Ice Skating in New England

Son's first lesson of ice skating:

Let me preface this by saying that ice hockey and ice skating in New England reminds us of soccer in the south. Most boys seem to grow up doing it and having it be part of their daily lives. So, we figured "when in Rome..." Which leads me to our son's first lesson of ice skating.

We walk into the ice skating rink and immediately feel like fish out of water. Slowly the other students start to arrive with none other than gear. I look at hubby, hubby looks at me, and we both look at son. Um....were we supposed to bring gear? Oh well, sure we can make do....until we start seeing the children put on their own ice skates, snow bibs, helmets, knee guards, gloves, and jackets (of which we have none). I try to subtly go ask the teacher if we can rent some ice skates. She looks at me with pity in her eyes and says "no dear, you need to bring your own." So, after we leave early with son bawling, we are determined to get it right the second go around.

Second lesson:

We arrive and are feeling quite organized. We've got the helmet, the skates, the jacket, the bib...basically our entire winter wardrobe. We gear up our little fella and put him on the ice to which he immediately falls flat on his face. So, I climb onto the edge of the rink to simply hold him up and am quickly chastised for standing on the ice with shoes, whoops. This begins thirty painful minutes of our little guy falling time and time again on the ice. While this was a beginners class, he was by far the worst!

As cool as the skating rink vibe was, we felt very southern and out of place today.