Against All Odds or My First Couples Only Skate

A few days ago The Wife and I took The Peanut roller skating. It was the first time I had entered a roller skating rink in more than twenty years. Being on skates again (I didn't even hurt myself!) brought back a lot of fun memories. One of them grew into this piece...

Her hair was curly, shoulder length, so red it seemed to glow with its own inner flame. Her eyes were green, the rich color of the Irish hills. I had noticed her before as she skated past with her friends, her blue and white checkered dress ruffling as she passed. As a child of ten, my radar for noticing members of the opposite sex was still brand new, awkward, hard to understand. Most girls flitted by without even a second glance, the barest hint of any sort of consideration. But this girl was hard not to notice.

The DJ at Spinning Wheels, the premier roller skating destination of my childhood, had just issued the call for a couples only skate. This call usually signaled a retreat to the arcade games for my friends and I. We were all about skating as fast as the attendants would let us, not skating while holding hands with girls. For some reason on this particular day I left the skate floor as usual, but instead of following my friends to wait in line to play the new Spy Hunter game, I lingered, watching the older kids and a few pairs of adults link hands and begin to skate. The first few bars of Phil Collins' song Against All Odds began to pour forth from the speakers.