Originally published February 2023.
I loved roller skating as a kid. Still do. As someone prone to both accidents and anxiety, roller skating is the closest I’ll ever come to flying and I’m very comfortable with that. I can think of nothing more terrifying than being on a motorcycle because it does not contain seat belts so I’ll stick to wheels I can wear, thanks. I never grew tired of going around and around the oval-shaped rink, feeling completely free, gliding like some sort of avian creature in OshKosh.
Y’all remember Couple Skate? It was that birthday party agenda item in between Abba songs and slightly crusted over buttercream frosting when the DJ (and let me tell you how badly I need a documentary on 80s/90s-era roller rink DJs) would announce to all that it was time for the moment that really separated the Cools from the Not-Cools: “Couple Skate.” Do you remember how that felt? I still feel it just as tangibly as I feel the sock on my left foot sliding down below my heel as we speak. It’s the feeling of being left out.
When I say left out, I mean left out. Never, literally not once in my entire youth did I ever have a boy to Couple Skate with. But we’re not here to unpack the shortcomings of my childhood, are we? We’re here to unpack the messages about superiority that were communicated to us as kids that can lead to the thoughts and feelings we have throughout our lives. I want to talk about how Couple Skate impacted the course of my entire life, and I don’t just mean my visceral discomfort upon hearing “slow songs” to this day. I mean I learned lessons from Couple Skate that I had to unlearn as an adult (once I discovered that unlearning was even a thing) and I want to help you do the same, because I don’t think it’s fair that childhood exposure to cruel exclusivity should have so much to say about us when we’re grown.
When something is kept from you, you learn that it’s not for you. That’s something other kids get, but not you — you don’t get to have that. It becomes a lesson baked into your developing brain that slowly morphs into your understanding of your own value and place in the world. You develop the belief that some things are only for others, and because no one is specifically teaching you why things like Couple Skate get to happen to other kids and not you, you’re likely to fill in the confusion gaps with reasons of your own, and here’s the reach bitch: those stick with you, too. When you don’t understand why Cathy Cream Cheese gets to hold hands with a boy and skate around to the most romantic (if not overtly sexual — weird) song on the Top 40, your brain will latch onto any reason it can find to make sense of the sadness you feel in wanting something and not receiving it.
She’s prettier than me.
She’s cooler than me.
She’s smarter than me.
Her family is richer than mine.
She’s really good at sports and her mom lets her wear lipstick.
And on and on with “reasons” that reinforce more negative bullshit and presumed “flaws” than any little kid ever deserves to battle with in youth and pay for later in therapy. There are so many things I wish grown-ups had done differently in the 80s and 90s, but some of the most significant pain points for me are the unnecessary things that we could have simply done without that made a lasting harmful impact on my sense of self worth. No one ever needed Couple Skate at a child’s fucking birthday party. Oh but isn’t it just so cute?
Through things like Couple Skate, and those $1 carnations they’d sell in school on Valentine’s Day, and those goddamned Texas Homecoming Mums, I learned that romantic interaction was something that was for other girls — not for me. And then I grew up never dating until I was in my 20s, having very few romantic relationships overall, and as of my 40th birthday was still single and never married. Which is fine. But sometimes I do wonder if a lifetime of learning that love was something reserved for other girls and never for me might logically have something to do with it.
Couple Skate was special. It was one of the very first memories I have of partnership “perks.” A romantic song, a less-crowded skating rink, all the little have-nots, myself included, looking longingly at these special people, their bestowed specialness making us feel like real turds by default. For the length of one song, we saw something that belonged only to those who had been chosen by someone else. An early lesson in exclusivity. That’s what Couple Skate was boring into the brains of you and me.
In reality, Couple Skate was just another part of growing up, definitely a silly one that probably sexualized us a bit too early, but it didn’t actually decide who deserved love and who didn’t, of course not. It was just young kids learning what it meant to like someone, and then acting on that, and learning how that felt. The kids who did get to Couple Skate were learning things, too. And it’s in this unpacking, infusing childhood memories (or any memories, really) with a little more logic than we had access to back then that we start to see how these lessons impacted — and are still impacting — our self worth.
It doesn’t matter if a boy never asked me to a dance, or if I never even had a boyfriend while all my middle and high school friends were partnering up constantly. Nothing about those memories makes me a less or more worthy person, because my worth as a human being is inherent. Moments of shame and feeling left out can absolutely steal our worth from us, because we learn that we’re less in some way than those receiving the things we want. You can call it jealousy if you want to, but I think that river cuts much deeper, and creates a canyon of vacant space where our self worth should be. Feeling left out hurts, it’s allowed to, but that doesn’t mean that those left-out feelings get to dictate how we feel about ourselves, and therefore how we show up in the world.
Here’s the fun part: We grew up. We’re not beholden to the whims and musical tastes of that roller rink DJ anymore. We’re our own people, fully cognizant that how “cool” or “chosen” we are doesn’t actually matter, that it was never real. It was just a way kids learned to relate to each other while our brains and bodies got bigger. Now, as adults, we actually have a choice about whether or not we’ll let bullshit praise like “he likes me” drive our feelings and thoughts. Now we know that “he likes me” doesn’t matter half as much as “do I like him,” “do I like me,” and why.
We get to let go. We get to take an accounting of memories like Couple Skate and ask ourselves what lessons they were teaching us, and whether or not those lessons still hold water. Every time I sat on the side during Couple Skate and felt unpretty, every time I learned that “boys just don’t like me,” — it’s my choice now whether or not I believe it. And because I know it’s nonsense to let whether or not someone else desires me determine whether or not I deserve desire, it gets easier and easier to let go of all those internalized “flaws” in favor of seeing myself for all the wonderful traits that really make up me. No, I never had a partner for Couple Skate. That’s allowed to simply be something that happened, not something that defines my opinion of and experience with my romantic worth.
Making different choices about the lessons I learned as a kid feels like setting that kid free. Was I sitting out during Couple Skate, or was I sitting with another little girl just like me and were we taking that downtime to become friends? Maybe I was using Couple Skate as a bathroom break so I could be first on the floor when they started playing Erasure’s “A Little Respect?” Maybe whether or not a boy liked me when I was ten doesn’t deserve to have power over my 40-year-old self worth. Maybe everyone, regardless of how “cool” or “chosen” we were or are, deserves to feel like they’re flying.