the secretary.

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But something magical happened…her exact words -> “We’re sorry but your kids are a danger to the other people here so we are going to have to ask you to not come back AND get a refund.”

At that point I didn’t care about the skates and helmets we already purchased, I didn’t even care that they were giving us our FULL payment back, all I cared about was never having to step foot in that rink again.

Guess what came home from school this week? Guess I dare you! SKATING EXCURSION FORMS!

The kids school has booked the arena and the kids want to go. They have forgotten. I have not.

Needless to say we spent some time getting them skates and helmets…AGAIN. Send wine!

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*Tonya Harding is a sore loser and bully. I realize that now.

Aneta Alaei

Aneta is a Toronto-based mom of four that loves a good meal, great company, and learning something new. In her free time, you can find her trying to keep yet another plant alive.

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