roller rinking...

We were having a calm, quiet evening at home, queuing up the dvd player for a movie when the phone rang. It was a birthday party at the roller rink and I should come. He was moving away soon so it would be one of the last opportunities to hang out. I said I was sorry but I had already made plans, but he insisted I invite my "date" along. The "date" was happy to go along but taking him any where in public often made me just a little nervous. I never knew when he was going to make a scene or get upset about some random minor event. Surprising the night was going very smoothly. We skated in circles for a couple of hours laughing, playing, holding hands. It was toward the end of the evening when we were talking to one of my favorite friends. It was a seemingly harmless topic when the date made a seemingly harmless comment. This comment resulted in the friend stomping out mumbling something about how he had to get out of there. We looked at each other, confused. When we turned around the rest the party was staring at the friend leaving the building, equally confused. I decided it was time to leave before things got worse. When we walked to the car, the friend's temper had only escalated. He was screaming and swearing - two things I had never seen him do. He was, after all, Mr. Christian. No swearing, no drinking, no negative thoughts at all. Only peace, love and forgiveness. Despite my desperate plea for us to just get out of there, date decides to go over to apologize. "YOU ARE NOT FORGIVEN!" People were holding him back as the swearing and the kicking got worse and worse, I just stood there crying and begging to leave. Finally we left, the situation 100 times worse than with what we had started. The night went bad and it was not even the date's fault. To what was the world coming?

The next day Mr. Christian called to apologize; he was forgiven and things went on as normal.

Mr. Christian and I still talk about that episode and refer to it as the "roller rink incident". "So, did you go all roller rink on his ass?" We laugh but we both understand that it really was not funny and to him it is a very embarrassing situation. He has no idea where the anger came from or why he reacted as he did. Of course, being the pushy, nosy person that I am, I ask every time. Then we continue our conversation with more recent, but less severe roller rink incidents he has experienced. I ask, "don't you love it when I call? I make you talk about all of the horrible things in your life, and then I laugh about them." Man, friends like me...