It's that time of season. It's the Olympic Winter Games.

Ever since I was a kid, watching Wide World of Sports with Jim McKay on Saturday afternoons, back when the show really presented the wide range of sport, I always watched curling.

I really got sucked-in 4 years ago watching the Olympics in Salt Lake City.

I really felt this was a game I could play. It had simple rules, and simple skills to master. I could really dig playing this game. Maybe I could get somewhere playing it, even. How cool would it be to get good enough at it to play in the Olympics?!

Let me tell you the story of how I could have died tonight, playing a sport that looked so cool and so easy to play.

Yes, I went curling tonight.

My cousin joined a country club that has one of the few curling houses in the area, and once I found out that 1) he was curling and that 2) they were having an open house, I think the phrase he used is that I "freaked".

I had to do this. How cool was this going to be?!?!!

So, we show up at the club, and there was got to be almost 100 people there, almost all were new to the sport. It was great! The members were going to take groups of 8 out onto one of the 4 "sheets" they have to learn the fundamentals - how to push off and deliver a rock, and how to sweep.

Part of our 8 were family or friends of ours (theirs) that we knew through the years. This was going to be fun.

We learned how to push off the "hack" - the toe-thing that you push against to get your body moving down the sheet the deliver the rock (stone). We first learned without a stone, just to understand the mechanics - place the right foot onto the hack, just like a starting block for a running race. Stand straight up, and squat straight down. You would hold the rock in your right hand (you wouldn't be picking it up - it's over 40 pounds!) and you'd hold on to a stabilizing brace with your left hand (or a broom - that's how your supposed to do it) and just push-off with your right leg.

Piece of cake.

WRONG.

I'm the only one who can't do it. I can't control it. I can't stay straight. I can't stay level, I start to roll... what the hell is going on? I just can't get stable. And everyone in the group is doing fine. Everyone can do this - except me. I look down the other sheets. Everyone is doing this - except me.

Frustration sets in. My joy has gone away. It's not fun being here any more.

We learn how to sweep. Turns out it's a little awkward - the best way is to face the direction of your movement, but the rapid brushing takes a lot out of you and I feel totally uncoordinated. Some ties the rocks just fly by - it's hard to keep up.

We break up and go back inside where after a Short wait, we're going back out into new groups to play at least one end of a game.

I'm first to throw.

Let's just say that I'm allowed 2 tries since I rolled over on my back and the rock didn't make it past the 1st half of the sheet. The second throw, same thing, but the stone makes it into the house somehow! Still don't feel good about this - how can I compete if i can't control what I do!

Now it's my turn to sweep. You know what's going to happen.

Yep, my legs come out from underneath me, and I slip and fall forward, my right knee hits the ice hard, my arms are flailing and I hit the ice jamming the tip of my left thumb. Hurts like hell. Difficult to stand - the lower half of my right leg feels week. I hobble back to our team's end.

Obviously, my shoes suck. I'm not gripping the pebbled surface of the ice well enough. I'm loosing my balance trying to move with the stone and sweeping at the same time.

We eventually change ends.

Still can't deliver worth a damn. No one really helps me - they don't understand what I'm feeling or what's happening. In fact, everyone thinks this should be a piece of cake and no one offers a clue on how to correct this in a way that makes any sense to me. Nothing seems to fit. I can't get myself into any position that looks like anybody else. Weird.

then I go out to sweep and it happens.

I'm moving down the ice. The stone is a bit quicker than I was ready for. I'm trying to stay with it. I'm feeling like I'm reaching too much...

when my feet slip out from underneath me

This time, I'm flying backwards. Fast.

I hit the ice. Hard. With the back of my head.

I know I stopped, but I swear that the rest of the place stopped. It got quiet and too many people are starting to try to get to me. I hear them yelling to stay down, but I feel intact, and instinctively sit up. I can feel -no, taste - something in my nose, it's a weird sensation. I never lost visual, I never saw stars - just felt like this was a crazily hard whack to the head like I've never experienced before. People got to me and started asking me the same questions that I expected them to, how many fingers, follow the finger, just sit there a while (I really wanted to say "I'm... Batman!! but no one would have understood the inference to the Snickers commercial of a few years ago.. ("Not going anywhere?")). One of the guys that is with me came from down the sheet because of the sound my head made hitting the ice. I could feel something dripping off the back of my head. Fortunately, it was cold and not warm - water from the ice and not my blood. I didn't crack my head open like so many feared.

I got up. I was shook. Everything just added-up. I needed to go back inside, sit down, get something to drink (non-alcoholic!) and try to get back to normal.

i didn't want to play anymore. I couldn't do this. I'm too frustrated. What I thought I could do, I couldn't.

It looked simple, almost easy. I could have cracked my skull open hitting the ice and never had another thought again. It really shook me and scared me.

I must have sat there for over an hour. Dejected. Watching my cousin and his friends and the rest of the party having fun on the four sheets of ice.

When my cousin's game was over he started talking to some people. Before long, Two things happened. First - and importantly, i was introduced to a guy named Craig who introduced me to "The Stick". This little device - allowable in the club and even in some tournaments - allows a person to clip this stick over the handle of the stone, the person then WALKS toward to hog line and delivers the stone from the end of the stick, in a manner not too different from shuffleboard, but with a twist of the wrist at the end.

Now all of a sudden, I'm delivering stones pretty near like everyone else. the stick is typically used when people have back of leg trouble. One problem - I would never be able to be in Olympic Competition - the stick is not allowed.

I think I can live with that.

The second thing that happened was I was able to use my cousin's wife's (oh, hell.... Myrina's) "grippers" or foot coverings. It's a soft rubber crepe shell that you put over the sole of your shoe.

Let's just say the traction was like night and day. I might be able to sweep with these. If someone just would have done this two hours earlier, the night would have been so much different.

And thus, my problems were solved. Except for my extensive pain, my bruised well-being, my shredded ego, my staggering disappointment.

I'm spent and upset. I haven't felt this since... I wasn't able to fly on NASA's KC-135 "Vomit Comet" in Houston decades ago with my friends, to do zero-g experiments for some high school students... but that's another story.

Nonetheless, it was a feeling of another dream shattered.

Something that seemed so simple, wasn't.

I hope I can sleep OK tonight. I hope that nothing got screwed-up in the gray thing inside my skull.

But, I just can't think of the disappointment right now.