How I Met Nancy Kerrigan

It all began on December 21, when one of my friends named Becky here in Culpeper (hereafter referred to as Becky 1) called me at midnight.

She told me that she'd met the perfect guy for my other friend Becky (hereafter referred to as Becky 2), and asked me what her phone number was.

This all resulted in Becky 2 having a profoundly random message on her answering machine when she returned home from break. I found it all to be highly amusing--and almost identical to a scene in a screenplay I was working on under the tutelage of one Carl Kurlander, screenwriter of St. Elmo's Fire and Saved by the Bell.

It turns out that the character I most resemble is Screech. No surprise there.

But I digress.

Becky 1 hatches a scheme to introduce Becky 2 to said person. This scheme involves taking a truck load of people to go...ice skating.

It should be noted that I have never gone ice skating before, and that my prior roller skating forays were notable to my mother because she would see me speeding around the rink, then vanishing when I fell, then getting back up, then speeding around. Apparently this was hilarious.

I arrive at the skating rink with Becky 2 and her older sister. No one else is there thirty minutes later. Then, finally, Becky 1 and her boyfriend arrive, claiming that the alleged date would arrive soon. In the meantime, we watched many tiny people learning to skate by pushing buckets around the ice to keep their balance.

"I need some of those buckets," I thought. But they were only for children, it turned out.

When we finally went out to skate (the date still absent), I discovered one thing quickly: ice is slippery. I avoided doing anything silly like falling in front of thirty speeding children by pushing myself along the wall. Then, suddenly, I figured it out.

I was thinking two things as I proceeded at a slow but graceful glide around the ice.

1. Where is this guy, anyway?
2. Why on earth is that woman over there wearing age-inappropriate black lace tights and skating around on one leg like she's Nancy Kerrigan?

I was still thinking these things when the guy arrived nearly an hour and a half after the scheduled meeting time. To make a long story short, I got really good at ice skating (all things considered), Becky 1 dragged everyone out to a bar (I didn't drink), and The Date got kicked out by a bouncer because he's TWENTY and had been kicked out the NIGHT BEFORE from the SAME BAR.

In summary:

1. I can ice skate!
2. I didn't fall!
3. It was kind of exciting seeing someone get kicked out of a bar.
4. I can ice skate!