PLAYL | Skating — recently, not so recently and long ago (2024)

A couple months ago I wrote about getting old. All of us are getting older every day, even our precious, youngest, stinking cute granddaughter, Ellison Reece Playl. In fact, Ellie is twice as old now as she was then. Ella Harper is just a wee bit older than she was a couple months ago, but a couple months back, her daddy shared with me, she celebrated a very special day — her twelfth birthday.

After reading my article, Drew, Ella’s dad and our friend, told me about her birthday party. Ella is a very talented young lady, both musically and in drama. She has participated in theatre and concerts all around the Kingsport/Tri-Cities area. She has plenty of imagination for celebrating special events. Her choice for a birthday party was to gather with her friends and spend the evening at a skating rink, rolling around while still on their feet.

When I was her age one of the favorite pastimes of about half a dozen of my closest friends was to go to a skating rink every Friday night and roll around. Many times for us it was not on our feet, though. I spent a lot of time dusting the floor with my bottom, but we had lots of fun. We were fifth and sixth graders at the time and depended on a mother to drive us up US 41 from Madisonville to Slaughters, KY eleven miles away. Slaughters was a crossroads which had no traffic light, but was home to the very popular skating rink. As long as we had an old Ford station wagon, my mother was the favorite Mom of the group. When we traded for a Chevy sedan that was no more roomy than any of the other Moms, she was demoted to “just one of the Moms.”

Moving on to the next generation in my family, our girls enjoyed gliding around on roller skates. At least most of the time when they put skates on their feet or attached them to their shoes, they had fun. A couple of times Stacia found that skates can lead to painful experiences. She probably fell fewer times than her daddy did, years earlier, but two of those falls resulted in a broken arm. When we lived in Nashville our youngest daughter hit the floor of a skating rink breaking one of the bones of her forearm. She had not practiced falling enough land on her bottom...like her dad. Trip to the ER, X-rays, cast and all.

After we moved to Bristol, she tried out the sidewalk with the same results. Fractured the same bone close to the same place. At least Bristol’s skating rink was more comfortable. No broken bones for any of our daughters there.

Next came grandchildren. Our oldest daughter’s three sons have all played roller hockey, which is just like ice hockey, but with a much warmer place to land. We have driven to the Richmond area several times to watch the Nash boys push a puck all around a skating rink trying to get it past the other team and make a goal while keeping the other team from sticking the little puck into their goal. They are much better skaters than I was. Faster, more agile. More contact with other players than with the floor. They are very entertaining to watch and, just in case, they wear helmets for protection.

Scripture never mentions walking or running with wheels on your feet. That idea only arrived a couple hundred years ago, and the guy that was first to give it a try ended up running into a mirror and suffering more injuries than a broken arm. While coming up with the idea of wheels on his shoes, he forget to think about brakes.

But scripture has much to say about running and walking. Mostly it speaks of a spiritual walk. “Walk by faith and not by sight.” “Walk in the light as He is in the light, as He is in the light.” “As Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we may also walk in newness of life.” “Walk by the Spirit and don’t fulfill the desires of the flesh.” “Run that you may obtain the prize,” “Laying aside every weight and sin let us run with endurance the race that is before us, looking to Jesus the founder and finisher of our faith...”

Don’t expect me to ever put on skates again, but it’s okay to remind me to walk with the Lord and to run to the Lord. We all need to walk and run with Him.