Conall: "Can I have some help with my math homework?"

Cocky Me: "Sure! I love math! It was my best subject all through school."

Conall: "If 7/8 of the points in a basketball game are scored by the home team and Sandy is scored ¼ of the home team’s points, what fraction of all the points scored in the game were scored by Sandy?"

Less Cocky Me: (long pause) "Is Sandy a he or a she?"

Conall: "What difference does that make??"

Busted…..

I loved math all through school and even got through calculus in high school. It was a breeze for me then, but after years of intellectual disuse, my math skills are apparently gone; they disappeared without a trace and didn’t even have the courtesy to leave a forwarding address for problems like this.

Hmmm. I thought to myself, what other skills are long gone? Can I still ride a bike with no hands? Can I still decipher French grammar? Can I still sing all the words to the score of Pippin? These are essential life skills I’m talking about!

To test one of these questions, I decided to finally accept Conall’s kind invitation (read: persistent nagging) to go ice skating at the Eton Ice Arena one Saturday afternoon. It was warm out and the rink is kept at a balmy 55 degrees, so I donned a sweatshirt, scarf, and mittens.

As we drove over, I waxed poetic about my ice skating prowess as a child. I told Conall all about the Forand’s and the ice rink they made every winter in the empty lot that adjoined their house. I reminisced about how every day after walking the 20 miles home from school I would put on my skates (with the blade guards), bundle up and hop the fence to walk the short block to the Forand’s house.

There, a predictable group of rag tag neighborhood kids would skate the afternoon away until it was dark, then return home with chapped cheeks and our mouths frozen in a smile. Conall was patiently listening to my scintillating story, and as we arrived, he asked, “So are you any good?”

Had he not been listening to a single word I said?!

We paid our fee for the ice time, laced up our rental skates and readied to hit the ice. The free skate time had already started; Conall and I entered the rink and tried to merge with the oncoming skaters. Conall had only skated a couple of times and had nothing to prove, but I was out to prove a point: Even if I can’t do fifth grade math, I can still skate!

We started around the rink, slowly at first, Conall clinging to the wall intermittently while I was trying hard to look smooth despite my shaky legs. The last thing I wanted to do was the arm-rolling-back-stroking sort of balance move that would belie my lack of skill! We both made it around the rink once without falling and then I got a little cocky (shocking, I know).

I decided to go a little faster, and let’s just say I’m not 10 anymore. Although I didn’t fall, my arms were flailing and my butt was sticking out in a rudimentary attempt to regain control. I saw the handwriting on the wall and slowed down – Salchows and triple axels were out of the question. (Of course, I couldn’t actually do those as a kid, either, but I had a fantasy-skating-expert waking dream in which I’d become Dorothy Hamill at 46).

We kept on skating for about 90 minutes, and as we practiced, we each got better and more confident. I never did fall, but I sure realized that I’m not a kid any more. Not on the ice, not as a math scholar, and *gasp* not as a no-handed bike rider either, I suspect.

As we drove home, Conall happily told me how much fun he’d had and that he was amazed that I hadn’t even fallen. He said that even though I wasn’t as good as I might have been as a kid, he was really glad that we went together. And you know what? I was beaming like a 10 year old again and realized that being a great skater seemed a lot less important than sharing the afternoon with my own 10-year-old.

I have new talents that have replaced my fifth grade math and skating skills, and my son could see them better than I could. Nice and humbling.