Red Chucks

I hate when I'm hit unexpectedly by that weird feeling. An overwhelming sense of sudden loneliness and difference.

I never thought that the feeling would hit me at a roller rink. After lacing up my skates, and launching onto the skating floor, I never expected to be hit by a wall of debilitating indifference.

It started off normally, my whole family comes in as usual, one of the regular families at the rink, and slowly but surely we swing ourselves into the vortex of the Marion rollerskating rink. Lap after lap, turn after turn. An endless cyclone of loud pop music, small children, and fake people.

That's what bothered me most. All of the sudden, skating slowly under the florescent lights and disco balls, the whole facade crumbled down on me. Little did the people around me realize that I was laying under the fragments of their false-heartedness. It just hurt to watch all of these people disillusioning themselves. Losing what matters, and instead being swept away by the superficial.

It just threw me off. I wanted to skate near the sides slowly and go unnoticed, sulking in disregard and mental disarray, but it didn't work. I was pulled into their storm of materialism. Swept away to skate fast, skate centered, attract attention, and stand out. I hated it.

So I pulled over to the side stage, sat down and thought. My eyes blurring with each passing skater, my mind being melted by the technicolor expanse dancing in front of me.

Whilst sitting and thinking (or at least semi-thinking as the lyrics of the Black-Eyed Peas blared in my ear drums), I realized that this is the world. It's the rapidly moving vortex of competition and infidelity. Maybe that's why I get this feeling. So that I can avoid it.

I'm just made to stick out like a sore thumb, or a pair of red chucks on the glow-in-the-dark floor of the skating rink.

L. Soleil