Love and Ice Skating

I believe that my lovely Jenny H once said (in answering one of those email survey things that kill me) that she did in fact fall in love everyday. I love that, and I completely understand it. I also often fall in love at the drop of the proverbial hat. It certainly doesn’t tarnish or lessen the love of my life that I am lucky enough to bask in. As a matter of fact, I think she also understands the feeling, and also falls in love quite often herself.

When I was like 5 years old, my parents took me to see Sesame Street on Ice. I was heavy into Sesame Street. Heavy! I had a non-sexual hard on for the Count. He was a vampire for Christ’s sake, but an obsessive-compulsive vampire with a monocle! Anyway, I intended to get seriously excited about seeing Bert and Ernie and Snuffleupagus on ice skates, but I was instead entranced by the young girl sitting in the row in front of me.

Whoa! Let me pause here for a second. Muppets on ice? What friggin’ stoner, ice-dance fan thought of that?

This girl though, I never saw her face completely, just a ¾ view from behind, but she made my heart flutter and my stomach do crazy things I wasn’t quite ready for. She had this small little freckle/birth mark just below her left ear that I couldn’t take my eyes off of. She is the only thing I remember about the “icecapade”. It’s as much a mystery today as it was nearly 30 years ago, this notion of love. What brings it on, what is it about a certain person, is it all just chemical? The romantic in me wants to believe that it’s more, but I don’t know.

On the radio, during the car ride home, Paul McCartney and Wings’ Silly Love Songs played and lulled me into a constant reminding of this mystery girl.

To this day when I hear that song – which admittedly is not often – I think of that girl and that freckle, I remember that first thrilling and sort of spins inducing tumble.