As a child I was not particularly clumsy, I took dance lessons and played sports, however I never really excelled at these things. I didn't learn to ride a bike until I was ten—and I only learned then because I was humiliated into it. My younger brother had learned to ride a bike without training wheels—and no way was I going to be outdone by him.
My brother tried learning how to roller blade a few years later. This hobby I decided I did not need to learn.
This childhood decision never haunted me until I was a freshman in college. All throughout my teenage years up to this point I had religiously avoided anything with wheels or skates that attached to my feet. I had never been ice-skating, rollerblading, rollerskating, or even stood on a snowboard. I'm not sure why I had such a passionate aversion to trying these things, but I did. Of course the first time I decided to try rollerskating out it was with a large group of friends. We all went to the rollerskating arena, we all got our skates, and we all set out to have a blast rolling around. I think somehow in my mind I thought I would just magically be able to keep my balance, or perhaps I'd even discover that skating was one of my unknown talents and I'd be able to magically glide across the floor. —While this worked well in my mind, the skating did not actually work quite as immaculately in practice.
