My most favorite place in the whole world is Hyde Park Roller Magic about 35 minutes away from my house. My paternal figure, I mean…my father always said that the one thing you can count on in this life is change. The sooner you make friends with change the easier your life will become. This is easier said than done, as we all know. We fight to hold on and beg for mercy and circumstances around us are altered and we cling for dear life. We hold onto the past and present in a pathetic fashion…even though there is virtually no hope of sustaining this predictability. For this reason, I continue to return to Roller Magic even though it is no longer age appropriate. It was a pastime from those carefree days of childhood yore and yesterday from age five to twelve. It has only been a source of drama and strife once when my dad broke his wrist there when I was six years old. I remember the trauma of him yelling at me as I was skating. Darnit! I am going to be in trouble again and a spanking is in the near future! Then I saw the big bag of ice and realized that something else had happened and we would have to make an early trip back home.
The only thing that tends to change are the music and the
video games. I was a child of the
1980s…for crying out loud. The video
games that used to be housed at Roller Magic once made sense. They were not games of chance, but
skill. And there was never any
winner…ever! We just kept playing and
playing and playing as the levels became harder. Donkey Kong…Pacman (the first virtual symbol
of compulsive, overeating, by the way), and of course…that Galaga game with
those crab-like spaceship monsters that mercilessly attacked you as you tried
to fend them off! The games just became harder
and harder until you finally died every single time. Kind of like life, but a lot more fun dying a
spectacular death! As frustrating as it
was, it always compelled us children of the 1980s to rise to a greater level
and try harder. Good was not as good as
excellence. We were motivated to strive
for excellence with these games.
The music has changed.
I miss the Ghostbusters theme music, but have embraced the tween music
of the 21st Century! But one
of these days the staff at Roller Magic should look up archives of the every
piece of music played during the 1980s and play it for the sake of us adults
looking to take a blast into the past once in a blue moon. Please Roller Magic in Hyde Park…take me to
the moon and back with your relentless nostalgia.
In a world where not everything is fair and good people are
maimed in the most tragic ways possible while simply running a marathon…I skate
at roller magic because it is my sanctuary…synagogue…church…mosque…or whatever
keeps outside demons at bay. The
obsession was revived only a couple of years back when I returned after having
nothing better to do that particular day.
The dormant seeds were suddenly in full bloom again and I was
hooked. I continued coming back for more
and eventually let go of the fear that people would begin to see me as creepy
for hanging around a place mostly frequented by children.
For the past four years…I have had three of my birthday
celebrations at this beautiful Roller Skating paradise and the only virtual
remnant of my childhood is Ms. Pacman and Soccer Pinball machine that barely
works. But so what? Every human being must accept change, but
needs to draw the limit somewhere! In
this world where there is little constancy and sometimes no mercy…there is
always at least one music-enriched oasis in the desert! Someplace you can count on to stay the same
and house these memories from yesterday and the few thousand days before
that. On my birthday we skated up a
typhoon and the two hours the rink allotted went so very fast. But it was better than the previous birthday
when the cake was not as huge and they somehow talked me into wearing the big
mascot suit of the giraffe mixed with some alien creature! I looked at that costume and immediately had
a sinking feeling. “Have you washed that
thing lately?” It felt like a furnace
inside that thing…but I did the best I could to entertain the kids during the
hokey pokey. On a final note, how do the
poor souls in Disney World do it? Do they
have some kind of high-powered air conditioning mechanism in side that Donald
Duck or Goofy shell? It takes a lot of
work to make childhood fantasies come true, but sometimes we have to seize it
for ourselves!
I would like to offer my sincere appreciation to my local
community for attending and helping to raise so much money for the autism
foundations that helped me plan the event.
All of the proceeds from ticket sales went directly to the Autism
Move-a-thon of Orange County (AMOC) and the Hudson Valley Autism Society. We even had a young celebrity in attendance
named, Eric Orzell! He is the little boy
who was chosen as the poster boy for autism in New York State. You may see him licking a lollipop just about
everywhere. I had his photograph printed
on the cake along with one of me skydiving.
In my speech to my guests, I remarked how wonderful it is to
have a place like Hyde Park Roller Magic in my life that makes me feel
welcome. It is critical to lionize
certain businesses that are kind to those on the autism spectrum. I know that if I actually did say something
inappropriate then it would be nothing more than just a bad day. Furthermore, it is my intention to have
subsequent birthday celebrations at this roller skating haven until I become
the oldest man to have a party at Roller Magic.
Nobody has received thank you cards yet and hopefully they do not take
it personally. It has just been so
difficult these days keeping up with all of the business e-mails and travel
schedule. Notes of gratitude have to be
placed on a backburner for just a little while longer.
Hopefully you will also find your own “Roller Magic” in this
world that is relentlessly changing and is not always fair. There has to be one thing you can count on
especially considering we have already lost our beloved Twinkies. Sure…they were toxic in large doses and made
from the same ingredients used for envelope glue. But they were part of our childhood
experiences and we must find something else!
