ice monitor (m)

The regional championships were held at our rink this past week.  Somehow, I got volunteered for a 4 hour shift as "ice monitor."  The job sounded simple enough.  You are given a clip board with skaters' names on it.  The skaters approach you at the scheduled time and you check off their names and let them on the ice.  My husband had the shift before me: 6:00 a.m. until 11 a.m. 

"I'll train you," he says. 

What's to train? I wonder.  Zippy the Monkey can do this job.

Well, not unless Zippy has strong knees.  The gate to get on the ice is 100 years old and is heavy and gets stuck--both opening and closing the door.

"You have to put your knee into it," my husband explains. 

Great. 4 hours, 25 skaters per hour.  One hundred bangs on the knees.  No possibility of Workman's Compensation.

As I sit there, I have plenty of time to look around.  I see two women, both coaches, with whom I've discussed weight.  One woman told me she once weighed 292 lbs, went down to 213 and appears to be somewhere around 240 now.  She is wearing black tights, a long black sweater and a scarf around her neck.  I recognize the this-is-as-slimming-an-outfit-I-can-find look. 

The other, a blonde woman named Susie, also appears to be heavier than when I saw her in August at the summer competition.  She's the one who noticed my weight loss from the prior year and told me bluntly,  "I used to look at you and think this woman just doesn't care how she looks."  That hurt.

Well now, Susie-Q has packed on a few pounds and is bigger than I am.  I wasn't sure at first, but when she gushed about my new blue jacket (from Paris, a placed called Pret Pour Partir) she said she wanted one and asked if she could try mine on.  I let her....it was smaller on her than on me.

I know monitoring other people's weight wasn't in the job description, but it was a gratifying side benefit of the job for me.