o yea, i remember when you asked about what we wanted to be when we were a child in sumi server 2
i had fantasies of being a figure skater when i was young
there was this offer at a nearby shopping mall, you could buy a day pass for the ice rink and go in and out freely, so if you were hungry you could go have lunch or dinner then continue
and because i had nothing to do i would sometimes hang out at the mall while my mom went to buy the groceries
actual lessons at the ice rink were really expensive, it's a rich man's sport, the rate goes by the half-hour, so it was like $30 to $40 USD per half-hour, and skates go for like $500-800 USD
so i tried to learn from youtube (lol) and made a surprising amount of progress, i managed to learn all the 1x jumps, how to do backward, forward crossovers, how to do the sit and stand spins
most of the kids who had lessons were super pampered, private school kids; they were doing it as an extracurricular activity so they got permission to leave school at like 1-2 PM and have 4-5 hours long lessons, and the coaches would berate them if they didn't do well, the environment was super stressful, i saw so many breakdowns
some of the coaches in the rink even came to me and asked me if i was interested in getting formal coaching but i said nah
there was one girl who i observed who was super quiet, and who went on to the national team and got top 5 or 6 in an ISU competition, sometimes i wonder what became of her