BACK TO THE FUTURE
By Chris Harrigan -
Hard to believe, but in the early ’90s the absolute coolest thing a person could do was strap a pair of neon-coloured rollerblades to their feet and scoot around town shouting inscrutable phrases like “eat my shorts!” and “booyah!” I know this because I was 10 in 1995, and despite the fact I could barely ride a bike, let alone get anywhere in one piece with eight wheels bound to the bottom of my gangly, fawn-like legs, I wanted nothing more than a pair of blades to call my own. Such was the power of the rollerblading craze – even people who never left their bedrooms wanted to do it.
Of course, wanting to rollerblade and being able to rollerblade are two different things – a fact I learnt within moments of receiving a pair for my birthday. For months I’d dreamed of gliding around with the cool kids. But after just 30 knee-grazing minutes of practice in my driveway, I discovered I was too uneasy on my feet to do so immediately – and too lazy to learn how to do so eventually. So away went the blades, along with my ambitions of being cool. It nagged at me, this impulse to stop doing something the moment it became difficult. But before I could work up the resolve to try again, I was granted a reprieve: the skating craze died down suddenly, and I could pretend I’d simply moved on to Tamagotchis and Furbies like the rest of the world.
Flash forward 25 years,
