Never Race A Hockey Boy

I was going to call this entry "I Am Stupid" but I've used that one before...

I had some unexpected free time tonight so I decided to go to the Sunday evening "family night" ($5 admission includes skates, not that that applies to me). My friend Amber Lee asked to come along since she has wanted to go back to skating for a while. She had started to learn with her old boyfriend but hadn't skated in 4 years or so (her current boyfriend is not big on such things). Anyway, it turned out to be not too crowded and a relatively good environment, so I started out by teaching her the step-step-glide thing and getting her over her fear of falling and hurting herself. We also did the get down on the ice and get up thing. After a bit of that we went on and I introduced her to forward swizzles and then a bit of basic stroking. She was making pretty good progress and only occasionally felt the need to give me the grip of death.

At one point we were skating along and she was holding my hand because she was feeling unsteady. Just then a hockey boy (probably 12 or 13) decided to duck under our hands, in between us. I yelled at him and he ran off, but I was so mad that I went after him and started to give him a tongue lashing. Of course the parents of these kids are never around. Anyway, like the idiot I am I try to talk to him like a person who cares and he just gives me attitude and asks me things like "who makes the rules?" and "I know the owner, anyway" and "how long have *you* been skating?" Finally at one point he says something like "well, I bet you can't catch me, anyway!" and reason seemingly leaves me and I say "sure I can" and he is off like the proverbial bat out of hell and I am off after him. Of course the kid is way faster than I am and doesn't have any compunctions about scaring the daylights out of innocent bystanders, so in a few seconds he's way ahead of me. I'm rounding a corner of the rink at what is for me a pretty high rate of speed when suddenly TOE-PICK! and I go down forward hard. I probably slide for 15 feet (fortunately no one was around) and then stop finally. I get up and discover I'm mostly undamaged, and then go do what I should have done in the first place -- go find a rink employee. I finally find one and tell him the story and ask him to talk to the kid about it, and he promises he'll talk to him. So I get back on the ice and go find Amber Lee and, after a brief break, we go on with our skating.

I'm basically okay, but I banged up my knees a little and seem to have wrenched/strained/sprained my left shoulder/upper arm. It hurts to move it. I hope it won't be too bad tomorrow, but I guess it serves me right for being stupid.

Update: As of Monday, my right knee hurts a little, my left ankle hurts a fair amount but not enough to keep me from walking, and my left shoulder/upper arm still hurts quite a bit. No check position for me on Wednesday unless I heal faster than I expect. I assume from the left ankle that it must have been my left toe-pick that caught. Oh well.