Sunday, March 13, 2011

Ice Dreams

Have I mentioned I picked up a nasty hockey watching habit during this year's bar study? Yeah, I did.

I'm currently curled up on the couch watching a hockey game that I know the results of, that ended several hours ago and I don't even care. It is beyond awesome. 

I know this is useless to be upset about and really how could anyone know that at my rapidly advancing age I would fall so thoroughly in love with hockey but damn do I wish my parents had known to channel my youthful angst and aggression into this sport. There's no way anyone could have known to. There was no inkling of it anywhere in my growing up. There might have been when I suddenly and quite completely switched allegiance from baseball to football as a college freshman, enjoying the pure adrenaline and speed of football over baseball, but really...it probably took this exact and precise moment in time and the confluence of events that occurred to get me here. So here I am. In love.

(I am not, and have never been, athletic. I am not from the driven kind of family where we fight for success, which translates into us not being great athletes. My parents were/are young and got divorced when I was young, so the thought of them spending hours driving us to any kind of practices anywhere or investing money in our playing habits is laughable. My wish for a different kind of youth is beyond moot.) (Also: SF didn't even have a rink most of the time I was growing up. I know that's insane to imagine, a major city without an ice rink, but it's true.)

Still. I wish... (I haven't cried at this ad or watched it about a dozen times. Nope. Not at all.)

I can't get enough of it though. I find it magical, the way they glide down the ice. I could watch Ovie skate all day. (When he's on, he is very, very on.) The way it's all so fast and seemingly effortless. The way the players skate backwards on the ice when on defense. The classic hockey stop. The slashing at the puck with the stick and crashing the net. I love learning the different team histories and about the players and who has a rivalry with who and why. I love hockey nicknames. I ask bartenders/restaurants to change the TV no matter where I go now so I can watch a game/highlights. (It helps that it's currently just spring training and basketball. Not all 20 TVs in an establishment need to be turned to ESPN.) I want to absorb every last second of it. I want to buy jerseys and go to games and cheer as loud as possible. Do you know that moment when something and everything suddenly makes total and complete sense? What is that? Kismet? That's how I quite suddenly and all at once feel about hockey.

But it's more than that too. Because, as opposed to the way I know I can't play football and have only the mildest interest in throwing a baseball around, I want very desperately to skate and to eventually learn how to play. I will break my ankle or wrist. I have almost no doubt about this. See above where I'm not athletic? Yeah. I also lack any semblance of grace. But I want this. It feels like a really bizarre thing to want, to be able to glide down the ice and not fall over and to hopefully one day get proficient at it. For now, since ice is hard to come by in Northern California, I'm going to figure out where the pair of rollerblades I know I had at one point are and drag them out, head down the street to the school playground and start there.

This should be amusing...

I also hope at some point it becomes really really awesome. 

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