This morning on FirstNews, I did the weather from the Crown Center Ice Terrace in honor of the opening of their skating...and holiday...season. It is the scene of one of the more interesting events in my checkered broadcast career.

Many years ago...I didn't have any gray hair, yet...I was filling in on the 5:00 p.m. news for Bryan Busby and, being a beautiful January day, the producer of the newscast, sent me down to the rink to do the weather. Being several bricks short of a load, I decided to do the live-shot on skates. Just as I opened my mouth to start the forecast, a little kid slid into me and knocked me on my best side. As I collapsed, I knocked down another kid standing next to me. It is always the innocent bystanders that get the worst of it. I heard the anchor-people, Dave Eckert and Kelly Eckerman, laughing heartily as I hit the ice. It was the first time I had fallen completely on my kiester doing the weather...well, literally speaking. Figuratively would be another matter.

Well, we showed that tape for the rest of the week. Toward the end of my fill-in stint, the "assailant's" mother called to say the boy felt awful and that it had just been an accident. We invited him on air and gave him some presents. Frankly, everyone in the newsroom wanted to shake his hand for doing something they'd often longed to do themselves. Knock me on my fanny.

After the fact, one of my co-workers, said, after watching the tape many times, that he was convinced the errant skater had taken me down on purpose. This Oliver Stone of KMBC, was sure I had been a target. He then started to implicate Fidel Castro, LBJ, the CIA and the cast of Happy Days. But, the initial nugget of his premise started to seem plausible. Over the years, we've shown this little clip fairly often...including about 400 times this morning. Most people who see it seem to think the "accident"wasn't really accidental.

Last year, when we showed the clip, a viewer called to say that the boy who knocked me down is now studing orthopedics at KU Med Center. I hope that is true. Maybe he got his inspiration after hearing my bones creak and crunch as I hit the rink. Or, maybe he was thinking ahead to his career and figured, by leveling me, he could one day have a new patient with problems incurred in an unfortunate skating accident.

That brings us back to this morning. Again, not having learned my lesson, I did most of the show standing on the ice, in skates. I didn't really move much. I mostly stood. When I did attempt to slide it was like the Tim Conway "World's Oldest..." character on the Carol Burnett show. As the morning wore on, more and more good skaters arrived and I started to watch their eyes carefully. Wondering...just wondering...if that "boy" was lurking out there...waiting for an opportunity to send me to the frozen mat, again. Of course, now he would be a young man and I am a middle-aged one, so the collision would've possibly had consequences beyond a bruised bum. Still, I kept a wary eye on the circling crowd.

Now, our daughter is a great skater but she had other plans at 2:00 a.m., like sleeping. Our second oldest son is a good skater, too, but he would only accompany me if it meant getting out of school for the day; not a deal I was willing to make. So, that left it to me, to be on skates. The most embarrassing part of it all, is being from Wisconsin, growing up around a lake, and not being able to skate. What I really needed this morning was a pair of those double-bladed skates like I used when I was very little. I wonder if they come in adult sizes?