I'm an Apple

Today I learned the skater doesn't fall far from the tree.

Some of you may remember how Dmytri used to yap at me all the time for looking down. I used to tease him that he could say, "Don't look down" without an accent because he said it so many times. I must be getting better because he doesn't say it anymore.

We were working on Dutch Waltz and the swingrolls at the ends of the ice (along the goal line) were giving me fits. It's a wicked tight curve and I just couldn't get the feel for it.

"Can't we just start the swingroll here," I said, pointing to a place inside the face-off circle with the toe of my skate. "That would make it so much easier."

"No," Dmytri groaned, shaking his head and skating away from me in exasperation. Apparently ice dance coaches don't like you messing with their dance patterns.

We tried doing the crossover-outside edge-swingroll-crossover part again.

"Oh no! Everything about that was a disaster!" I exclaimed.

"Yes," Dmytri agreed. Then he skated around showing me everything I did wrong. (He also did this really neat thread-the-needle move between two random skaters who got in his way. He's so cool.)

"When you were learning to skate, was there anything that was hard for you to learn?" I asked.

"No," he deadpanned. "I was always perfect."

"Seriously, what was something you really struggled with?"

He paused, then said sheepishly, "Looking down."