Now and then it’s time to spice up a marriage. And you know that can only mean one thing: roller skating old school style on Staten Island. Let’s hit it.

Wait.. let me BRIEFLY backtrack (no one enjoys a long back story).

In general, my husband and I are pretty good about going out on dates.

It kind of goes like this.

Book sitter.

Go to dinner.

Pay sitter.

As much as I truly love trying new restaurants in New York City (please don’t make me use that atrocious word “foodie”), I sometimes long for an evening with a little less, “Our special appetizer tonight is slow roasted rabbit and sweetbread salad,” and a little more boogie nights.

So I invite my husband to go to….

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in Staten Island. There are no longer any indoor roller rinks in Manhattan (a cryin’ shame if you ask me), so we head to one of the outer boroughs. Very outer. After a 45 minute drive and enough traffic to dampen our adventurous spirit just a bit, we arrive.

But our mood is immediately boosted when we see a middle aged woman in the parking lot, sliding out of the passenger side of a Pontiac Firebird, with a half-drunk bottle of vodka in her hand. Well, that’s a good sign. Clearly, a fun-lovin’ crowd.

Inside, where they don’t serve alcohol, we put on our rollerblades and Rick reaches for his wrist guards.

Me: Honey, PLEASE don’t wear your wrist guards. It ain’t cool. Not in a skating rink.

Rick: Wrist injuries are the number one injury for rollerbladers.

Me: Right. I know. Don’t wear them.

Rick: I really think I should.

Me: If you break your wrist, at least you’ll have the comfort of knowing you looked cool before you went down.

Rick hesitantly agrees to skate without them. He is so macho when he lives dangerously. The music is jamming and we start to skate the night away. Here I am out on the floor…

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presumably stunned at some of the skating attire (not a lot of Michelle Kwan style going on). Like this one for example…

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I only wish you could see this from the front. Let’s just say, this is one lady who is very comfortable with sharing her cleavage AND her belly. You gotta sort of respect her chutzpah. Or something.

There are seriously some awesome skaters, including a Cuba Gooding Jr. look-alike who moves like Fred Astaire on wheels. But Rick and I hold our own. I think we really could have wow’d them with our triple Lutz triple toeloop combination but you know, Rick wasn’t wearing his wrist guards and all.

I am so enamored with the skaters who can zig zag effortlessly, dancing and doing tricks, that I now want to be a super fab roller girl too. How do I become that?

The roller jammers keep it rockin’ deep into the wee hours of the morning. But around 11 pm…

My bunion hurts.

Rick’s shins hurt.

Our babysitter needs to go home.

So we head back to the island of Manhattan. As we drive home, Rick says, “I’ve never crossed the Verrazano Bridge on a date.”

See that’s what I’m talking about, people. We are keeping this marriage spicy.

mama bird notes
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