My son has decided that he wants to learn to play hockey. He has signed up for a beginner’s class at our local ice rink and has asked me to take him to the free skate on this Friday night before the first class. Not wanting him to be out by himself, I go with him.

And not wanting to skate, I find myself here in the bleachers above the ice rink, the geek mom with her legal pad and pen. “Are you hiding here out of the way?” another mom has just asked me. I might as well be hiding, I think, as my son won’t even glance my way for the next two hours. And why should he? His best friend is here—heck, his whole school is here.

In this teeny-bop central, the blaring music reverberates off of the domed roof above and the cacophony of voice below, swirling into a drone that sends me reminiscing…

When I was my son’s age, the place to be on the weekends was not the ice rink but the roller skating rink. Round and round we would go, foot crossing foot, to “Celebration” and “Call Me.” Every so often, the lights would dim, and the ceiling’s disco ball would illuminate to throw its magical pixie dust over the Couples Skate. Lights would come back up to a Girls Only Skate or a Reverse Skate or a Backwards Skate. It never occurred to me until now how much that skating was like a Simon Says game.

It’s not unlike that here at the ice rink tonight. Doing as Simon implies if not says, most people are moving in a counterclockwise direction with the herd, with a few rebels weaving throughout the middle. Thirty years have passed between then and now, but looking beyond these kids’ clothes and hair styles—and their on-ice phone texting!—you would never know.

The Zamboni cleaning the ice jerks me back to the present. I was wrong: Things are undeniably different between then and now. In the same way that the shiny ice façade looks like brand-new ice rolling out from under the Zamboni, the feeling that things are the same is an illusion. Much more than wood versus ice—or perhaps even serving as symbols of the dichotomy—the world in which I moved as a kid was authentic, warm, weathered wood compared to this hard, cold, illusion-prevalent ice world in which my boys are growing up. Think of Narnia & Aslan juxtapositioned with Narnia & White Witch. There are very little similarities between the two.

The skaters now pouring back onto the ice know that things are different too. Instead of moving counterclockwise as before, they all seem to know to now move clockwise instead.

My son is also proof that things change. This evening, he has gone from a wobbly, unsure skater creeping along the rink edges to a more-confident future hockey player gliding along with his flow of friends. More evidence of change is that he has also unbelievably acknowledged me with a wave—even if only to ask for some snack money!