Skates and scooters were the first equipment most children operated independently, they were used on surfaces nobody had designed for them, and everything about them required adjustment. Here are eleven.
1. They Clamped Onto Your Own Shoes
Rather than being boots, skates were metal frames that gripped the sole of whatever you were wearing, tightened at the toe and strapped at the heel.
Any shoe would do and none did well. The clamp-on design is what made them adjustable and unreliable.
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2. The Key on a String
Adjustment required a small key, which was worn around the neck on a length of string precisely because losing it made the skates useless.
Everybody lost it anyway. The skate key is the object that had to be kept and never was.
3. Adjusting Them for Length
The frame extended and contracted to fit different feet, which meant they could be handed down, shared and lent along a whole street.
One pair served several children. Adjustable sizing is why so few households needed to own any.
4. Coming Off Mid-Stride
The clamps worked loose progressively, and a skate detaching at speed was a routine occurrence rather than an accident.
You learned to feel it going. The unexpected release is the failure everybody experienced repeatedly.
5. The Noise on Paving Slabs
Small hard wheels on uneven concrete produced an enormous and completely distinctive rattle audible from a considerable distance.
Adults always knew where you were. The paving noise is the sound the whole activity announced itself with.
6. Every Crack Being an Obstacle
Wheels that small stopped dead in any gap, which meant the route was determined entirely by the quality of the pavement rather than by where you wanted to go.
Surface knowledge was detailed and local. Crack avoidance is the navigation the equipment demanded.
7. The Hill Everybody Used
Every area had one slope of the right gradient, which was known to all the children in it and was where the actual skating happened.
Getting back up was the tedious part. The chosen hill is the piece of geography the equipment selected.
8. The Knees
Falling was constant, the surface was concrete, and grazed knees were a permanent condition rather than an occasional event.
Nobody stopped for them. The knee graze is the standing consequence of the whole enterprise.
9. Stopping Being the Hard Part
No effective brake existed on most equipment, so stopping was achieved by grass, a wall, a friend or sitting down.
Everybody developed a preferred method. The stopping problem is the design gap nobody addressed.
10. The Home-Made Scooter
A plank, a set of wheels off something else and a length of wood formed a scooter that somebody in every street had built, which worked adequately and steered barely at all.
It was heavy and much admired. The improvised scooter is the vehicle nobody bought.
11. Being Fast on Your Own Street
On familiar ground with known surfaces, children moved at real speed and covered their whole territory quickly, which was the entire appeal.
It was the first independent mobility most people had. Local speed is what the equipment actually provided.
Metal Plates and a Key on a String
Clamps that worked loose, wheels too small for the surface, no brake worth the name and a key everybody lost – and the first truly fast independent movement most children experienced.
The last item is what it was for. None of this equipment worked well, all of it was unsuitable for the surfaces available, and it gave children the ability to cross their entire territory in a couple of minutes – which at that age is worth a considerable number of grazed knees.
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