Sports!

Growing up, it was a rule in my family that my brothers and I had to play a sport two seasons out of every year. It couldn’t be just anything—it had to be a team sport, and nothing that required a lot of expensive equipment. That meant softball for me, baseball for my brothers, and soccer. I’m not sure how my brothers felt about it, but I remember doing a lot of eye rolling and staging angst-ridden protests. It was hard to drag me away from the quiet comfort of a couch and a book. Digging me out was like pulling a tick, but once I was out, I was fine. I hardly remembered what I had made such a fuss about. And so it went, every week, for thirteen years.

My poor parents.

Team sports wasn’t an arbitrary requirement. My parents felt that being on a team would help us learn to communicate with others, pull together as one, and get some exercise. Left to my own devices, I probably would have read books, watched tv, and only talked to a handful of people, so sports weren’t a horrible idea. Don’t get me wrong. My parents are proud of how much I read and how close my brothers and I still are with each other; this was just a part of their plan to raise well-rounded kids.

Once I became an adult—I’ve been an adult for a long time, actually—sports were relegated to something I watched other people do.

Seemed a shame.

And then, seemingly out of the blue, my brothers and my dad took up ice hockey. They found adult leagues, learned to skate, and jumped in. They invited me to try it as well, and I did. I bought secondhand-and-yet-somehow-still-ludicrously-expensive gear. I learned to skate. I joined the casual coed stick-and-puck practices. I even got a concussion.

Last week, twenty-odd years after leaving team sports, I played in my first hockey game. I wasn’t good. I had only a rough idea of what I was supposed to do. I understood I should get the puck into the other goal—no, not that one, the other one. I knew about defense. It was the details I hadn’t worked out. The referees kindly (and frequently) pointed out where I should stand. Teammates gently explained the offsides rule. I’m still not clear on that one.

The thing is, I didn’t hate it. Quite the opposite, in fact. It was exhilarating.

I’m an idiot on the ice. I say things like, “Ooh, I like your socks,” to the opposing team. I make backup beeps to myself when I realize I’m in the wrong spot. I got the puck away from another girl—it’s a women’s league, by the way—and emitted a kind of whacky chuckle. I lost the puck immediately and could not have been happier.

My team lost, and we all barely noticed. The final buzzer sounded, and we threw our hands in the air, rushed to our goalie and congratulated each other on a good game. We fist-bumped the other team, and then it was like we weren’t on opposing sides anymore. We took back and returned borrowed gear, called out good plays, and joked with the referees.

Halfway through the game, a teammate had told me, “We’re all here to have fun.”

No lie.