Tick-tock, tick-tock......

   My knees hurt and my pride hurts. My knees hurt a little more than my pride, which is generally pretty resilient. For that matter, my knees heal up pretty fast, too.

The sport I`ve been playing for almost 45 years

   But it feels kind of different these days, this playing ball hockey a couple of times a week. I used to enjoy it, it didn't seem to matter what kind of week I might have had. Nowadays, though, I don't greatly look forward to heading to the rink and the prospect of staying home with the wife seems infinitely more preferable. Today, driving home from work, I was thinking to myself "thank god there's no ball hockey tonight" and was struck by the newness of this feeling.
   I played twice this week, once as a goalie and once as a forward. We lost both games and have lost every game so far this season. We are a new team with a bunch of guys who've never played before and this quite often happens with new teams. No big deal really, I've played on teams like this before and they always get better. I've played on teams like this before that then went on to win championships. But now I'm tired of the whole process.
   The game I played goal in was the most lopsided one in terms of score I've ever experienced. The score was 15-2 and I actually played pretty well. The other team was the first-place team and they were all over us. Quite often I would make the first and sometimes even second save but then the ball would still be there and because the other team was everywhere the ball would end up in the net.

Me, playing goal. Can`t see the ball, assuming I stopped the shot....

   Regardless of how I might have played, I still have that 15 goals hanging over me. At the end of that game, one of the guys from the other team came up to me and said that they`d been talking about me in a complimentary way on the opposing bench. I guess they were impressed that an almost 60-year-old guy was still hanging in there and playing. This did not provide a lot of solace. Whatever pride I`ve had around playing with the youngsters depended a lot on fitting in with the youngsters. On the wrong end of a 15-2 score and all of the sudden you don`t fit in quite as well anymore.
   Of course, all of this could change by this time next week. My knees`ll feel better and my pride will have had a little extra time to heal. We might win a game. We might play in some close games. I might get a shutout (giggle). I play forward as well and I might get a goal. At this point in my life it wouldn`t take much one way or the other to either keep me playing or hang up the pads for good.