Saturday night was here and it was time to go to Suburbanite Roller Rink. I had been going to that rink for a few years but it wasn’t until I bought myself a kick ass pair of roller skates at the pro shop and stopped being a “rental mental” that some of the cool cats that were a part of the rinks “in crowd” started talking to me.
Going to the roller rink is all of those things I had told you about earlier, but the thing that really had got me hooked on skating, other than the girls, was the tricks that could be done on skates; like spaghetti legs, crazy legs, and high speed turns. I loved making the loud screech sound as I power slid to stop on the rinks hardwood floor.
Since I’m telling you about the rink, I will let you know about the “In crowd” at the rink. I’m probably telling you about them because some of them kind of annoyed me. I can tell you that I wasn’t in the “in crowd” but once I bought my expensive tricked out skates with the Blinger wheels and speed skate bearings along with the two hundred dollar skate plates it became an inadvertent “in” with some of the known “cool people,” who actually started talking to me once I had them. Which hey, I get it. Who wants to talk to a “rental mental” that skates like a chump? By the way “rental mentals” were the skaters who had to rent skates when they went to the rink.
I suppose anywhere and everywhere there’s an “in crowd” and we all want to be “in” but some of these “in people” were just too cool for school, at least so they thought. I mean some of them seemed kind of dorky to me but because some of them had a brother or sister that knew people in this “in crowd” somehow that made them a part of the club too, which gave them the right to act like hard-asses.
Once in a while you had to deal with dorks that thought they were cool because they knew the right people. And they knew that if you messed with them, they would have tall “back up” waiting in the wings to mess you up. I had watched it happen to many rental mentals who didn’t quite get that there was an “in crowd” clique at the rink. These new comer rental mentals would mouth off to the wrong person at the wrong time and then BAMM, “Bruno Capone” or “J.D. Soprano.” (A couple of cats from this in crowd) would be surrounding them like flies on shee-ott and start pushing them around. That’s why I mostly just kept to my crowd.
I’d usually get to the rink early right when it opened. I wanted to be one of the first ones inside. I didn’t want to miss a thing. Even just waiting in the circular shaped lobby was a trip. The entire lobby reeked of girls perfume, dudes cologne, cigarette smoke, and gum. Older teen’s jackets smelled as if they had smoked ten packs of cigarettes just before they had walked inside. Even 420 seemed to be lingering around the yellow lobby once in a while. Heck, I didn’t even know what 420 was or what it smelled like until I started going to the rink. The first few times I had smelled it, I just assumed that someone down the street was burning leaves or that person had just come from a bon-fire.
While waiting to get in, you can totally hear other people’s conversations, because of the acoustics in the circular shaped lobby. It’s amazing how many teen girls were concerned about their periods being late, whose ass itched, or whose feet smelled even after they took a shower. People should really watch what they say in close quarters, dontchya think?
When I started to hear the muffled music playing in the background, it meant the rink DJ was starting to warm it up and get things going and that the cashier would be opening up her window to let us pay to skate. That was when everyone in the lobby would start pulling out their cash, which was a perfect time for an enterprising young man to make his move. I tell you about it.
This one time right after I had whipped out my cash, my buddy Witold Dee, (he goes by Witty) and I were laying low, just chatting and such, waiting to get in, when this big dude, which I recognized from school came up to me and opened up his jacket all slick like and pulled out some large packages of gum. “Sup dude? Pack of gum for a buck?” he asked while shifting his eyes around with raised eyebrows and a horizontal smile, not even looking at me, even though he was talking to me. I remembered thinking at the time that he had been sprayed by a skunk before he had walked into the lobby but the more I think about it now; it was Mary Jane, but like I said, I didn’t know all that much about 420 just then. But I always remembered this incident because I would have sworn that he had been sprayed by a skunk. So I’m going to call this my “dude got sprayed by a skunk story” but I may have to revise that later to, “dude is a stoner story.”
I think he tried to sell us gum as a subterfuge because he asked us seconds later, “Or anything else you guys might need?” and the way he had said it with a certain smile, made me think that he had drugs for sale under his dark green trench coat.
I told him, “No thanks, bro.”
“Nahhh dude,” Witty said.
“Did you get sprayed by a skunk?” I asked.
“Yeah, hah-hah, good one” Big Ted said.
Big Ted shifted his eyes from left to right a few times seeking out his next prospect, then quickly swept his way around the lobby hitting up the rest of the unsuspecting soon to be skaters, leaving a waft of what I now know was 420 behind.
After Ted walked away, Witty Dee rolled his eyes, and I told him about Big Ted. “He is the dude that has a pair of speakers in his locker at school. In the mornings and in between class periods he plays Vanity Six, “Nasty Girls” over and over again; every time I walk past his locker, it’s jamming. That song is a groove,” I said while nodding and smiling, as I noticed a couple of girls staring at me.
“I know who you’re talking about,” Witty said, “I just didn’t recognize him at first, he’s a loser, he sells all sorts of bull shee-ott.”
Big Ted was the kind of guy that would say something to you confidently. But you wouldn’t necessarily agree with him or even think the thing he was saying was true. But he would raise his eyebrows up and down a couple of times, show you the whites of his eyes, while nodding, and before you knew it, you'd be nodding with him too. Which made me start to wonder how much gum Big Ted actually sold that tonight? Ted was one of many “types“ that had hung out at the rink. But it wasn’t just the people that made the rink a big deal. It was the music and the lights.
I still remember how it always took a while for my eyes to adjust as I walked out of the bright yellow lobby, through the turnstiles, and into the dark, humungous, echoing skate rink that was jamming loud disco music with laser lights flashing that begged for my attention right when I walked in.
The funky fresh skate jams blasting from the speakers would always get my groove moving; the place was instant euphoria. It was where kids became teens. Right when you walked into the rink you could feel that something cool was going on.
Anyway, getting back to the Saturday night at the rink that I was about to tell you about, which was the same Saturday just after I had seen that show PM magazine with the break dancers.
“There’s something going on” was echoing through the speakers as I sat down and started lacing up my skates. And as usual, I spotted some of the “in crowd” cats walking into the rink, hugging all over each other as if they hadn’t seen each other in years - Even though they had just seen each other last week. They were all slobbering all over each other while they looked at everybody else as if they didn’t even exist. This is what they always did, every time I went there. I suppose I was a little jealous and I guess I’m telling you this so you can feel it all. I want you to feel as if you were really there, you dig?
After lacing up my skates and watching the “in crowders” beam their “in crowd” eyes around, I started heading over towards the stand up arcade games. Nobody was on the rink hardwood yet. And I usually needed a few minutes to start to feel my skate groove anyway, so I headed on through the carpeted outskirts of the rink and slowly made my way towards the Donkey Kong and Pac Man video games. I passed by a couple teenagers sitting on the benches where you'd expect them to be lacing up their skates but they had other ideas. They had conveniently picked a less lit section of benches where the two horn dogs were ramming each other’s tongues down each other’s throats. I didn’t want to eyeball them too obviously but they were straight up mashing! Old boy had his octopus arms all over her, grabbing her ass, rubbing her thigh. I mean some of this stuff was a little gaudy. They didn’t seem to be in too big of a hurry to get their skates on. There was definitely something going on just as the song was singing.
“Yo Phil – Sup?” Witty Dee slapped my back and yelled, “Are ya ready for some roller tag dude?”
“I’m just heading to the back of the rink by the arcade games my brother! I’ll get you in a game of tag in minute; I’m about to rock out on some Pac man. I’ll catch up with you in a few,” I told Witold Dee as he gave me a nod and skated off. I knew he was ready to get on the rink and get some roller tag going but I usually started out my night over by the coin ops. I was only going to drop a quarter in the game but since I could rock it like a rocket, that quarter on Pac Man would last me a good hour, put that on the docket. I was a Pac Man champ, you see, and I remember this part of the night because it was the first time that I had broke 200,000 points and I had made it to the key where the ghosts didn’t turn blue anymore, even after eating the power pill. Some things you just never forget.
After my game ran out, I heard the DJ playing my jam, “Don’t stop till you get enough,” by M.J. If Michael Jackson couldn’t get you out on the floor, nothing would. It was time to rock, time to roll, time to skate, and get out on the floor. I had been working on my trick skating a lot in those months –in fact, big Effing time! Trick skating to Michael Jackson made me look like a big deal you know.
For those of you who don’t know, trick skating is like dancing on skates. Which may not sound all that tough but I guess you would have to see it to understand; it’s actually very tough, just ask any girl who hangs out at the rink. Although, I understand how a lot of people may not see it that way. For example, I first started going to the rink in 5th grade. By sixth grade I already had someone that wanted to kick my ass because I told him I liked to go roller skating. I guess it can sound kind of wimpy if it’s not explained the right way.
You see, in sixth grade we had pen pals from another school across town with other kids in our same grade. I wrote in my letter to my pen pal about how I liked to go roller skating on the weekends. So he was probably picturing some pansy that skated around some rink with flowers in his hands or something. He wasn’t picturing tough tricks, high speed movements on skates, and hot rink chicks, that’s for sure.
Our teachers had arranged for both classes to meet one another so we could all meet our pen pals; on the day that our class walked over to our pen pals school, my pen pal didn’t show up. All the kids were telling me how lucky I was that he didn’t show up because my pen pal named Bucky Munster was going to kick my ass when he saw me because I said I liked roller skating. I was shocked someone wanted to kick my ass over it.
In retrospect I guess I could have told him that when you go to the roller rink there are a lot of fast girls there, that are dressed fast too, and I’m not talking about how fast they can skate. Because when it came down to it, the rink was really all about the girls. If there were no girls at the rink, I wouldn’t have gone there; Aint nothing pansy about that. And I suppose I could have told him about the underage drinking and the 420ers and about the make out sessions that I had witnessed and stuff like that. But I guess it never really occurred to me to write that in a 6th grade pen pal letter. But it also never occurred to me that someone would want to kick my ass because I said I went roller skating.
Anyway back to my trick skating I was telling you about. I had been practicing my crazy legs and spaghetti legs like a madman. I had just figured out how to do spaghetti legs last month. This is a trick you do while you’re skating around the rink floor trying to look all sexy-cool. You get up on your two front wheels on each skate and start zig zagging your skates in and out in the shape of the letter “C” with the left skate and a backwards “C” shape with the right skate. Kind of like a pattern you'd see in a top loading washing machine at home while your clothes were switching back and forth. You dig?
And of course I had been working on my speed skating and quick maneuvers too; which came in handy when you had a half a dozen buddies on your tail in a game of roller tag out on the rink floor. Yep, I said roller tag, it’s not really as juvenile as it sounds, I'll have to tell you about it later. It’s actually kind of dangerous sometimes. Wiping out on a hard wood floor can really kill somebody sometimes; so it’s not your little brothers game of “tag” is what I’m saying.
So, where were we? Oh yeah, MJ was grooving over the rinks sound system and after doing a quick reconnaissance lap around the rink, I spotted 2 hotties entering the rink and heading towards the rental skate booth. I took a couple of more laps around and I let them get their skates from the rental shop. I watched from afar; I tried to not be obvious. The next time I skated around I threw a hard gawk their way. I tried to act as if I wasn’t looking at them but I also tried to have a “cool face,” whatever that was, but I know I tried. Once I saw they had noticed me, I sort of smiled and tried to look like a hot shot and play it off, so I busted out into high speed spaghetti legs.
While I was zig zaggin’ my blinger wheeled trick skates back and forth I saw one of the girls nudge the other girl as she surreptitiously pointed in my direction. I took another lap around not to look too anxious, but I knew … it was on, it was on like Donkey Kong. The girl was straight up gawkin’.
As I was making my lap around, I thought about what the coolest part about those two chicks was. Other than the fact that they were stone cold foxes, they were rental mentals. You know what that means? It meant they were not a part of the infamous rink “in crowd.” I wouldn’t have to watch my back, just because I was trying to talk to a couple of girls. If they were Rink regular girls – I'd have to watch my back, just for even looking at them. It’s funny, something so small like what kind of skates someone wears tells a whole story.
After my lap around, I was ready to make my move, I smoothly exited the disco lighted hardwood rink floor and I made my way to the darker more mysterious carpeted rink outskirts. I felt the carpet slow my skates as I stealthily headed towards the benches by the two unknown “rental mental” chicas who were just chilling and casually putting their skates on. It’s funny; we guys have to move mountains to look all sexy but girls … girls can look all sexy by just putting a pair of skates on.
On my way over I was thinking about what I was going to say to those girls. The only thing I could come up with was, “HI.” But hi is good. Hi is better than saying nothing at all. And Hi is better than saying something stupid. As I was skating over I saw one of the girls nudging the other girl who was previously the nudger. The nudger had become the nudgee. Girls – all they have to do is nudge another girl with their elbow and they look totally cute with their nudging and such. However, we guys; we have to catch lightning in a bottle to look cute. It’s just the way it works.
I was looking in their direction without being too obvious by having a mix of nonchalance and cockiness all in one. They both started vehemently waving their arms like two people floating on a life raft that had been lost at sea for hours – it’s as if they were waving their arms at a passing airplane for dear life. I remembered thinking, wow - these chicks are really trying to get my attention. They must have loved my trick skating.
I started to skate more directly towards them so I could say, ‘HI’ and find out their names and all. Then out of nowhere. Witty Dee slapped my back red hot hard and yelled piercingly in my ear, “You’re it!” it was loud enough where I was sure the girls had heard it.
Witty Dee skated off as to not get a tag back.
And I suddenly felt like a kid.
Now I know I told you that playing tag at the rink is not really as juvenile as it sounds but I also realize that when you’re trying to look all cool for the girls, playing tag, doesn’t exactly accomplish that goal. But really, I’m serious, meandering through the busy rink crowd at high speeds, trying to evade another high speed skater from tagging you while also trying to fly under the radar from the rink skate guard, who can throw you out of the rink if he catches you skating all crazy, really makes this game a challenge. But I know, it did nothing for the chick magnet factor.
After Witty Dee skated away I continued to head towards the two smokin' hot rental mentals that were still a good hundred feet away. One of the girls was looking at me square in the eyes. She waved me towards her. She was even being more emphatic with her waving than she had been a minute ago, which seemed kind of odd since I was obviously heading their way already.
Another Michael Jackson jam began pumping through the woofers and tweeters while the smell of someone’s sweet yet undesirable perfume that reminded me of old lady perfume hit my nose, practically triggering an asthma attack. I muttered, “If I didn’t know any better I’d think that someone was wearing my grandmas’ perfume.” I said randomly, trying to get a laugh, to this group of “in crowders” that was lingering by the lockers, but nobody paid attention to me. I’m sure if I was an “in crowder” everyone would have laughed their asses off at my perfume joke. When you’re popular, every joke you say is funny.
I coolly and casually skauntered toward the two girls, oh yeah, skauntered it’s my own word. Skate and saunter merged together. Studying the dictionary in your free time can really have a perverse effect on you, you know? The closer I got to this girl, the tighter her pants were starting to look. The disco lights were bouncing off of her tiny curves. Whether a girl has tiny curves or big curves, it makes no difference to me; girl curves are girl curves. Girls should never worry about what kinds of curves they have - And with her tight ass painted on shirt, you couldn’t help but to look at her bumps and humps.
As I cool-cat-ed-ly inched over towards her I couldn’t help wondering why she had this quizzical look on her face and was still aggressively waving at me, even though I was close enough for her to spit on me. (Well, if she really belted a hocker out. I mean, if she could spit like a guy, then I was a spitting distance from her.) She was acting as if I hadn’t even acknowledged her yet or anything. But I had. I had already winked, did the head nod, and hap hazard wave of my own. Plus I was obviously heading her way. Girls can really be a mystery sometimes.
The closer I got to her; I started thinking about how sexy her curly brown hair looked in the purplish red disco lights. Her bangs were hanging down hiding her flirtatious eyes, which made my heart clang that much faster. My face felt warm as I noticed her belly button which was showing ever so slightly. Yet all I could think about was: why is this hot goofy girl still waving at me like someone at a sporting event trying to get the camera man to put them on TV?
I was seconds away from talking to her when she stopped waving. Belly button showing girl smiled big and I was thinking: cool, so far, so good. Then like a bolt of lightning. Bruno from the rinks “In crowd” swooped in from around me and gave the hot wavy haired girl a big hug. “That was awkward,” I said out loud, but only to myself. I kept on skating passed the two girls and Bruno while feeling like an ass.
Then I shouted out, “Yo Witty Dee, wait up,” but Witty Dee actually was nowhere in sight. I just had to save some face, you know. So I pretended I was waving at him.
I was wondering if the girls had known that I was heading towards them. But it’s cool I got it, they were actually flagging someone else down that was behind me; none other than Bruno from the rinks ”In crowd.” He was one of the dudes at the rink that had tall “back up” and he was definitely not someone to mess with. He had too many people to back him up. In fact he was the last person that I'd want to see those girls talking to. As I skated by, I heard one of the girls say something about how her speed skates were getting repaired – and that was that.
It was time to look for Witty Dee or Brock Blazin' because “I was it” and it was time to un-it myself. It was a perfect time to find someone to tag because Harry the rink guard was still helping the mentals get their rentals instead of being out on the rink floor patrolling. Therefore, I didn’t have to worry about getting kicked out of the rink for skating all crazy while I hunted down my targets.
You know what? Real quick, I'll tell you about my buddy Blazin' since he was first on my tag list. Brock Blazin' was one of those cats that you would see in a crowded place like a movie theater and he would just grab your attention out of nowhere. The theater could be dark, crazy, loud, and packed and Brock would just stand out. He would grab your eye, for no particular reason. He'd be the big pumped up cat, big smiled and sculpted jaw teen that was laughing his teeth off. I mean, he would be getting all of his body English into his crazy ass laugh, grinning with his eyes too – and you’d just have to look, he is that captivating. Funny thing about him - whatever he was laughing about probably wasn’t even funny to anybody else but him. So when you’d ask him “Wazup?” about all of his laughing. He would then have to explain to you why he was laughing so hard. But his explanation wouldn’t make sense, so he’d keep explaining and explaining until you finally laughed too – for no reason, just like him, even though you probably just guffawed to get him off your back, so you could go back to watching the movie again. But that’s my buddy Brock Blazin’. Even though it may have been a dark movie theater that you had first met him - you’d remember him if you saw him later, he just stands out, even in the dark. That’s exactly why he was the first person on my list to un-it myself.
I scanned the oval rink floor which was slowly becoming filled with skaters and couples, while the carpeted outskirts of the rink were also teeming with people: walking, gossiping, and damsels longing to be seen. Or maybe, I was just longing to see them. Many were just chill-axxin’ and others were quickly getting their skates on and laced up. There were plenty of lovebirds to go around too. Those two lovebirds I told you about earlier. They were still going at it and talking all of that mushy mush while they stared at each other all starry eyed. I playfully yelled out, “GET A ROOM!” while they weren’t looking my way. Subsequently they looked in my direction but I played it off and passed the blame.
I noticed this crowd of dorky looking rental mental guys, one with bucked teeth and another with pants pulled up to his nipples within my path of the lovebirds. While the lovebirds were still staring in my direction, I scolded the dorky gang of guys with my best tough guy impersonation, as to pass off the blame for that, “get a room” remark. I said, “Y'all should mind your own business” as loud as I could so the lovebirds could hear. I then looked at the lovebirds, nonchalantly nodded, I looked back at the rental mentals, and I shook my head disdainfully. I kept up my tom foolery by shrugging my shoulders and said, “Kids” as I skated away.
The two lovebirds gave those dorks dirty looks and then went back to their smoochy smooch. I skated away laughing to myself. I loved doing stuff like that. Truth be told, my buddy Witty Dee taught me that kind of crazy ice shiznit. Witty Dee was always busting someone’s chops or blaming someone else for something he had done. Funny thing is - not too long ago, I looked just like those bucked tooth, pop bottle glasses, and pants up to their nipples dorks; the mess-ee had become the messer. I had to mess with them though, even though I felt sort of sorry for them. But not too sorry, I guess.
An animated indistinct figure had caught my eyes from half way across the rink. Someone was flailing about under the bright snack bar lights. It had stuck out like a zit on a cheek. I quickly skated my way over on a hunch. Show nuf, it was Blazin'. I skated over to his table; Blazin' was all chillin’ like a villain. He was going on and on about how freshy fresh some dudes shoes were, who was also sitting at the table. Blazin' was all foaming at the mouth and filling the snack bar room with echoes of his voice - louder than anything else that was going on in the snack bar. You could feel the eyes glaring at our uproarious table. Mainly Blazin's uproar.
Blazin's mouth and eyes were filled with energy as he enunciated loudly and passionately about the dudes kicks. I had only caught a glimpse of them, but the more Blazin' went on and on about them, I felt the pressure to agree. I even started thinking quietly to myself, maybe the shoes are really cool and I just didn’t know it yet. Heck I even started to want a pair. Brocks salivating, open mouth, and nodding melon, made me want a pair. It’s funny though, I could barely even see the dudes’ shoes because his feet were camped out under the table. Yet I suddenly wanted a pair too. That’s the kind of passion Brock Blazin' had. I didn’t even have to see the dudes damn shoes, yet I knew I wanted them.
I started to get the impression that the dude with the “killer kicks” wasn’t really that excited about his own shoes; at least the same way Blazin' was excited about them. I could tell the dude was starting to feel the pressure to get a little more excited about his own damn shoes because he started adding to the conversation with reluctance, “Yeah, umm, my shoes are cool dude, I agree, okay, they’re cool, it’s all good man …. Chill,” he had said sort of annoyed.
Blazin' can have that effect on a person.
After talking about that cat’s shoes for a million minutes, Brock Blazin' finally asked me, “Yo Swift – have you seen Witty Dee yet?”
“Yeah I caught up with him for a minute. I've just been out there doing a re-con of the rink … and there are some chica’s up in this jizz-oint tonight my brudda,” I said to Blazin’, all slick like, since there was a table load of girl’s right next to us. It’s funny, when girls are around, they can make me talk that much more suave.
Blazin' continued on, “Have you seen these dudes’ kicks yet bro?” he emphatically asked me again.
“Yep, they’re sharp for sure,” I told him, even though I wasn’t really sure if I had seen them or not but I wasn’t about to make the dude get up from the table and stop eating his pizza, just to show me his darn shoes. If anything the thing that crossed my mind was: why didn’t the dude have his skates on yet?
“Yo Brock, I've gotta tell you something but I don’t want everyone to hear, come here for a sec,” I said. I leaned in all slyly, while positioning my skates for a getaway and then I swiped Blazin's back. “You’re it my brother from a different mother, you’re it.” I quickly skated away into the disco lighted, booming sound system, lovebird haven, gossiping skaters abound – carpeted rink outskirts, and began looking for Witty Dee.
I could hear in the distance, even though the rink speakers were blasting my ears off, “Awe man, you ganked me dude, you ganked me – paybacks are a bee-otch Swift!” I looked back and Blazin' was still sitting at the table. Seconds later, I swear I could still hear Blazin' yelling at me, “That’s bunk dude, that’s bunk,” he was that loud.
I skated passed the lovebirds again and gave ‘em a nod, then I saw that Harry the rink guard was done hooking up the initial rush of mentals with their rentals. So I hastened my pace and I caught up to him, I talked with him once in a while. A few girls were huddled around him giving him hugs and kisses and all that stuff which were the perks of being a rink guard. I just waited around a bit, keeping an eye out for Witty and Brock while he talked with the girls and I waited my turn to talk to him. He was a pretty popular cat at the rink. He was a part of that infamous “in crowd” but he was cool to me. Maybe he had to be since he worked there. But either way, he was cool.
Harry was sportin’ zipper pants that I had never seen before. They were puffy grey pants with gold zippers running down the sides of his legs with maroon sections of fabric on the inside of the zippered portion; the zipper started at the tapered ankles and extended to the hips, fresh as all heck.
I nodded at Harry a few times, to let him know, I was waiting for him, who half smiled back to acknowledge me. But I understood why he kind of blew me off, he was in the middle of chatting it up with a couple of “in crowd” hotties that were still hugging all over him. You can’t blame a guy for giving you the cold shoulder when something like that was going on.
Skate guard Harry and the two girls were finally done talking and exchanging hugs and all of that, so I asked, “Yo Harry I’m not trying to bite your style or anything but you've got to tell me where you got those pants from?”
He unpretentiously smiled and told me, “You can get them at Chess King in Dorktown mall.”
I asked him if the zippers on the sides could zip all of the way up and hide the maroon inside if you wanted to, so he started zipping them up and shaking his head yes and then quickly zipped them all the way back down. I knew I sounded like a kid when I had asked it, but I was just too damn curious not to, so I asked it anyway. After that, I could tell that Harry was done talking to me by the way he had started to skate away as he was unzipping his parachute pants and talking all at once.
Harry skated onto the busy rink floor and I stayed on the outskirts of the rink in the carpeted section where it was more clandestine. It was less lit; there were less people, and more shadows, so it was easier to see who was coming at me and who was on the rink floor, which was paramount when playing roller tag.
“Get down on it,” by Kool and the Gang was echoing all through