Happy Birthday Roller Skates

Today is January 4 and a very important day in my life. It is the anniversary of the invention of roller skates. I have no idea who I would be without these little wheels attached to the bottom of shoes. Being a child of divorce led me to become an intervert and there weren't many places I could go that made me feel comfortable...but thanks to one girl in my past, the roller skating rink always made me feel at home.

As I say in my book "Sensitivity 101 for the Heterosexual Male" "So Joyce started taking me to The Pink Rink, her lesbian skating rink. At first I was very nervous, but soon I realized these females were just normal women who happened to like other women. This element actually made it easier for me. Since I knew none of them would be interested in me, I could concentrate on being myself, improving my skating, bettering my initial interaction with females and hopefully on getting some confidence back.
These episodes with Joyce and her friends just reaffirmed once again that we are all basically the same. It also became my first interaction with women who were of varying backgrounds, cultures and races; and ones who had different religious beliefs. And soon I began to believe that we really could all get along.”

Yes, a lesbian helped me become the man I am today. She saw through the pain I had at the time and tried to help me, even though she was hurting at the time too. To read more about her, you should buy the book.

So to me that was a random act of kindness in itself. But that was nothing because she also helped me get accepted at a straight rink and that's where I met many of the friends I still have today.

This morning I posted on my facebook page the fact that roller skates were invented today and wondered out loud who I would be without them. One of longtime friends Carla answered with this: I would never have met you. My son would have a different Godfather. Someone else probably would have stood up as his dad's best man, when we married. Your life and who you are have far more impact than just those things in our lives, but I think they give you a bare-bones starting point from my POV on your life. My own life would have been far different, too (both from your absence and that of the skates!)

I view that as a random act of kindness, even though I asked the question.So in this time of economic woe, wars that we shouldn't be in and when most people only think of themselves, it was nice to know that I was still appreciated, at least by one person. And that I owed this all to the person who invented roller skates...