Wheelies

     Disco on wheels. For kids of the 1990's Wheelies Roller Rink was a place to experience a decade we never had. Iridescent and large, a disco ball hung in the center of the rink reflecting colours from the spotlights. Blue, red, and yellow -- luminous ribbons sliding across the floor. Top forty music and cherished hits from years past projected out the speakers, guiding the speed and rhythm of our movement around the rink. The room was designed for the chase of young love.
     But the strongest memory I have of Wheelies is not the pursuit of a girl who stumbled in her rollerblades, but of an evening speeding around the floor with my hockey team. Our skill on the ice was easily transferable to the roller rink and we skated with confidence and powerful grace. Perhaps self-conscious of the juvenility of the outing some of the guys created their own danger. Remember pixie stix? The thin, bright coloured straws full of powdered sugar? One of my teammates had a whole bag, so a couple of the guys went into the washroom, poured out the sugar on the sink and snorted it like cocaine. Then they'd come out of the washroom wide eyed and grinning, hunched over in a hockey stance, moving around the rink in chopped strides acting out their Scarface fantasy. This routine was repeated several times throughout the night. They insisted it gave them a rush. It probably did. It was sugar. I couldn't dispute that. But I never snorted any of the sugar. I knew that if I wanted that cheap feeling of brief energy I could drink the sugar the way it was meant to be taken. But that stuff tasted like shit. Instead, in long strides I skated alone, proud of my ability to differentiate cocaine from powdered sugar.