Figure Skating is my Drug of Choice

Is figure skating addictive?

If you are an adult figure skater, you probably keep a journal or some other record of your progress.  Figure skaters are obsessed with improvement, no matter how miniscule. The kids, of course, learn skills faster and will advance rapidly, especially if they practice. Adults measure their progress in years, as in “last year at this time I couldn’t do x, y, and z but now…”

Actually, there are plenty of adults who either stall at a certain level, or seem to endlessly work on the same five skills for all perpetuity. Since improvement is relative, what’s most important that you continue to grow and modify your goals as the years pass by.

Complacency annoys me, whether it involves skating or not. Lots of people are happy doing what they’re doing and that is no crime, but I figure there is so much to do and learn why would you want to hit stasis?

Of course, by “progress” I don’t mean rocketing up the skill ladder. Lots of skaters will announce that they’ve “got” a jump or an element and let the matter rest. Truthfully, just because you can do a certain jump or whatever, doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. For instance, I “got” a salchow jump quite some time ago. But I still work hard on making it better, improving speed of entry, more control on the three, controlling the free leg better and so on.

Funny, but as you try to improve something, that particular skill may disappear for a while. If you “have”a scratch spin but decide to make it faster, more centered, with more revolutions, you may briefly lose the ability to do the spin at all as you tweak.

This situation will make you hate yourself and wonder why you are pouring all your extra money into a sport for which you obviously have no aptitude ( why am I even bothering with the second person here? You know I’m talking about myself, my favorite subject).

 But then you “get” it and the joy is a powerful high. Like other addicts, you kill yourself trying to get back that glorious feeling again and again. Like drugs, that never works. So you work on improving once more and so the cycle continues.

Scary Public Sessions

Every skating blog or message board contains lengthy diatribes about public sessions. The reason why this is such a universal bonding experience among figure skaters should be self-evident. Yes, it’s what you always suspected—figure skaters DO look down at you. I don’t mean that we don’t like you as a human being or that we’re a bunch of specially talented prima donnas who can’t stand to sully our skating skirts by hanging out with the riff-raff.  No, the principal reason we can’t stand skating on publics is because you scare the bejeezus out of us. If it’s not children skating like kamikaze pilots, it’s teenagers flopping over the ice like beached walruses; if it’s not some joker showing off for his girlfriend, it’s some no-talent  macho hockey wanna-be slamming into the boards.

If I’m gonna knock out my teeth, I prefer to it to myself and not through a collision with a public session skating zombie.

I gave up most public sessions years ago. Public skating is party time.  I do feel sorry for the poor shmucks who, due to scheduling and finances, have no other choice than to practice on a public session. And, yes, sometimes that shmuck, c’est moi.

Actually, I enjoy publics more as an amateur anthropologist than anything else. The rink provides an amusing mise-en-scene for all kinds of mini-dramas.  Sad to say, sometimes I’m playing a starring role.

For instance, I despise the chairs/cones/walkers that rinks lend to help little kids with balance. Inevitably, these things are appropriated by older children and teenagers, who turn them into weapons and push the things randomly like missiles. One day a kid was launching a chair around like a catapult. He didn’t need it to skate; it was just a fun toy. I skated up to the boy and removed the chair, heaving it over the boards. Suddenly a shrill indignant voice  shouted, “Excuse me??!!! My son was using that!!” I tried to explain that since he was (a) big, and (b) could skate he didn’t need it and that the chair was actually dangerous.  The mother huffed and puffed and informed me that her kid just had to use because he couldn’t skate.

Astonished, I asked if she meant that kid skating over there, and added, “If he can’t skate, why did you come to an ice rink?” (although bitchy, it is a reasonable question).

Well, she went and grabbed the rink manager. I was in the right so I didn’t get in trouble. Still, the question remains: really, people, if you can’t skate, why not take some lessons?  You’re not going to learn through some magical incantation or by just stepping out on the ice in some rental skates.  But if you feel you must skate, please do not make the ice anymore dangerous than it already is.

Incidentally, about a month after this incident the rink put up big signs: “No Chairs on the Ice!”