T’s regular lesson in learn-to-play today and not much new, except that I’ve decided not to jump into the current adult learn-to-play session. I’d like to, but I’ve watched it a couple times now and I’d be the worst skater in there. Instead, I’ll be taking a four-week learn-to-skate class starting Saturday –- hopefully I’ll be able to improve enough with that to get in on the next set of playing classes.
Since we started this, I’ve noticed some folks going out of their way to be nice and helpful to us:
- T’s coach at one of his first couple lessons, who gave him a free jersey;
- Really, all of T’s coaches deserve credit for putting up with the little snot; ;)
- I was sitting at a table during one of the public skates and a referee walked up to me and asked, “Is it your son who’s learning to play?” My first thought was: “Oh, hell, he jumped onto the ice during someone’s game”, but no, a player had broken his stick and they took the time to track down a kid it could be cut down for (resulting in the one and only $180 stick T will have for a long, long time);
- A lady who heard me talking in the pro-shop about goalie gear, during a momentary brain-fart where I thought my knees might be able to handle that, and stopped me a couple days later to give me the number of someone who was selling his old gear;
In general, everyone we’ve interacted with has been very nice and helpful – so let me set the scene for Jackass.
The public skate starts today and I take a few laps, then move on to practicing backward skating.
I’m skating a normal oval, like everyone else, but I’m transitioning to skate backwards at the red-line, and continuing straight until I either decide to stop or transition back to forward-skating somewhere between the other blue-line and the goal-line.
Before I transition, I’m making sure that there’s no one ahead of me that I might catch up to once I’m skating backwards and no one coming up behind me who’ll be caught unawares by my transition. Furthermore, I’m making sure that there’s no one in the boxes who might step out onto the ice ahead of me (behind me?) once I transition. If these conditions aren’t met, I just keep going forward to the other side of the rink.
I’m very comfortable with my transition at this point and I’m keeping my speed down to maintain that comfort-level. I think it’s clear that I’m not very experienced at going backwards yet, but I’m maintaining a straight path and I’m certainly not spinning around or flailing my arms in the air.
Nor am I over-balancing and about to go backwards, ass over tea kettle. I recognize that my center-of-gravity is still too high and my knees aren’t bent enough, but I’m working on that.
In short, I’m being very careful to make sure I don’t run into anyone, get in anyone’s way, or push my skills too far – just enough to force me to improve.
So I’m doing this and as I’m skating backwards, this guy, we’ll call him really-good-skater-guy slows down and gets my attention. Now really-good-skater-guy is someone I see at the rink a lot – he breezes around at a pretty good clip and clearly knows what he’s doing.
“Turn around,” he says. I figure he wants to tell me something and knows I’ll be able to listen better skating forward.
“Cool,” I think to myself. “Really-good-skater-guy’s going to give me a pointer or two. Probably that I should get my COG lower, but still.” So I turn around and get ready to listen.
“You need to stop skating backwards like that,” he says.
Huh? I must have looked perplexed, because he continued:
“You’re going to bust your head open.”
Now, keep in mind, I haven’t fallen, I haven’t lost control, I haven’t been flailing my arms in circles like a deranged gibbon. In fact, I feel like I’ve been very careful not to push too far beyond my abilities – obviously, in order to improve, one has to push somewhat beyond one’s abilities, but I’m pushing that envelope slowly and with forethought.
I say something to the effect of, “Well, I’m learning.”
To which he responds, “Learning to crack your head open if you keep it up.”
At this point, I’m somewhat irritated, because his tone and phrasing are very condescending. In addition, I realize that his initial “turn around” wasn’t a friendly, “hey, turn around so we can chat”, it was, to him, an order of some sort – an attitude I don’t respond well to.
But I’m not going to cause a scene, so I shrug and say: “Well, I’m practicing,” hoping he’ll take the hint and go away.
Which he does, with the parting words: “If you’re going to do it, wear a helmet; I’ve seen too many people crack their heads open.”
Now, his core advice, which he finally gets to, is probably sound: wear a helmet.
In fact, I’ve considered wearing not only the helmet, but my shin and elbow pads, as well as my hockey pants, when practicing skating, precisely because it’s just safer. And I don’t bounce so good anymore.
But his presentation and attitude are just so supercilious and negative, that this encounter simply pisses me off. Plus now I’ve got “crack your head open” and the fact that really-good-skater-guy is apparently keeping an eye on me running through my head, so if I try to practice any more, I likely will fall and crack my head open – not the best mindset in which to be when practicing something.
Which, of course, brings up the mindsets of: if I don’t keep practicing it, he’ll think it’s because he told me not to; and, if I do wear my pads next time, he’ll think it’s because of him. The stubborn boogeyman of human nature rearing its ugly head.
But I realize that the I’m-pissed-off-so-I’ll-be-even-better-at-something mentality only really works in the movies, so I leave off any backward skating for a while.
Midway through the second-half of the public skating, I start practicing this again – same way, only doing it if there’s no one else around me and no flailing – when really-good-skater-guy breezes by me again with an eye roll. What the hell is this guy’s problem with me?
Even if the advice “wear a helmet” is good, fundamentally a lot more people have learned to skate – forward, backward and sideways-triple-camel-death-spin – than have ever learned with one. The learn to skate class, where, I assume, I’ll be taught to skate backwards, doesn’t require a helmet. Ultimately, this guy seems older than I am so, presumably, he learned as a child well before the current helmet craze, so he must have learned without a helmet.
Attitude and phrasing have a big impact when offering advice. My fifteen-year old daughter apparently knows that, because she offered some skating advice to a couple this afternoon and got a big “thank you” after the session.
Let’s see:
“Hey, you’re doing pretty good, but you should keep your center-of-gravity lower and a lot of people get hurt learning this, so you might want to wear a helmet.”
or
“Turn around. You need to stop skating backwards like that.”
Which approach would work for you?
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