Making like a hockey player, and getting the puck outta here...

This morning, a new chapter began in the history of all things Andy. A momentous occasion that surely will shape the outcome of the rest of my life. How many ages hence shall this my lofty scene be reminisced over in years unborn, and living situations yet unknown! Yep. I played hockey. I hit the ice and thundered across it as hard as I could. I chased the puck. I defended my goal valiantly. I ran into walls for no reason. In other words:

I sucked. Bigtime.

But I made an ass of myself with every ounce of moxie I had, and FUCK was it fun! And I really don't think I did too shabby for somebody who's never been on the ice any other time than public skating. Joking aside, I'm totally satisfied with my performance, given the intimidation factor of playing against a few people who are/were AAA and AA semi-pro players.

So I hit the ice for warm up, and I've only in my life ever been out there for public skating, in great big circles around the rink. So it almost felt kinky zigzagging randomly across it chanting to myself "Breakin' the law! Breakin' the law!" A guy says, "Hey, grab a puck!", so I do, and have one floppy-assed awkward time of trying to skate and handle that damned puck while slapshots are whizzing past my head. Yeah, I know I'm being sized up, and my team members have to be shaking their heads going "Good god, who is this clown?"

See, when you're public skating, you have to think only one-dimensionally: forward. You skate forward, in a big oval that follows the rink. But here, you have to think two dimensionally. There's all this lateral space that's opened up that you have to be aware of, and ready to move into. Yeah, that one kinda threw me for a loop.

Honestly, the guys were very supportive, and one was kind of sergeantly in his advice to me, which I appreciated (heretofore known as "Sarge"). I sat out a few shifts (turns on the ice), but Sarge said "You're up! Defense!" I spent my first shift skating my freakin ass off chasing the puck too much. After a couple of minutes I skated back to the box and gasped "defense..."

So I'm on the bench heaving to catch my breath and gather my thoughts. One guy looks over at me and says "Whadda ya think?" I beamed back an ear to ear grin and said "Fucking awesome!"

The next shift I went out, and Sarge was my fellow defender. Fortunately for my clueless butt, he kept barking orders at me: "See that guy? Cover him!", "You! Get over on that side!", "Get out of the goalie's way!" I appreciated the straightforward coaching/direction very much.

For my third shift I lasted only about a minute before getting exhausted, and as I skated back to the box, Sarge grinned at me. "Already?" he teased as he hopped over the wall to replace me. My back muscles had really begun to tense up, and I spent most of the rest of the game on the bench letting them relax as I manned the door.

See, I noticed the other defenders didn't chase the puck so much, they just kinda hung out and let the action come to them. So in the last few minutes of the game, I jumped out on a shift change and took that approach. To my amazement, it actually worked. Instead of trying to jump in the fracas, I looked more like this:



And on my final shift of the game, I actually did two productive things: I blocked one shot, and then I chased down a stray puck shot into our zone and I swatted it away. Let me tell you, it's a weird and unnatural emotional mix of both piss-your-pants dread, and "Bring it, motherfucker", to stare down a guy who's thundering toward you trying to fire a chunk of solid vulcanized rubber at the area directly behind you.

So all in all, I had a fantastic time. And for once in lord knows how long, I could say that I felt like a million dollars. As I had anticipated, necessity truly was the mother of invention, and I pulled skating maneuvers out there I never knew I could.

Sometimes it's nice to discover I can still surprise myself.