1 of 2 Photo: People Magazine
2 of 2 Photo: People Magazine
Renée Forrestall had no idea what was in store for her when she decided to re-learn how to roller skate in the days leading up to her 60th birthday on May 16. The high school art teacher, who lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, soon purchased a new pair of skates, but recalled thinking that they were nothing like the ones she had a teenager.
"I didn't like them," she recalls. "They were made out of vinyl and were so stiff. And the boot just didn't feel good."
So Forrestall decided to track down a vintage pair, which have become popular with younger skaters, and was shocked to learn how much they cost. Determined to find a less-expensive alternative, she set up a notification on Facebook Marketplace to alert her the moment someone put an older pair up for sale. A few days later she received an alert, informing her that Halifax-resident James Bond was hoping to unload a beat-up pair of skates for $40. Bond had no idea what size they were, but he posted a picture of them next to a ruler, revealing that they were 10 inches long
"I got out a ruler and measured my feet," she recalls, "and it turns out that they were 10 inches long, so I reached out and told him I'd take them." Two days later, she drove to Bond's house and learned that the skates had been sitting in a box in his recently-deceased mother's basement for decades.
"They were filthy dirty and looked like hell," she says. "The laces were missing and the wheels were rock hard and yellowed with age."
But none of that mattered when she tried them on.
"I slid my feet in them and they fit like a glove," Forrestall recalls, marveling at how they felt just like the skates that her mother purchased for her decades earlier as she was grappling with a personal tragedy. "It was one of those Cinderella slipper moments."
As Bond was describing how the skates used to belong to his sister, Forrestall pulled off the skates and was stunned to see her name written in black magic marker inside the boot.
"I was dumbfounded," she says, and was soon remembering how she used to skate by herself for hours on end as a teenager while trying to heal from the "personal loss" she endured at the time–and "always regretted" selling them at a yard sale in the early 1980s.
"I told him, 'Holy smokes, these are my skates.' He looked at me like I was trying to pull a fast one over on him, but when he saw my name written on them he was as flabbergasted as me. I started crying and it almost felt like my whole life flashed before me," she recalls.
She soon took them to a local skate shop where she ditched the old wheels for new red ones and purchased new laces. Then she set out to learn how to skate again. "I've wiped out a few times," she says. "But summer is here and I'm going to enjoy them. I just want to keep working on my balance and get good enough on them to where I don't hurt myself."