The Old Kids, none under 60, lace up, warm up and hit the ice.

One has lost most of a lung to cancer. One suffers from rheumatoid arthritis. One had a heart attack five years ago.

Here they are at Highland Ice Arena in Shoreline, spinning, dancing, doing careful little jumps, teasing one another when they fall, teasing one another even when they don't.

It could be a scene from "Cocoon III."

"It's the most fun way I know of getting exercise," says Tom O'Brien, 63, who took up skating at Highland four years ago after a heart attack, slowly reviving the smooth moves from his ice-dancing days three decades earlier.

Like increasing numbers of adult Americans rediscovering skating, the Old Kids come here for the exercise.

They stay for the multigenerational camaraderie, the challenge of teaching old muscles new tricks and the ageless zen of skating -- the glide, the peace, the inner stillness that comes from white, near-frictionless flight.

"It is such an existential feeling," says Gloria Reinman, president of the Seattle Skating Club. She started skating at age 27. She's 61. "It has saved me megabucks in therapy."

On any given day, the ranks at rinks can range from ages 2 to 80, the skill levels from klutz to lutz. Attendance jumps during Olympic Winter Games.

"It's always heaviest in Olympic years," says Melva Ohlemeier, who works the front desk at Highland and serves as "mother" to the regulars, offering advice and hugs as needed. It is Ohlemeier who dubbed the seniors the Old Kids.

"They are all my kids," she says. 

The family-owned and -operated arena, opened in 1962, is one of several in the Seattle-Tacoma area that rotate public and competitive training skates, with a Zamboni ice-making machine laying fresh slicks between sessions. The Highland rental shop is stocked with an estimated 2,400 pairs of rental skates: figure skates and hockey skates. There are two rinks, abundant glass viewing windows and a heated lobby.

The lobby's a warm, friendly room of ever-changing faces and non-stop skate talk. Most frequent topics are "The Games" and, always, Tonya. 

"My husband said, 'Remember, if things don't go well with your program, just cry and say your lace broke,'" one adult competition skater tells another before hitting the ice.

Young competitors at the rink dream of gold. 

During the evening, visions of Wayne Gretzky rule the ice, as the lobby fills with Hockey Dads. They talk fishing and hunting and National Hockey League standings as they watch their little hotshots shoot across the ice like low-flying aircraft, whacking sticks and passing pucks.

During the day, visions of Kristi Yamaguchi and Michelle Kwan spin across the ice. The lobby fills with Skate Moms discussing chiffon and Lycra, boots and blades, coaches and choreography, figure-skating competitions and emptying pocketbooks.

"We spend between $700 and $900 a month on skating," says Karen Smith, whose 11-year-old, Dominique, dreams of being in the 2002 Olympics.

The family moved to Mountlake Terrace to be closer to the rink, and Smith began home-schooling her daughter to accommodate the intense schedule. She sews her daughter's costumes, watches her practice two to three hours, six times a week, takes her to ballet lessons and workout sessions.

Says Mom: "She wrote in her journal: 'Skating is my life. Look out, Olympics, here I come.'”

Many young dreams crash on ice, to be revived in adulthood. Shelly Lane, a 37-year-old Seattle antique dealer, is one of the adult competitors who abandoned ice skating in her teen years, and returned two decades later. 

She arrives at Highland early every morning -- doors open at 6 a.m. for free-style sessions. She works hard, taking her share of the bum-thudding tumbles that signal skaters at work. 

"Difficult manoeuvres make you fall until you learn them," says Lane.

On the ice, she spins so hard her face becomes a blurred "O," her ponytail a perpendicular handle, her tiny skirt a halo around her middle. Skating, she says, is an addiction.

"If you ask any serious skater, they'll say they can't imagine life without it."

Some fumbling skaters during public sessions can't imagine life with it. 

There are the toddlers in crash helmets, hanging onto Mom's shirt. "Let go! We're both going to fall," warns a mom moving tentatively across the ice. 

There are children white-knuckling the railings, ankles flopped in, eyes glued to the ice. "It's so slippery!" says Heather Miller, 9, one of the many home-schooled children who use the rink for physical education class. 

There are first-time adults on their backs, legs flailing in the air like beetles turned upside down. 

And there are the newborn Old Kids. 

Tom O'Brien glides past the public stragglers, long legs stroking side-to-side, hand on hip, ears plugged into a headset to drown out any repugnant rock 'n' roll that may blare over the sound system. He prefers a good waltz. 

Dark and dashing, he moves dreamily past clumps of kids the elders jokingly call "ice lice," past pre-adolescent girls attempting their first backward skate, past the pint-size Olympic hopefuls in "Nordy" outfits practicing acrobatic jumps in the center with their coaches, their parents tracking every move from the sideline, lips quivering in the cold. 

The 63-year-old skates, and he smiles the Zen smile. 

Four years ago, after his heart attack, he couldn't skate more than 15 minutes. Now he's good for two hours -- and who knows how many years. 

"My doctor is in his 30s," he says. "He says I am in better shape than he is."