Summer 1953. Seven years old. Wearing roller skates. Not shoes with roller skates built in like you could get at the roller rink, but roller skates the way they used to be. Metal frames with wheels. They adjust to the length of your shoe. The heel of the skate straps to your ankle. The front is held on by a clamp that hooks over the edge of the sole of your shoe. The clamp adjusts with a “skate key”. The front clamp works some of the time. It doesn’t work well at all with tennis shoes. At best, it seems to work just long enough for you to get up some speed; then the next stride find yourself with one roller skate on and the other dangling from your ankle by the strap.
We’re in Seal Beach. I’m next door at Marlena and Judy Prebble’s house, on the porch, on my roller skates. I ring the bell, but the doorbell button isn’t where it is supposed to be. It is several inches too low. Wearing roller skates changes my perspective. Doorbells aren’t where I expect them to be. Neither are steps and curbs.
At forty I needed reading glasses. That didn’t change my perspective. I wore the glasses to read. I took them off to walk. At sixty I got a real prescription; just a little correction for distance. Not much, but enough to change my perspective. Now I have glasses I’m supposed to wear while I’m walking around. It feels like 1953. It feels like I’m several inches taller. My feet are not where they’re supposed to be. Curbs are not where they are supposed to be either.
When I discovered the difference roller skates made, I had seven years experience with where my feet were supposed to be. Now I’m supposed to adjust sixty years of experience?
