“It’s very nice holding your hands,” I said to a man I’d just met.

When you learn to ice skate at your local shopping centre’s outdoor pop-up skate rink, apparently it unlocks a part of your brain that says embarrassing things.

Gabe, the man who owned the hands, is usually an ice hockey goalie, but today, he’s the safety marshall at Winter Wonderland’s small rink. He’d offered his hands to help me step on to the rink’s synthetic, ice-like surface, and I, so startled by the intimacy, couldn’t help but comment on it as if I were suddenly on page 17 of a romance novel.

But this was no time for matters of the heart. I had heavy, rented skates on, and it was time to respect the sanctity of the rented footwear’s purpose: to skate a mile in someone else’s shoes. Or at least a few metres.

While the ice was not real, my hesitation was. I’d done no substantial exercise since the start of Covid, and in the spirit of visiting a Winter Wonderland, wore a very large jacket that made me top-heavy and even more unbalanced than usual.

Gabe’s instructions were easy to follow and execute … until they weren’t.

“Bend your knees and get down low. Now, put your feet in a V-shape,” he said.

“Then push your left foot away like you’re on a scooter. And drag your right foot.”

“Push and drag,” I said out loud, hoping that saying the verbs would better help my feet carry out the actions. “Push and drag,” I repeated as I scraped my way gingerly across the non-ice surface.

Before long, I was making my way across the rink. Was it skating? No. Was it a kind of movement that had its own grace? Also no. It was a kind of ice … walking.

When I showed signs of wobbling, Gabe introduced me to a beginner’s best friend, the wall, which doesn’t mind if you clutch at it while you ice walk.

Eventually, I arrived at the far side of the rink. A distance that had taken me minutes to traverse would’ve taken probably 20 seconds to walk, but I was breathless from the effort of staying upright.

“Gabe,” I said. “There’s just one problem. I’m here now,” I gestured to the corner of the rink I was hovering in unsteadily. “But my things … are over there.” I pointed to the other side of the rink, an area I’d previously underestimated for its size before it required me to “skate” across it.

“My life … is over there.” I looked at Gabe, not wanting to say it out loud: how was I going to push and drag all the way back to the other side in order to exit the rink? I was exhausted and my centre of gravity was threatening to collapse at any moment. Why did people do this? Was there not enough uncertainty in everyday life that we had to bring a perilous travelling surface and big metal-bladed shoes into our days?

“I’ve got it,” said Gabe. And then in words that were on the one hand, kind, and also on the other hand, the precursor to a devastating abandonment, he said, “stay here”. And then he skated away. Like, properly skated. His feet gliding left and right with ease, his body upright and relaxed, his voice silent from not having to guide his feet.

He stepped off the rink. And returned with a wooden whale, the length of its body on the ice and its tail curled up to the height of a small child, where it conveniently ended in a pair of sturdy handles.

Strangely, I’d been in this situation before. My last attempt to ice skate a few years ago had ended with me having to rent a wooden penguin to push around the rink because I simply could not skate. Instead, along with the bundled up six-year-olds on the rink, I shuffled and pushed the cartoonish penguin along as if performing in a budget version of Happy Feet on Ice.

“Whale, whale, whale … what have we here?” I said, stalling for time, delaying the inevitable moment I would once again have to hold on for dear life to a skating aid designed for children as I shuffled my way through people happily whizzing their way around the rink sans support animal.

“Hop on,” said Gabe.

“Sorry, what?” I said.

“You can sit on the whale,” he said, holding on to the whale’s tail.

I guessed that one could sit on the whale, even if it wasn’t intended for adults. But could I lift my leg with the weight of the ice skate on my foot in order to hop on? Without falling? Just. And in that moment I sat down, it was the biggest amount of human-on-whale action since Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick.

Before I had time to worry about the prospect of falling off the whale because I have no core strength, Gabe began to push.

“Wahhhhhhhhh,” I yelped as we flew across the rink, my legs akimbo, arms out wide, the rhythmic scrape scrape scrape of Gabe’s skates in contrast to my wobbly, sustained wailing.

Within seconds, we were back at the entry to the rink where it all began.

Disembarking the whale-wind experience, I thanked Gabe for the lesson and for returning me closer to my normal life back on land.

“Thanks so much for the ride,” I said. “I really didn’t expect to be riding a whale today.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. “You should try ice hockey now that you’ve learned to skate.”

I don’t think more generous words have ever been spoken.

• Jennifer Wong is a writer, comedian, and presenter of Chopsticks or Fork? on ABC iview