There are some activities that are just easier for kids. Like getting up from the ground. Or rolling down a hill and liking it. Kids hate to get drunk but love to get dizzy. Adults tend to have opposite tastes about those.

Most kids have no trouble keeping a Hula Hoop up. Adults have to struggle for the skill, even those with solid memories of excelling at the activity when young.

Melanie was a natural at the balancing act. She turned nine years old the year after Wham-O started marketing the device, and her body was at prime development for spinning a plastic ring around it. Her first hoop was blue.

She’d take the toy out onto the curved driveway to practice. Standing with her feet planted a shoulder-span apart, Melanie would start the hoop spinning clockwise about her waist. She rocked her hips around and the blue hoop flew, steadily maintaining its parallel position above the concrete-covered earth. Melanie felt like she could continue the motion endlessly.

Her parents noted her skill. Her brother tried to outlast her at it but failed. Her father praised her coordination. Melanie’s father was an affectionate man who appreciated his first-born’s intelligence but he hadn’t had many occasions then to compliment her about physical feats, so she treasured his approval. At first it made her try to be better at hooping. She soon realized that trying to be better at it actually slowed her down; she could spin longer if she let her body run the show instead of her head.

Her across-the-street neighbor wasn’t as good at hooping as Melanie was. Linda looked prettier at the activity, but Linda always looked prettier. Linda was two years older than Melanie and an archetype of cute girlness. She even managed to look good as the hoop circled toward her knees and her face reflected cute dismay. Everyone told Linda it didn’t matter when her red hoop clattered around her feet.

Shelly and Alice were pretty good at the game. They had yellow hoops and a way of spinning in sync with one another. But they couldn’t go as long as Melanie could.

It was a Thursday in late May when Melanie impressed even herself. She started hooping soon after she got home from school, and she kept that plastic ring rotating around her waist almost all afternoon. It was nearly dinner time when Shelly and Alice came by on their way home from the playground; they whooped at Melanie, startled her a bit, and that’s when the hoop hit her hip wrong and she didn’t correct for it, and the toy wobbled to the ground.

“Wow,” she said then. “If you guys hadn’t wrecked that I could have gone on forever. I just did the Hula Hoop a million times.”

“You did not,” Alice replied.

“Did too.”

“Not,” barked Shelly.

“Yes I did. You’re just jealous.”

Shelly and Alice looked at each other, turned eyes toward Melanie again, shot glances at the blue hoop and back to Melanie’s face, and shrugged.

“Wanna come with us to my place?”

“Nah. It’s almost dinner time. I have to stay here.”