Roller Skates and Bagpipes

For all the things about me that my mother did not tolerate, it's surprising the kinds of things she did put up with.

Case in point: Me, roller skating, when I was four or five.

Sure, lots of kids roller skate. But not the way I did it.

I had a pair of skates, the old kind that fastened on to your shoes and tightened with a skate key. I could just about do that myself, though I often needed help.

The part I always needed help with, though, was putting on the record of Scottish bagpipe music. Mom had to put that on the hi-fi stereo for me, because it was Dad's 33 1/2 rpm record and he wouldn't like it if I scratched it.

Why bagpipes? I have no recollection of how that started. Dad's family has roots in the lowlands of Scotland, which is why he had the record in the first place. A little Scots pride. A little ancestral memory, maybe. In my imaginative hindsight, maybe my Border Reiver ancestors were singing in my blood, urging me to mount a sturdy steed and ride out to terrorize the English or whoever was the Reiver target of the moment.

Once Scotland the Brave was rolling out of the speakers, away I'd go, around and around on the gray wool carpet that overlay the wooden floor of the living room. CLUMP CLUMP CLUMP around and around and around because at four or five I didn't know how to actually make the roller skates roll much. CLUMP CLUMP CLUMP while the bagpipes went skree skree skree-skree-skree skree skree SKREE SKREE SKREE-SKREE-SKREE skree skree, around and around... around and around... CLUMP CLUMP CLUMP SKREE SKREE SKREE CLUMP CLUMP CLUMP SKREE SKREE SKREE...

... until eventually Mom couldn't stand it any more and came it to say I'd have enough and wouldn't I like to play with my toy dishes now?

"No." The horses were still galloping across the heath, the pipes still singing away, and I was still riding among them.

CLUMP CLUMP CLUMP

SKREE SKREE SKREE-SKREE-SKREE SKREE SKREE

"It's getting to be nap time now," Mom would say.

Nap? Scottish warriors don't take naps. I had places to go, enemies to fight. "Not yet."

CLUMP CLUMP CLUMP

SKREE SKREE SKREEEEE SKREEEEE SKREE-SKREE-SKREE

"ALLLL RIIIGHT" Mom would say, and she'd take the needle off the record.

CLUMP CLUMP CLUMP clunk clatter as Mom finally caught up with the pint-sized Border Reiver and lifted her bodily off of her metallic steeds.

And that was it. Off came the record, off came the skates -- there might have been some kicking and protesting involved and possibly shoes removed skates and all -- and off I was transported into my crib.

Well. You can put a Reiver in prison.

But you can't make her nap.