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.

For reasons I still don’t understand, my band director when I was in high school in Kansas decided we needed to march. Not in straight lines during parades, mind you, but in patterns on the field during games. My response was “how about if I just shoot myself in the knee instead?”

Although I liked playing trumpet, I never liked putting on bulky leather vests–complete with dangly bits on the shoulders–and funny hats–complete with fuzzy things sticking off the top–and marching around trying to hold the trumpet out, stay in step, stay in tune, stay on the downbeat whilst trying to avoid collisions with random objects and/or people.

It was bad enough in parades but in Kansas the torture of “pattern” was added to it. Go here, turn there, pause, swing your horn (which is totally not dirty) and end in a neat little geometric pattern whilst playing your heart out. Mind you, we were no Sonic Boom of the South, but then they have talent and dedication and actually volunteered for the job.

With us, we were dragged to school early and forced to march around the parking lot in the cold. This wasn’t that hard except that, in the case of the trumpet players, we were holding large twisted bits of frozen brass and couldn’t wear gloves. (Well, we could, but then we couldn’t actually operate the large twisted bit of frozen brass.)

To make matters worse, as trumpet players we had to buzz our lips against another frozen bit of metal and try to make everything stay in tune. Basically, we ended up with numb hands and lips.

Now, as if that wasn’t bad enough, it was decreed that on the night of Homecoming, all the seniors performing in their last Homecoming would be given the “honor” of solo performances section by section. I was like, “Aww, shucks, you don’t have to do anything like that. No, really, you don’t”, but the person who made the decree was like “get out there and practice. You will be honored whether you like it or not.” (Something like that.)

This meant my friend Randy and I had to march out to the middle of the pack and perform a duet. If we had done this at the beginning, I would have been fine, but by the end of the performance I could barely feel my fingers and could barely play more than a sharp honk. Luckily, Randy was a better trumpet player and carried the performance.

I was honored when it was all over. Or maybe I mean relieved.