But It was all worth it, as I played on a pond (lake, really, since ponds are never 40-something acres) today.
See, that's the thing hockey has over all other sports. In basketball, the variation is hardwood vs clay court, which is a distinction that can be made any time. No baseball player has ever said "hell yeah, let's play some baseball in the mud!". Actually, baseball players don't come out if it drizzles, so mud is right out.
Football probably comes the closest. We used to play a ton of hockey at the park below my house (see past posts for more on that park), but when it was too snowy to skate (ironic, huh?), we tended to pull out the football and beat the hell out of each other for a few hours. Snow football is great.
But there's something great about pond hockey.
Usually, I'm iffy on if I want to play or not, because honestly, I suck. I'm really, really bad. And I worry that everyone else on the ice is thinking "man, that kid sucks, and is really, really bad". But when my friend said last night that he was playing on Canonsburg Lake today and wanted to know if anybody was in, I was all for it.
When the ice is really choppy, the air is cold as hell, and the bench is a long, long way away, nobody really cares if you suck, because everyone sucks.
Except Bryan, who was quite good, thus making him the Dick Of The Day.
I'm not going to go into some gross, sloppy, sticky, awful, unimaginative soliloquy about "the good ol' days on the pond, when we'd play for hours until Ma would tell us to come inside for dinner". But I'll just say that even if you don't play hockey, never played hockey, but have some skates hanging around, give it a shot. You could do a lot worse than an afternoon on a pond.
I'll probably still be the worst person on the ice.
