In my teen years leading up to the Olympics, I loved having the excuse to skip out on parties because of skating. Partying wasnt my thing anyway. Mostly I hung out with other skaters. We were all buddies, so its not like I missed out on socializing. I was really enjoying myself.

My mother stopped working when she had my brother. She was a full time mom until I started getting heavily into ice skating lessons, and it got to the point where they really needed my mom to earn an income.

It's different today than it was then. In those days we were strictly amateurs. If I had wanted to stay in for the '80 Olympics, my parents couldn't have afforded it.

I think I dreamed about competing at the Olympics, maybe hoping to win a gold medal. Not that I ever thought that I would, but I dreamed about it.

In my teen years leading up to the Olympics, I loved having the excuse to skip out on parties because of skating. Partying wasnt my thing anyway. Mostly I hung out with other skaters. We were all buddies, so its not like I missed out on socializing. I was really enjoying myself.

In group lesson number six I think we learned how to turn backwards and then just kind of wiggle. That wasn't really skating backward, but I guess I was going in the right direction.

I wanted to learn how to skate backwards and they wouldn't help me and they went off and left me on my own.