Rollerblading Trauma

Ever since Julie posted about puddle land and Christian posted about elementary school, I've been reminiscing about events in my own childhood.  I think I've blocked some of these traumatic events from my memory until now.

Rollerblading at Redondo Beach Pier

I can't remember what the occasion was, but I remember Julie and I were rollerblading at Redondo Beach Pier.  We were rolling each other up and down the slight inclines that are built into the walkways of the pier.  We were having a good time.

I distinctly remember one part of the walkway that was steeper than we initially anticipated.   

Julie told me to really bend my knees so that I would speed down the walkway faster.  "Kuya would do it!" she explained, although I didn't need very much convincing.  

"Remember to use all of your weight!" I instructed.  

And so she did.  I bent my knees and tried to make myself as aerodynamic as possible.  Julie backed up so she could get a "rolling" start.  She rollerbladed as fast as she could and pushed me down the treacherous walkway.  I was blasting by other slow-poke pedestrians.  Then there was a slight turn that I didn't quite make.  Before I knew it I was headed straight into a metal railway.  This metal railway was all that stood between me and falling about 45 feet right into the Pacific Ocean.  I slammed right into the railway, the top half of my torso pretty much hanging over the top rail (think of the bar that kids sort of somersault/twirl their bodies around in playgrounds).  I was that close to swimming/drowning with the fishies.

When we got home I noticed a blue-black and eventually yellow bruise all along my abdomen from where I hit the railway.  Now that I think about it, I had a dangerously high chance of falling off the pier that day.  And then I think, I wasn't a great swimmer, much less so with rollerblades on.  I think I seriously could have died that day.  Scary.  

And Julie and I thought nothing of it.  We continued pushing each other around on the pier.

Rollerblading at some Park

I just remembered another dangerous rollerblading incident.  I vaguely remember rollerblading down some hills in a particularly hilly park somewhere in Orange County with cousins Allison, Christian, Tricia, and Mark.  Probably on one of my famous Orange County vacations.  These hills were definitely not safe for small children to rollerblade down.  Nonetheless, we did--probably lead by our fearless, daredevil leader Christian (in retrospect, I guess I should have warned against this danger since I was the oldest).  

So we're rollerblading down these insane hills, and we're moving so fast that we can't control our descent.  So, to stop ourselves from totally eating it, I remember intentionally crashing into trees on the way down the hills.  We would run off the cement pathways into the grass, and eventually into a tree.  Someone could have suffered a serious head injury by crashing into these trees, and yet all we could do was laugh.  I remember Allison and Tricia laughing so hard that they peed.  And then Tita Glory got mad, not because we could have paralyzed ourselves, but because Allison had peed.

Rollerblading in the Backyard

I'm starting to see that we made rollerblading a very dangerous sport.  When Allison and Christian used to sleep over at my house, we'd spend most of our time in the backyard.  We'd play farm with the chickens and my first dog, Brownie.  During those warm summer nights, we'd try to catch as many "boogies" as we could (now I know they're called June bugs).  So we'd rollerblade around the backyard, trying to catch these flying beetles.  The dangerous thing is we'd skate around wielding these long, pointed sticks.  I'm not talking little kabob sticks, I mean wooden poles more than five feet long.  At the speeds we were skating around, I'm sure these poles were enough to impale each other.  We would swing them around trying to hit the boogies in mid-air.  Probably could have gouged someone's eye out.

It's a miracle we all survived childhood without any serious damage.  I used to think Grandma was overreacting when she said we'd all break our necks.  Now I understand why she was constantly warning us about that.