Standing on 1/8th of an Inch

  The sheen of a sharpened skate blade reflects the sunlight onto the wall next to my dust covered nightstand. Before he left, my father told me that I learned to skate before I learned to walk. I'll take his word for it, but I can never remember learning either. I suppose retrospectively gliding across the ice was not unique, but I felt like a lone Shakespeare actor dancing eloquently after the other players have gone.  When I was a young boy I used to come home from school in the dead of winter and toss my bag carelessly into the snow before I laced my skates and soared around the ice. I can still hear my skates etching through the ice, carving a piece of modern art that only the birds could see. Temperature was never a factor and neither was snow. Snow only meant how much time I had to wait before I could skate, temperature only obstructed me from removing my sweat soaked t-shirt.
  Skating and hockey are two separate entities that only mingle by their mere surface. Skating is elegant, hockey is barbaric. When traveling faster than any land ridden mortal, adding a flying disc that can exceed any ball may seem ridiculous to some, stupid to others. I was not the elegant dancer of the pond when I played with ten other dancers. We devolved into competing animals battling for town reputation like cavemen for women. For many the taste of blood meant jeopardy, but for hockey players the taste meant you were doing something right, you were playing. The atmosphere of the hockey rink is intoxicating: the noise from the overzealous parents jockeying for their children's success like betters at the Kentucky Derby; the glow of the red light when the puck crosses the goal line and the jeers and screams of joy that follow; and the anguish of defeat as we came off the ice, only to walk like the mortals that came to watch us compete.
   Those years are gone now and I no longer battle in the Colosseum of ice. The glory of victory now comes in academic success but the praise is short lived and unfulfilled. The taste of blood is typically subsequent of accidents and dentist trips. My body aches from years of torn ligaments, ripped cartilage, and broken bones. In the early days of my youth I yearned for that next goal, the next play, the next shift, the next chance to stand on 1/8th of an inch. But now I sit here and reminisce of the days that I was the arctic gladiator. Starring at my skates, waiting for cold, so I can once again stand on 1/8th of an inch and dance across the ice as the players leave the stage.