I was passionate. I found something that I loved. I could be all alone in a big old skating rink and nobody could get near me and I didn't have to talk to anybody because of my shyness. It was great. I was in my fantasy world.
I was just ice skating. I had no concept of that. In those days you couldn't see the judges. I was this little person on the ice and they were just people that would stand around the boards.
Every time you go out on the ice, there are slight flaws. You can always think of something you should have done better. These are the things you must work on.
I don't really think they saw anything in me, except the fact that I was interested in it. Some of the kids would miss a week here and miss a week there, I think they could see that I really enjoyed it.
I hated to read. My mother could not get me to read. I'm going through the same thing with my daughter now. I love to read now, but I don't remember reading.
It was very much like Norman Rockwell: small town America. We walked to school or rode our bikes, stopped at the penny candy store on the way home from school, skated on the pond.
It's different today than it was then. In those days we were strictly amateurs. If I had wanted to stay in for the '80 Olympics, my parents couldn't have afforded it.
My mother stopped working when she had my brother. She was a full time mom until I started getting heavily into ice skating lessons, and it got to the point where they really needed my mom to earn an income.
There were no competitions on television. The first skating competition I ever remember seeing on television was the 1968 Olympics when Peggy Fleming won.
They're still considered Olympic eligibles, so there's never an issue whether they're going to turn pro or not. When they get to that level, money is never an issue. They make so much money now.
In group lesson number six I think we learned how to turn backwards and then just kind of wiggle. That wasn't really skating backward, but I guess I was going in the right direction.
