I once had a very strange and informative discussion with a Canadian that revealed a lot about cultural differences and religion (or maybe it was sports; it’s hard to tell the difference sometimes).

For reasons I don’t remember, we were discussing the fact that I had once owned a pair of ice skates. He thought it funny that I’d owned what I guess are called “Tippy Toe” skates when I should have had hockey skates. (I don’t know if this is true or not and, quite frankly, don’t care. It’s just hockey and figure skating, after all.) I kept trying to point out that wearing hockey skates, at least where I grew up, would be the equivalent of wearing football cleats to run a marathon but he kept accusing me of being Johnny Weir.

I put it all down to cultural differences. Where I grew up we were into skiing not skating; where he grew up hockey is religion and so important that a loss in the Olympics will send an entire nation into mourning for a week, especially if that loss is to Finland and keeps them from even getting a bronze medal. (I saw this happen in 1998; my Canadian friends still cannot talk about it without choking up a bit.)

The most curious thing about all this is I don’t remember why I owned ice skates in the first place. Either I had requested them, with visions of me being more athletic than I was, or someone had thought it a good idea that I own a pair. (Every boy should own a pocket knife, a baseball glove and a pair of figure skates?) Something like that.

However I ended up with them, I joined a group of people at a small frozen pond in a gully near my house in Hayden, Colorado. I got on the ice, and well, things didn’t go so well. Weak ankles run in my family and I found it hard to keep the skates vertical. Most of the time I was walking on the sides of the skates and trying to actually, well, skate.

I tried skating a couple more times after that and it went badly again.  I did the manly thing and gave up and put the skates away forever.

For all I know, they’re still tucked away in a box somewhere.