Slip-slidin' away

I WAS STOPPED AT A TRAFFIC LIGHT on Indy’s south side and doing my best to recon away from apparent hill-jack motorists during our most recent snowblast. Off to the side, I saw a couple of youngsters fancying  some kind of faux skating routine in the parking lot of St. Mark Catholic School. One of the kids lost his footing and went spread-eagle down onto the pavement – then immediately bounced right back up and continue on with his pals.

Many years ago, some time between an era when T. Rexes roamed the planet and a few millennia after the last Ice Age, I made the bold decision to cave into pleas to my then-spouse and our blended-kid household to visit the Pan Am skating arena, now dubbed the Indiana/World Skating Academy.

I had never been on ice skates; in fact, my distant experiences on roller skates would have gotten me annihilated in roller derby for 3-year-olds. I remembered Peggy Fleming from the 1968 Winter Olympics and a more recent speed-skate sensation named Eric Heiden. I had visions of being a fast learner. How tough could it really be? Winter Olympians aren't real athletes.

So there we were during a holiday break in the early 1990s, checking in and getting the cursory fitting of skates. I made a doddering slow step onto the ice and watched in amazement as our kids immediately blended into the cold-surfaced circus turning laps at varying speeds around the oval. The more deft moved elegantly and effortlessly in the center, turning and twirling and hopping in strange geometries.

I hugged the Plexiglass wall as I tip-toed onto that crazed arena.

Step, step, slide – fall.

Grab a helpful arm.

Step, fall, stand up. Slide a bit more. Fall again.

“C’mon Dad, it’s not that hard! Just hold on!” my daughters Erin and JoAnna urged me.

Actually, I think there was some mocking in that tone. Isn’t it always satisfying, to some degree, to witness someone older, wiser and more experienced to appear in their most basic human form?

After 30 minutes or so of imitating Mayberry’s town drunk, Otis, it became clear to me that I had better chill out for a few. So after some struggle and with a lot of help, I was able to plop my sorry self onto a ringside bench and nurse my aching right ankle. Pulled my pants leg us and notice this huge and throbbing knot pulsating above the skate.

“My God, I think I’ve fractured it!” I gasped to myself. As I loosened my laces a scene worthy of the movie, M*A*S*H* gushed forth. A thick geyser of blood blasted and sprayed onto the rink. Immediately, my family and a cluster of gore-minded voyeurs were checking out the scene. And within moments, rink employees were there, one with a walkie-talkie and making an urgent plea for EMS.

One of the managers made her way down asking me to sign a release/waiver with a promise for a free family visit to that venue. Avoiding potential legal problems is always the first step in good PR.

Ultimately, the mortal wound was a half-inch nick, complicated by a way-too-tight shoelace tourniquet. The doc who fixed me took all of three stitches to put me back together again. Obviously, my grasp of emergency medicine and self-triage was lame.

What I relish most about that evening is what happened before I went to  the urgent-care center: The gruesome blood-spilling immediately shut down the Pan Am Plaza rink. Scores of skaters were ushered off the ice and encouraged to check themselves for contamination.

And the stellar moment came when the guy driving the Zamboni set out clean up the mess; that was worth every damn angry stare burning at me from the spectators. Sympathy has its limitations, I suppose.

Such as it was – so many years ago – skating and falling in a Hoosier, winter wonderland.