Post II: Response to National Museum of Roller-Skating

On Friday afternoon, I visited the National Museum of Roller-Skating. My experience there was not one of the most thrilling or invigorating experiences of my life. As I first entered the museum, I walked through the doors and the first thing that I saw was a cubicle. As I entered the room, I realized that I was walking through an office; an office full of people busy at work. At this point, I began to feel slightly awkward. I felt out of place. I thought to myself, “I don’t belong here. People who roller-skate and people who care about roller-skating belong here.” I was not one of those people. I was just there for an assignment.

As I finally made it back to where the actual museum was I felt a little bit more relaxed. I was finally away from all those office cubicles with workers peering out of them at me with looks on their faces that read, “What do you think you’re doing here?” Everything started to felt better to me. I was a little more at ease. I began to walk around the museum and start to examine a few of the exhibits. Although I still felt out of place, I began to focus more on the history of roller-skating and various other interesting facts about roller-skating and forgot how out of place I felt.

There were a few interesting facts that I noticed while I was there that I had never heard before. For example, I never knew that Tara Lipinski was a roller-skating champion when she was a young girl. I also never knew that there used to be a dress code for women when they roller-skated. They couldn’t wear skirts that were more than two inches above the knee.
So, I finally stopped caring about what all the roller-skating people thought about me invading their museum. After that it became a lot more enjoyable. It became more than just an assignment. It became something interesting. I learned stuff while I was there. It was a good experience but…I’ll never go back.