Roller skates were something I always thought to be fun to have as a child. But growing up just before and in and after the WWII years, that was a hard thing to obtain. Not many kids had skates. When I asked my mother she told me that she could not get any and besides it was not something I needed, I could get hurt.
So the only time I would get on skates, was when a friend from my church youth group let me use hers after one of our youth meetings when I walked with her to her home on my way home. I hung on to the house walls or fences in front of the little gardens of some the homes. I never had enough time to learn to skate.
I did have a girl friend in my own neighborhood who had a pair of skates. But when I asked her to let me use them, she only would give me one skate. I would 'proudly' skate on it, pushing off with the other foot, up and down in front of the house on the sidewalk. But after a couple of minutes she wanted it back. So I never learned anything there either.
Ice skates I did get one year, sent to me from the US by a relative; they had boots attached to them. But they were a tight fit. I did walk alright in them on our rugs in the home. But on an icy pond that winter, which had a rail going around it, I hung on to the rail, because my toes hurt so much from the tight fit of the shoes that I did not dare to do any "free-skating".
And that was the end of that. I never put them on again.
In the years later when these things could be purchased easily, I had another life and interests, and so I never learned to skate.
Until decades later, when I met roller derby girls, and plan to attend some of their games, that I wished I could at least have the knowledge of what it feels like to skate, either roller skate or ice skate, since I am also an ice hockey fan, and admire those players how secure they feel on the ice with their skates.
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