Hockey

            The music was blasting, my adrenaline was pumping, and my heart was racing. My left skate was a little loose so I quickly bent down to adjust it. My song was finally playing. That means it's my turn to go. I waited for the specific spot in the song where the music gets really hard and that's when I go. I skated down my Dave's steep driveway and into the street. At that moment I feel so alive, like I am stepping onto the ice at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum alongside my favorite hockey team the New York Islanders. As I first enter the street I skate really fast and act like I am really good, which is what I would do if I were entering the ice in a professional game.
             I grab a ball from the grass and begin to skate around the street and shoot at the empty net. The music is still playing until we all have made our entrances. We all begin to stretch and warm up, mocking the professionals we see on television in every way we can remember. As the song comes to an end, we all realize that it is time to begin. We lineup at the blue line which Eric drew on the street with chalk, and my brother Devin puts the National Anthem on the stereo. We take our helmets off and face the flag that hangs from Dave's house. Near the end of the song I move my skates forward and backwards just like Ron Hextall did at every Islander game.
             As soon as the song is over there is a brief period of skating around the street once again as Andrew and Mike retrieve our makeshift goalie from the shed. Nobody ever wanted to play goalie, so there came a time when we were too good to shoot the ball into a garbage can that we needed to create a device that would make scoring more of a challenge and therefore more rewarding. Dave and I put our heads together and were able to invent a perfect solution.
             We took a piece of wood and cut it into a solid square that covered the entire net. Then we drew circles and squares in various places on the wood where we thought it would be difficult to shoot the puck into.