Tippy Toes, Rat Fink, Crazy Legs and The Microwave - That's the Way (uh huh uh huh) I Like It.

When my husband and I met I was a rollerblader. 

Growing up roller skating, like a lot of girls in my neighborhood, I skated non stop: to and from school; at the local roller rink every opportunity possible; and, of course if you read my blog post about Basement Boogie you know I was a sucker for a good 1970s homestyle underground skate.

I also grew up in a hockey family so when I didn't have roller skates on my feet, I was donning ice skates. In fact, the first job I ever had at the ripe old age of ten was teaching MIGHTY MITES (pre-K hockey babies) to skate by pushing folding chairs at the Civic Center.
Don't fall, kid, or you're face planting into metal. 

Simple as that. 

Quick learner!

Good boy. 

This was all new to my husband, raised in the urbs (as opposed to the suburbs). He was a hoop player, a boxer, a runner, a pitcher, and a weight lifter, definitely not a skater...ever. However, I told him rolling along was super simple to learn (and convinced him that 16 years ago...with help from a sleek metal folding chair...I was THE BEST skating teacher ever!) and he trusted me. 

Silly boy.

No, really, he did fine, so long as 'fine' means narrowly escaping flattening by a Dodge. Read on. 

The first place I took him was a busy road in our urban locale and he, right out of the gate, went down a sizeable hill. Looking back, I wonder what in the hell we were doing. Maybe I figured he was so coordinated in every other way, how could he not be a natural on the insanely beautiful  rollerblades that we'd just picked out and dropped a cool hundred on? Maybe he was trying to impress me by just going for it? I might have blocked some of this out to spare myself the guilt. 

Well, whatever we were thinking, he made it to the bottom of that hill by the grace of God. Looking a lot like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz...when his stuffing was on fire...hubs was all knees and elbows, making breathy puffing noises as he rolled on by at a frighteningly fast clip, I was Dorothy off to the side with my hair in braids and my mouth in the shape of an "o", holding my hands in prayer position as I watched him cross the road in a giant, unadvisable, dangerous as feck back and forth pattern; at one point careening very haphazardly in front of a Ram truck with step sides that almost took him out. When he turned around at the bottom of the hill and gave me a big grin with two thumbs up, I decided we were only going blading indoors from that point on. Love you, babe!

To his credit, he enthusiastically committed and we began rollerblading at an indoor skating rink a few nights a week. Not only was it good exercise but it was a way for us, in our new relationship, to spend time together doing three things that I freaking loved: 

1. Skating 

2. Listening to music 

3. Drinking ICEES with those fat, spoon straws. 

To our delight and surprise, we encountered many of the same folks each time we went. Who knew that there was such an active adult community of roller people? Who knew how defined their personalities would become as the weeks went on? During our car trips over I'd wonder aloud, "Who do you think will be there?" and hubs would name our four favorite regulars. Now don't get the wrong idea...we hadn't made any personal acquaintances, we were sort of doing our own thing there, but we had given a few memorable guys fun and recognizable nicknames. To let you in on a little secret - I'm sort of a professional nicknamer. I nicknamed an entire residence of fraternity boys in 1989 - like Bluto in Animal House, only my GPA was well above 0.0 at the time and I don't like green Jell-O.

More about that another time. Back to the story at hand!

First there was Tippy Toes. Do you remember Eight is Enough? Tippy Toes looked like what Nicholas would look like 25 years post EIE, with the same hair do, a pleasantly cultivated beer gut, and enough confidence for three people. (For those of you who don't recall, Nicholas is the little cutie on the bottom of this picture, sandwiched between Tom and Mary Bradford.) Anyway, if there were government presiding over the rink, Tippy would have been the mayor. He wore well loved roller skates from, I'm guessing, the 1970s; a sort of a grungy light tan with newer ebony wheels and worn navy blue toe stops.  The dude was not light by any means - he probably tipped the scales at about 260 - but damn, if he wasn't the freaking Fred Astaire of the roller rink. He would, when he saw someone he knew, which was pretty much everyone, immediately skate backward in front of the person, with this loose limbed swagger that suggested he was just as comfy grooving in reverse as he was forward. He'd flip his 1970's dirty blonde bowl cut bangs out of his eyes, and nod his head casually as he chatted up the nervous ladies, with their stiff wrists and locked elbows, small stepping around the oval rink, in careful time to the beat. If they were indeterminately slow, he'd literally skate circles around them, and funk himself back to a reverse glide, mane flipping, fleshy pouch bobbing a little from beneath his tshirt, and gumby legging all the while. His favorite song was Keep it Comin' Love but if the DJ played anything at all by KC and the Sunshine band, he'd skate alongside the rail and wildly clap toward all the bystanders (or is it byskaters?) soliciting them to come out and celebrate like he was a mascot at a high school pep rally. I don't know what Tippy did for a living but maybe he was some sort of professional encourager? He was a truly enthusiastic ambassador for the sport. 

Next up: Rat Fink. Rat Fink was the rink's wiry, mustached Yenta, telling Susie Q that Frankie D thought she was totally awesome, and so on, but really, he was no matchmaker. He was just a gossipy adult young man that liked stirring up roller drama under the flashing rainbow strobe lights. He'd grab some Bon Jovi-esque frosted and permed chickee once she was freshly laced up and beginning to roll and notify her how the heavy metal haired fellow she bounced with the other night lovingly skated with someone else as soon as she left. Then, he'd pull handfuls of paper napkins from the plastic snack bar dispensers and with, what appeared to be fake concern, hand them over when she'd go into full blown hysteria at the thought of Tippy, for example, enjoying the moonlight skate with Busty Beverly. It was a really weird thing to witness, seeing as I'd graduated from middle school like 18 years prior. How Rat Fink managed to even grab the attention of these babes remains one of the great roller rink mysteries for me. He was about 120 pounds soaking wet, and although he had the perfect build for, say, acid washed Levis and a nice crisp white tee to compliment his light colored pricy blades, he always wore faded sweatshirts with the cuffs and neck cut out and trash bag style bottoms from those two piece track suits so popular in the early 1990s. His legs would rub each other with this disconcertingly loud swishy friction, only heard in the snack bar, thank God, but I always knew, mid sip in my ICEE, that it was him rolling up on me. Hubs just said, when I asked if he remembered Rat Fink, "Oh yeah, he was that Jeff Gillooly-looking scrawny guy, right?" 'Nuff said. 

Oh! Let's talk about Crazy Legs! Crazy Legs was a character. He wore a lemon yellow sweat band on his head and yellow and white striped terry cloth wrist wraps, too, which I truly believe were for form as well as function, since he bladed faster than anyone else there. He was like a roller-greyhound in the race of his life. One night we figured out the reason he was so flipping fast, besides being rail thin and possibly Ginseng-ed up, was that he wore speed skate inline blades. Like, he had an extra wheel in there or something (not totally sure, because his tootises were just a blur of cosmic green pigment whirring by us, lap after lightening lap) that made him uncatchable. His ability to do anything besides catapulting forward was impeded by the unusual skates but, thankfully, going forward like a 6 foot WASPy Sonic the Hedgehog seemed to be his favorite thing...in life...ever. Hubs said he saw him come flying into the men's room and crash into a urinal (or a urinal user) more than an uncomfortable couple of times. Having an extra wheel meant no rubber stops on the front of those babies, which I am sure, led to some interesting stories (and injuries) over the years.  

The Microwave was the last regular with whom we were enamored. He was fierce, rotational, and heatin' it up - beep beep! The Microwave was a trick skater, performing for us in the middle of the rink with a lot of heeling and toeing and spinning and posing. He was also the first person I ever saw who left the ankle portion of his roller skates flopped over and unlaced in sort of a devil may care style that suggested he was way too cool for what was going on here, but he was still down for the party. Hubs just reminded me that when the SHUFFLE skate was announced and G.Q. Disco Nights Rock-Freak was queued on the DJ's turntable, The Microwave would come bolting onto the floor from wherever he might be as though he'd just won a turn in the all you can grab flying money booth. That kind of joy is hard to come by, friends, but he was stoked like that several times a night and it was a riot to witness. 

'Shuffling' was the pinnacle of the evening for most of these regular coasters. It was a time to chug along the floor, train style, holding the waist or the shoulders of the person in front of you all the while with the precision of a Rockette, rhythmically pumping your legs in a sort of half moon movement in time to the disco beat. When done well, it was pure poetry in motion. Pure, touchy, forbidden in any other part of society poetry in motion, but still cool as hell to watch. Hubs and I shuffled in our own little way but we weren't part of the conga line like the regulars were. I preferred the songs Good Times (Chic) and Genius of Love (Tom Tom Club) for shuffling, but you could see the light in the eyes of the regular crew when any and all of the shuffling tunes were announced. It was like when the aliens hypnotically lurch toward the mother ship in the old sci-fi movies.

Shufffff-fulllllllllll.

Just writing this makes me want to hose off the blades, now shelved in the garage, covered in the dirt and dust of neglect. Hubs's blades are right next to mine. We have lost our wrist guards and knee pads over the years, not that we ever used them, but we could probably benefit from them today.

Spring's coming. Shuffling shall be on the to-do list. No hills for hubs, though. No hills, no how.

#1970s #1980s #rollerskating #rollerblading #icee #eightisenough #Chic #LeFreak #TomTomClub #GeniusofLove #KCandtheSunshineBand #KeepitComingLove #Bluto #AnimalHouse #RockFreak #DiscoNights #mushroomtumbler