Playing down to be impressive sucks. In a beginner class, there's one guy who knows everyone. He is on all those e-mail lists you're talking about and he's on every open bench in a quad-state area. He personally knows every player stepping onto or off the ice for games before and after. He refs every game that's happening within driving distance, even when they're happening at the same time and at different rinks.

But for some reason he's still at the beginner classes and one day I got matched with him. He's dangling, deking, and showing all his favorite moves. That's fine. I don't expect him to act helpless for my ego. He's better than me and he can beat me fair and square.

The puck comes near me and rather than just waiting for me to whiff the pass and fall over, he charges at me and starts hacking at my stick. Not a stick lift. Full on raising his stick with two hands and whacking the top of my stick over and over again.

I'm sure he's on his 30th run through of the class because hE's WoRkInG oN hIs EdGeS or something, and there's no upper skill limit but Christ, I trip over the blue line. Does he want to make ESPN's highlights? Does he just get off on dominating the worst skaters he can find? Where the hell is the thrill in this? Does he want my wife's phone number, or for my kids to call him daddy too?