IN-LINE SKATING : Balancing Act : Unfortunately, in-line may be the least appropriate description for the way you’ll move.

It’s not easy being a child anymore, a difficulty compounded by the fact that you’re 32. Still, the urge is on you. Besides, this is California, where lines between adolescence and maturity have long been blurred. No one blurs them more than you and your friends. You do what any adult would when searching for something new. Look for company.

Ring.

Sorry. Company picnic.

Ring.

Gee, pressing root canal.

Ring.

Advice this time: “Hey. Break a leg.”

So you go in-line skating with the one person who is always game, no matter how harebrained the scheme. Having your wife along has its pros and cons.

She’ll pay.

She’ll also give no quarter, show you up and ask annoying questions laced with obvious innuendo. The first one comes before you even leave the house. You’re wearing shorts. She looks at your knees, smooth and soft as summer rain. You aren’t going to wear long pants?

Get real. Anybody who knows anything about in-line skating knows that only geeks skate in long pants. Besides, the sport has been around for enough time that the folks who rent the things know exactly what beginners need.

At the rental shop, along with the skates, you are given knee pads and wrist guards. You notice that the wrist guards, which extend from the back of your hand halfway up your forearm, look and feel a lot like a cast. You are about to point out this silly coincidence when the guy behind the counter sucks all the marrow from your funny bone with a few statistics.

“We have at least one broken arm a week, sometimes two,” he says in a failed attempt to get you to relax. “Everybody falls.”

His advice is limited to pitch. Namely, which way you should.

“Fall forward,” he says, the implication being that a broken arm heals quicker than a cracked skull. He laces your skates, pulling the neon yellow shoelaces tight. You gaze down at your hands. Across the back of your wrist guard, a single word is stenciled. Slam! This may be why you signed a lengthy liability release. There is probably less paperwork in buying a gun.

In-line skates look just slightly less dangerous than a gun. If you’ve ever ice-skated, in-line skates will give you a homey feeling. They are stiff and bulky like ski boots.

The wheels--three, four and sometimes more--are strung out in a single-file line down the middle of the skate, running from heel to toe like cyclists in a pace line. Unfortunately, in-line is the least appropriate description for the way you’ll skate.

Proving that point, you stand, perform an unsightly wobble and stumble to the parking lot, groping every immovable object in your path. In the parking lot, there is nothing to cling to. You look for your wife. She blithely skates toward you, already confident enough to give advice.

“It’s just like ice skating,” she trills, gliding smartly past, an astute arm’s-length away. “Haven’t you ever ice-skated before?”

She doesn’t like wearing the knee pads. They itch. She wants to take them off. You’d sooner part with your firstborn. Within 30 minutes, she will be skating backward, singing and saying cute things like, “Watch me on this ramp.”

Actually, the rudiments of in-line skating prove fairly easy. Perhaps this is why so many grown-ups do it. Also, purveyors of in-line skates highlight skating’s physical benefits, cardiovascular improvements and, oh right, slim legs and tight buns. Companies know which buttons to press.

After 10 minutes, you leave the coddling confines of the parking lot for the bike path, reasoning that the human sea of a Sunday afternoon will provide the adrenal thrill essential to any worthy experience. Also your wife has already skated off.

Like any good debutante, you keep your knees together and maintain good form. Rolling over the rough asphalt surface produces an odd tingling sensation in your shins and calves. That and the fact that your friend at the rental shop cinched your skates tighter than Trump’s wallet combine to produce an effect similar to Novocain. This is not all bad.

Your upper body shows no signs of numbness. When you lose your balance, you jerk straight up and fling your arms skyward in an impromptu wave.

Californians are a fairly unflappable bunch, but this sort of erratic behavior gains you much respect and, more important, a wide berth.

Some people smile. Others offer helpful advice: “Go faster.” “You’re going to fall.”

At one point, you find yourself on a collision course with a BMXer, one of those preteen grommets who launches his bike off retaining walls and backs away from no one. He sees you. His eyes bug wide. He veers off into some shrubbery.

As time wends on, you begin to approach if not fluidity, at least controlled forward progress. There is a charm in easy movement. You lay waste to pigeon-chested, pinch-faced joggers, push casually past lurching surreys, propelled by frantically pedaling families. You learn to distinguish between surfaces good (sidewalks, newly paved asphalt) and bad (cobblestone, sand, railroad ties).

Unfortunately, you’re not quite so quick at learning how to avoid them. In theory, stopping on in-line skates is accomplished by dragging a plastic brake on the heel of the skate. In practice, this maneuver is foreign to the human instinct for survival.

Instead, you scan ahead, set your coordinates on some fixed object, then grab frantically as you whip past. Poles, fences and concrete benches are good. Newly planted trees are not so hot.

A short skate from the bike path, you discover skater’s nirvana, a parking lot so smooth it appears to have been lain with ink. Your wife seizes the moment and demonstrates how she has learned to skate through turns. Leaning gracefully, nimbly crossing her skates, she powers through each bend.

Emboldened by this sordid display of bald-faced one-upmanship, you rise to the challenge. There is a small dip, little more than an oversized speed bump actually, but in your world, which has been flat to this point, it drops away like the cliffs of Dover. You spin around the parking lot, gathering steam. The pavement drops away. You bring your knees together, lean forward like someone with a bad stomach cramp and rush forward.

To your right there is a sign. In a fit of bravado, you lift your eyes from the pavement and read it just before it flashes past. “Slow. Children at Play.”

Yaaaaaaaaaaa.

* THE PREMISE

There are plenty of things you have never tried. Fun things, dangerous things, character-building things. The Reluctant Novice tries them for you and reports the results. After all, the Novice gets paid to do them--and has no choice in the matter. If you want to tell the Novice where to go, please call us at 658-5547. If we use your idea, we’ll send you a present.