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My child is learning to ice skate.  I’m proud of her.  No one else in our family is big into ice skating.  So it is unfamiliar to me.  Since she is high school age, she has paid for and attended her lessons alone.  I haven’t heard the instructions from her teachers.  I haven’t spent much time with her on the rink.  But, when she gets back home, she consistently says, “That was so fun!”  She really enjoys it.

She normally bikes herself to her lessons, packing the large hockey skates into waterproof bags on either side of her bike.  One Thursday, we had lots of snow and the bike paths were unusable so I drove her to her lesson and came inside to take a few pictures.  I enjoyed seeing her confidence on the ice and her happiness with her developing skills.

As I waited for her to unlace her skates (which is a task that is surprisingly time-intensive and not short-cutable) I began looking around the room.  There was a bulletin board filled with photos and papers.   In addition to photos of all the staff, there was a brochure about ice skating.  The descriptions made me laugh.

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The moment your skate first touches the ice, you feel it. That rush of adrenaline. That surge of exhilaration. You cannot deny the energy of ice skating—the combination of imagination, positivity, and bravery. Oh, and it’s fun. So much fun. The more we skate, the more we realize we are learning something bigger. We learn the joy of getting better every time we try something new. We learn that every time we fall, we get right back up. We learn that great challenges can be overcome to achieve greatnesss. These are more than lessons in skating; they are lessons in life. Skate to your inner amazing. Skate to great. That is not at all how I personally feel about ice skating!

I do not experience a “combination of imagination, positivity, and bravery.”

To me, it is a combination of uneasy balance, little momentum and blister-inducing discomfort.  I’m not really interested in trying to learn more about ice skating.  It’s not how I want to spend my time.  Does reading a descriptions in this brochure help me want to ice skate?  I am an example of what happens when an outsider evaluates the activity with disinterest.  I don’t want to learn more about ice skating.  I’ve already made decisions about whether or not I’d be good at it.

Homeschooling is similarly an optional activity.  Many people have already decided they wouldn’t be good at it.  They don’t want to learn more about it and aren’t wanting to try it, no matter how glowingly it is described by someone who loves it!