For those newly following my writing, this was something I posted a while back on FB. Just to start I'm adding this, and a few others, here also. For those who are on FB with me, you don't have to read this, most likely you've see it already and therefore you will fall asleep once you've read the first sentence.
Note: This blog does not really reflect the new turn that my blogs will be taking, a more desi prospective of living in the USA. Then again, not all my future blogs will do that consistantly. Anyhow, enjoy : )
October 3, 2012
You know what one of the most powerful words in my dictionary is…“nostalgia”. Well I admit the word itself isn’t really all that powerful, it’s the meaning behind it. Here’s the dictionary.com meaning: a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former pl...
ace or time: a nostalgia for his college days.
Oh boy, how true is this? Like this morning, as I lay snoozing unwilling to give up the arms of sleep, my alarm (which is set to radio and hates me too I’m convinced) went off. Somewhere between slumber and reality, the music must have seeped into my noggin (the song Borderline by Madonna) and I dreamt of the skating rink. Back in the day my friends and I would go to the local rink to spend a few quality hours working out our legs. The truth is we went to flirt with the boys, eat bad pizza and for me in particular, fall many times on the hard unyielding gleaming floors. I still went though, week after week and they would play great 80’s music.
Back then I was big into wearing hats, as in the George Michael kinds, lol…this was about middle school and I had this outrageous crazy horrible uncontrollable rats nest which others would call hair and I would just shout obscenities at cause it would never look like Madonna’s, any of the Bangles, nor even Tiffany’s hair-dos. Mine was a definite hair-don’t. So I thought why not a hat to at least cover it? Perched on the back of my hair I thought I looked like Molly Ringwald from 16 Candles fame. I assure you that was not how it really was. Anyhow, I’d wear that darn hat everywhere, including the rink and my mother would drive me there, reminding me of when she’d be back and hand me a 5 dollar bill only to drive off shaking her head cause she knew that I sucked at roller skating. That was okay it wasn’t about skating and I’m sure she knew that also.
My god how many memories in just that one thought (spurred from that one song)? The rink, the smell of the pizza and popcorn wafting through the air, the pop tunes that boomed from the speakers only to be interrupted by an equally disembodied booming voice announcing ‘couples skate!’, the gleaming hardwood floor, the shiny railing where so many clung to it as if a lifeline, the swoosh as the experts zoomed by, the laughter coming from every corner. Could anyone be depressed at such a place? Not me indeed. And then there were the boys! The gangly boys who thought they were so cool with their pseudo mullets, braces and pimples not to mention acid washed jeans, big timberland boots and crooked grins. Let’s also not forget the gang of gals who would cluster together emitting ear splitting giggles whenever one of those said boys strolled by and god forbid there should be glances exchanged. That was a whole different ball game. But do you also recall the bright neon, the jelly bracelets, the outrageous earrings, the crazy colored Ked’s and the Alyssa Milano hair-dos?
Remember being asked for your first couple skate? Well, I don’t because I avoided eye contact like the plague since I always figured my mother would come through the door at any moment and bust me. But I sure did envy my friends who could indulge. I was the chick who clung to the railings (and yes, my life did depend on it) and the only couple skate I did go on (that’s right I did) was with my friend Alison’s dad who took pity and thought he could teach me to skate. Oh boy was he wrong, not only did I take him down, he cracked his skull on the wood. I can remember that sound fairly clearly to this day. Yea I was a real winner in my early teens.
Lol, but I can laugh now about what a loser I was and feel nostalgia tugging at my heart. I’m so going to listen to 80’s music all the way home!!!
