q: what’s the hardest part about learning to rollerblade?

a: telling your dad that you’re fucking gay.

That’s a high school skater joke. I think so, anyway- I only heard it for the first time a couple of years ago, because I wasn’t friends with any skater kids in high school. I couldn’t be, really- my school’s alternative population was split pretty solidly between skater types and theatre kids, and there was a wide, piranha-filled chasm between the two, especially after Tommy D stabbed that skater kid at the fall fair junior year. From that point on, the odds of me being in on any of their jokes shrank to nearly non-existent.

Which is fine- it’s not like my life was much worse for not having heard that joke until I was in my mid-twenties, when I should have been mature enough to not find it funny, but come on- it’s a good joke. At any rate, I feel like we got the better deal from that particular feud. A theatre kid with an interest in skating could still do it, you know, could still get a skateboard and practice and have fun- there just wouldn’t be a group of kids with bad mohawks to do it with. But a skater who had the performer’s urge was out of luck- it’s not like he could round up all of his friends and put on his own production of into the woods.

[what does this have to do with anything?]
We went to a roller disco last night down in Vauxhall. Kat wanted to go, and I had always liked roller skating when I was little, so we went. What? I am large, I contain rolling multitudes.

The thing was goofy and weird, and mostly fun, until the end. It was a hipster club thing, but on skates. There was a velvet rope and the whole deal, and a bunch of giggly amateurs trying their best to stay upright and move forward with any degree of grace; there were also experts, what would appear to be professionals, people who could skate backwards, who would find the slower skaters and literally run circles around them, who could dance to “Billie Jean” and roller skate at the same time, who could drop to their hands and do a flip even with an extra thirteen pounds of roller skates on their feet. The sort of people who were so graceful and skilled at doing the same thing that you were doing that you would start to feel bad about your own obvious inferiority, until you realized that these people were just good at roller skating.

It turns out I was pretty okay at it- not doing any flips or anything, but I had some degree of grace to my movements, which is funny, if you’ve ever seen me, like, walk. Perhaps I was meant to be on wheels. It’s a dubious talent, especially in 2008, being a good roller skater, but I am but a simple boy from Texas and I will take what I can get.

Except at the end, when the equation completed itself- roller skating + drunk people = accidents, and two people plowed into me as I was on my way off of the skating floor. I reached out for a railing to steady myself, but fell about six inches short, and came down hard on my left knee.

I had hurt my left knee over the summer, doing a moving job in Austin, and immediately knew that it was not going to be a good fall. It took me a moment just to get back upright, and even then I only managed to get to a nearby couch to remove my skates and limp to pick up my shoes. Kat had a friend from class on the way, so I walked to the tube station by myself, took that to the bus stop, and then walked the rest of the way home. It was not very much fun from then on, and made the whole experience retroactively less than it had been.

[did you call the whaaambulance?]
I went to the doctor today, because I am in a country where the health care is free. I have had a mixed impression of the NHS system, having come into England expecting that it would be just like Michael Moore makes it look in sicko and finding it to be, um, less awesome than that. But really, it’s hardly any worse than a comparable experience in the US. In America, you show up for your appointment at the scheduled time, sit in a waiting room for a while, and see an impatient doctor. In the UK, you show up, sit in a waiting room, and see an impatient doctor. Here the doctors sound smarter, because they have English accents, and it feels a little bit like being diagnosed by Giles.

The doctor said it was some bruised ligaments, and that it would hurt like hell for a few days, and hurt like a lower degree of hell for a few weeks after that, until I was ready to suit up and play football again in about six weeks. Well, it could have been worse news.

[how about you post some immature pictures of things you saw in london that translate into american in hilarious ways?]
Why, I thought you’d never ask.

[okay, enough of that]
Well, it’s Friday, and I am under strict doctor’s orders to not walk very much this weekend, so what do you expect? There may be many updates over the next few days. How could there not be? Rudolph Giuliani in the Republican debate last night compared himself to the New York Giants. It’s almost like a letter addressed directly to me from the former mayor. Tomorrow is a Democratic primary, and even if this is an off-week before the Super Bowl, I can probably string together some thoughts on the subjects I’ve devoted the past month to nonetheless. Don’t get sick of me yet, I am a hobbled American with a keyboard, and I am going nowhere today.