My brief and illustrious hockey career started and ended in ninth grade gym class. Believe it or not, a public school in upstate New York somehow afforded twelve flimsy hockey sticks in its inventory, in addition to some makeshift goals made out of the finest vinyl netting and PVC pipes. Half of us donned blue pinnies that smelled of sweaty onions, then soon we were off to do the hockeying. And the puck? A plastic, hollow version of the real ones. Better safe than sorry. Our gym teacher for this fifty-minute class was some barrel-chested redhead who I think was also one of the football coaches. We started with our usual warm up stretches and sit-ups, absolutely the best exercises for the upcoming absurdity at hand. The school building had two gymnasiums, and we were scheduled to use the more run-down one on the second floor. None of my gym classes announced what we would be doing beforehand, so it was sort of a fun surprise to see what we were about to get ourselves into on...