Yesterday was my first hockey game of the year and it sure got off to an interesting start. I made my usual late arrival at the arena and started to get dressed. As I was changing, I noticed that I had forgot to bring my hockey pants. (These heavily padded pants are quite essential to the game, especially if you happen to take a hockey puck shot off the ass, which seems to happen to me a little too often. Of course, my excuse is that since I play defense I'm supposed to get in the way of the puck!) One guy on my team had a spare pair of pants, but there was absolutely no possible way that I would have fit into those. I need my pants to be... uh, "roomie." (Okay, let's just say that I require size triple-extra fat-ass.) Anyway, I live 15 minutes away from the arena but I had no other choice but to drive home to obtain my pants. I basically set the land speed record during the drive, and I got back to the arena, put on the rest of my equipment, and got to the ice about eight minutes into the game. Since the game was already in progress, I was immediately sent into action to substitute for the guy that was covering for me. Yikes, that felt so weird to get to the rink for the first time of the season, step out onto the ice, and go directly into a playing situation with no warm up or anything. But it actually worked better than I would have imagined. After spending all of about six seconds remembering how to skate, it all came back to me and I was able to get into gear. I have to admit that we ended up losing the game, but it was only a scrimmage anyway so it really was no big deal. The league starts in November, so as long as we can get things rolling by then, we should be alright. And I don't think that I'll be forgetting to bring my pants to any more games this year. I've totally learned my lesson!