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My little family recently embarked on the inevitable, inaugural roller skating adventure.

My husband and I were avid roller skaters in our youth, but we had abandoned the sport some 20 years ago. A girlfriend invited us to attend the local Christian music night with her young daughter so off we went, this time with our uncoordinated children, 7-year-old Zoe and 4-year-old Harmony.

The rink was sparsely filled with patrons. Maybe some dedicated skaters did not care for the blaring Southern gospel music (we were anticipating praise and worship music).

The building I haunted with my high school girlfriend, Kenne, so many Friday and Saturday nights in our Dirty Dancing youth was beginning to show some age. The carpet was stained. The bathroom stall doors did not shut properly. The colored lights did not seem as bright and promising.

Though my girls spent more time on their bottoms than skating, they gushed and embellished their experiences the following day. "I skated really fast all by myself," Harmony alleged to her skeptical baby sitter.

So we returned on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

And the differences were still startling.

Pants are no longer worn tight, but loose -- even droopy -- on a few teen fellows.

Kenne and I would throw our ripped, blue jeans in the clothes dryer for an extended period of time, hoping to make them as clingy as possible. I was just the frumpy tagalong friend, but I did manage a few friendly smiles from her discarded gentleman admirers.

Hair is not big.

Kenne and I easily used a bottle of hair spray for one skating outing. We did the thing where you comb your hair back just beyond your ears and spray. Then it was scrunch, scrunch, scrunch, spray, spray, spray. And we used the curling iron to achieve the tall pouf.

The people at the rink itself are different on a Saturday afternoon. There are the gossipy grandmas off to the side, guarding the birthday loot, while the grandfathers and fathers look almost pained. The mothers are tired and harried, wondering where they put the birthday candles.

There are no young couples burrowing into close corners, only children skating, falling, crying and begging for popcorn.

And the music has changed. Skating to Taylor Swift does not have the same momentum as skating to Guns N' Roses, Whitesnake or Madonna.

Later when we crawled into bed, my husband said, "I just don't like hip-hop music."

I'm not sure that Swift counts as hip-hop, but I had to agree, skating to whatever we were listening to is not the same.

Sometimes you just can't recapture the past. And that is usually a good thing.

Contact Janice Carmac at janice.carmac@news-record.com or 373-7098