snowball

We wonder what goes on in his little head. More specifically, we wonder how it is that in the grand scheme of things, in the cosmic parent-child lottery, he ended up choosing us.

Imagine the Time Before You Were Born as a kind of preconceptual roller rink, a windowless cinderblock building stuck out in the suburbs of limbo, trying to make up with shouts of neon paint what it lacks in architectural distinction. A guy named Serge takes your five bucks through a plexiglass window, and you say goodbye to the bright, uniform light of a cold cloudy suburban day and enter a darker, louder world. Inside, all the usual amenities: skate rental and sales, snack counter selling popcorn in cardboard buckets and candy and hot dogs and pop, 50-cent lockers, unintelligible DJ running the show from a hidden box, every surface carpeted. Out on the rink, little souls zoom counter-clockwise to the disco beat, thanking their lucky stars that "Saturday Night Fever" gave the BeeGees their second wind. They're biding their time here until conception, getting jolted on fountain Coke and then sweating out the caffeine on the rink floor, working on spins, swoops, and limbo moves.

There's a time for flash and dazzle, for strobing lights and bass-thump, for putting on your best moves. And there's a time where you line up along the wall like hopeful sides of teen beef and pray to be chosen for the slow dance. Back in the day at the Coon Rapids Cheap Skate, said slow dance was called the Snowball. The idea was that boys were sent to the perimeter, giving up the main floor to the girls while the DJ cued up something slow and sappy; the girls would then lingeringly drift by, choose a partner, and skate together in a kind of blissful rolling micro-monogamy in effect only until the beginning of the next song. But oh so heavenly while it lasted.

Finn is a high-flying newborn superstar, what with his ten fingers and ten toes, his bright eyes, his sweet disposition, and sundry other perfections. He was clearly a hot skater before birth. Based on his current toolbox of gestures, his favorite skaterboy move involved throwing both hands in the air while arching his back. So if he was such a happening preconceptual skater, how did he end up with a couple of parents who can't even skate backwards?