For years, my wife has owned a pair of roller blades.  And for all the years from the time we started dating to the present (approximately 15 years), I have never seen her wear them, let alone use them.  Year after year, the time comes when we go through our abundance of things in storage trying to let go of the things we no longer need or use.

“Should I get rid of this miniature Donatello tackle box?  What about the Hulk Hogan camera that stamps a miniature Hulk Hogan at the bottom corner of each picture?”  These are tough questions.  Eventually, I always come across the roller blades.

Here is the typical conversation that follows.
“Can we get rid of these roller blades?” I ask, thinking about tossing in them in the trash regardless of her answer.
She defiantly says, “No.”
I say, “Why? You never wear them.”
She claims that she will at some point and she isn’t willing to let them go. She can’t even imagine life without them.

The other day, everything changed.  No, she didn’t suddenly agree with me. Hell hasn’t frozen over as far as I am aware.  She told me she was ready to take the blades for a spin since the weather was decent.  You may be asking yourself, why the sudden interest?  It has been over 15 years since she used them.  And since I became entwined with her fate,
I have only seen them take up space in closets, boxes, or shelves. Like some left over relic from a time now past, a lonesome reminder of the more innocent days of her youth.  If there was a movie about her, the end would depict her roller blades being the only thing left of her life and the word “rosebud” the last spoken by her before her passing.  In the movie, I would be long dead, in case anyone was wondering.

I am trying to indirectly save you all from having to see Citizen Kane.  Honestly, it’s not worth your time to watch it.

The truth is, I brought the spark into her world and kindled it.  I am not talking about love.  I am purely referring to the roller blades. For years, I had been bugging her about trashing them and taunting her about the fact that she never used them.  Then, several months ago in lieu of buying her a present for a certain occasion, I came up with a
cheaper alternative.  I would argue that it was more personal and fun that a normal gift,
though some might see it as a method of avoiding a “real” present.

The present was a form of currency (fake money that can’t be exchanged to/from real dollars) she could use to buy things from me like massages, me doing extra chores, her getting to pick a movie without me being able to refuse, etc.  She could also gain more of this currency by doing certain tasks like finishing a beer (she struggles to reach the halfway point most of the time).  One particular challenge would give her a nice bonus, but the challenge would require her to complete a full lap around the fairgrounds area at a local park in her roller blades.

I thought this was a full-proof plan to avoid pay.  She never roller bladed.  She wasn’t going to start roller blading again.  Certainly, she wouldn’t try it in such a public place.