#534 Roller

The other day I was scared out of my sox. This kid comes drifting up to me and he wasn’t moving his feet hardly at all.
With his ethereal, ghostlike sort of stride-slide, he looked like a moonwalking Michael Jackson or something.
He had one of those Bluetooth earphone thingies in his ear, so for all I knew he was a robot.
Or a Stepford child.
Then he slid away, this time propelling himself by pushing with the toe of his right foot while he slid on his left. Except he wasn’t sliding, he was rolling.
And I know it pains you to hear it as much as it does me to say it, but with the way he was tilting his heels up and down, he was actually rocking and rolling.
Long live rock and roll.
The child in question was sporting that newest in fashion aberrations and urgent care clinic moneymakers, the Heely.
In case you just unrolled out from under a rock like me, the Heely is a shoe that contains a hidden wheel in the heel.
Hence Heely.
An adept and agile child can master the balance necessary to roll on one’s heels while holding one’s toes up ever so slightly, thus gaining forward, robot-like, weird, adult-frightening motion.
Said child can roll down hills, skate through malls, and generally make a self-propelled nuisance out of himself where roller blades, real skates and skateboards are forbidden.
The schools make the kids take the wheels out when kids come on the grounds.
For safety.
The kids scoff, of course, and laugh heartily when one of their tribe comes slamming down on his keester because he misjudged and his heel slipped out from under him.
Imagine wearing shoes with the heel part as slick as black ice.
Talk about having to tiptoe around difficulties.
And although the manufacturer recommends it for the self-altruistic reason of evasion of liability, I have never seen a Heely child in helmet or pads.
Although I did actually see one rolling along with his arm in a cast the other day.
His parent was pulling him by the uncasted other hand.
America ya gotta love it