Capades

We went ice skating last night in Union Square. It was uncharacteristically warm out for San Francisco but somehow, blowers going full blast, they kept the ice frozen and the wee tiny ice rink was packed with people skating in t-shirts.

Pretty much everyone out there, except for us and a handful of ponytailed perverts, was probably procrastinating studying for their 10th grade geometry test. When skating around the rink one had to maintain peripheral awareness of the writhing amoebic mass of shrieking, giggling tweens, to avoid accidentally checking them into the boards or slicing off one or more fingers, especially given that several of them spent much more time on their buns on the ice and laying on each other on the ice than actually skating.

Eric hadn't been on skates since childhood but took to it with the grace and ease of a newborn baby deer learning to ice skate on a planet with an unpredictably oscillating gravitational pull. Impressively, in spite of many nervous wobbly flailing moments, Eric stayed on his feet and even got to a place of steady competence going around and around the ice.

I was just settling into my mellow skating groove when Eric came up to me, poked me in the arm, yelled "You're it!" and then took off like a wild banshee, his long legs and arms flying everywhere*, somehow managing to pick up significant speed. I had only barely begun to give chase when Eric took what was by far the most dramatic spill of the evening, wowing tweens and pervs alike.

It was one of those falls where it's almost more entertaining to watch everyone else watching it happen - horrified wincing, almost closing the eyes but keeping them open just enough to see, slightly turning their heads away, but then peeking back to not miss anything. It was an absolute train wreck.

"Dude! Are you OK!??" exclaimed about a hundred people as they rushed over. Somehow, in spite of the thunderous, sickening sound of bone striking ice, Eric had sustained only minor scrapes and bruises. And, being a tough guy, he rejected proffered bandaids for his bleeding hands and elbow, preferring instead to bleed on my shirt while we walked home to watch 30 Rock like the rest of the people our age in this town.


*The most apropos though seasonally inappropriate comparison I can think of is Willy Willy Waterbug, that little guy you’d plug into the hose in the yard on a hot summer day and all his little hair-shaped hoses would squirt water at you while they whirled all over. Loved that guy.