Ice Skating on the Hudson Club

It’s a well-known fact that for decades the Hudson River has been a repository for all kinds of waste: slimes, radioactive material, dead mobsters, and who-knows-what else. And yet, when it freezes overnight, a sophomore decides to start an ice skating club, because what other thought could one have upon seeing a frozen river other than, “Aha! An ice skating rink!”?

You might be wondering who would come up with the mad idea of an ice skating club in the first place. And on the HUDSON? Well, the answer is that it’s someone who’s trying to make a last-ditch effort at being able to put “started a club” on their college resume. You may also be thinking that nobody’s crazy enough to join such a club… but you’d be wrong.

Three days passed before the first incident occurred. A handful of students on ice skates flailing down the hallways, screaming as though their lives depended on it, brought attention to the situation. They had seen something in the Hudson. The Great Principal himself decided to check out what exactly they had seen, and promptly proceeded to lock himself in his office for the rest of the month. “It was horrible,” one student commented, “like nothing you’ve ever seen before.”

When the terrifying object was finally removed from the ice, nobody knew what to do with the horrid thing: a hideous fur cape with the word “Stuyvesant” embossed on it in an awful neon-orange color—obviously a gym uniform from ancient times. It was too big to fit in a trash can, and they certainly weren’t going to carry it around in public, so the school hung it on the wall instead. Yes, it was the most disturbing thing anyone had ever seen, but the club needed a mascot!

A few days later, the ice skating club was at it again. They had been skating around, doing arabesques and triple axels and such, when suddenly they came face-to-face with Dr. Markova’s Polar Bear gym class, who were practicing running on ice with bare feet. In a competition for who would claim the Hudson, the two clubs tried curling (and they both failed terribly).

But that couldn’t deter the ice skating club; this was a resilient bunch! Why should they stop? Certainly not because of a fight with Markova and a wounded ego! So, soon afterward, the group was back on the ice, though the club had shrunk a good deal since the last meeting. They confidently skated around, doing arabesques and triple axels over the dangerously thin ice. And, of course, the inevitable happened: one of the freshmen, in an attempt to do a quad-axel, fell through the ice. The rest of the ice skaters frantically searched for their missing member, who had mysteriously disappeared off the face of the Hudson. Finally, after two hours of fishing out old volleyballs and ancient lab packets, they dragged out the frozen freshman, who was mysteriously stained green.

The disgruntled student eventually thawed, though they were a bit peeved about being permanently stained green (the color wouldn’t wash off even after 10 bleach baths). And in the face of five different lawsuits, the ice skating club finally admitted defeat and disbanded. Though this decision wasn’t really up to them, since there most definitely already was a law that prohibited skating on the Hudson.

“Everyone knew the club wouldn’t work,” the faculty advisor of the ice skating club said. “I mean, us teachers made bets on when they would give up… I lost $20.” The sophomore that started it all was also asked to comment, and she said, “What happened on the Hudson stays on the Hudson. Also, I’m not going to be quoted for a Humor article.”

When the ice finally melted, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. To mark the occasion, the school joined together to tear the hideous fur cape from the wall, tie it to a boulder, and throw it in the Hudson. No trace of the ice skating club remained, and it was, for the most part, forgotten entirely. But, as we all know, history repeats itself. And the swim team is getting too big to fit in the swimming pool…