Probie VIII

Prop comedy doesn’t get the respect it is due.  Safety Officer Harry messaged the department, asking if anyone wanted to join his curling crew (team, squad, unit … whatever they’re called).  He stressed it was a low stress, non-competitive league, and any or no experience level would be welcome.  When I saw Harry at the station, I said I had zero experience, save for watching the Olympics and one game one night in Madison.  Which was fun, if not wholly fathomable. 

By the way, those Olympic telecasts are excellent.  They should win some kind of award. 

Harry assured me my lack of experience would not be a problem, which I took as evidence they were at the anyone can play right field in Little League level of desperate.  I got a saying.  That I just made up.  Any field is better than no field.  So I showed up.  With my sticker festooned climbing helmet.  There would be ice involved.  And Harry’s the Safety Officer so, no harm in a little extra safety. 

I did not wear the helmet.  Because the joke was not that I’m a dork (its own life-spanning joke).  The joke was a sight gag; I did not understand the assignment, but was over-prepared for it anyway.  Being over-prepared for things I don’t understand is its own life-spanning joke.     

Maybe I should have worn the helmet.  The big flaw in the whole spectacle was I wrongly assumed there would be some pre-game (match, bonspiel, draw … whatever they’re called) practice.  Or warm-up, at a minimum.     

There was no practice.  There was no warm-up.  There was just Chris, a bright-eyed retiree in a lime green puffy and neon blue headband, with punky white hair, looking as ready to play keyboards in an 80s synth band as inculcate a newbie into curling.  Chris had some Swiffer device thing and told me to get one too.  Her instructions were simple.  Don’t fall.  Sweep when she sweeps, just ahead of her.  Stop when she stops.  Easy peasy.  Harry was right.  I can curl.

 But that kid in right field also has to hit every now and then.

The batter’s box is weird.  There’s these starting block things and the Swiffer thing I was supposed to hold with my left hand for reasons then unknown and this forty or fifty pound chunk of Scotland that I was supposed to … um … thrust myself away from the starting blocks like Usain Bolt with a bad back and then release Scotland from my right hand before I got to the red line after the Piggly Wiggly advertisement.  All while some guy named Skip stood like 300 feet down the ice and told me to aim at his Swiffer.      

No warm-up?  None?  Ok, fine.  How hard can this be?  I started out a physics major.  Feet in the starting blocks, left hand with the Swiffer, right hand on Scotland, gluteus maximi poised for glory.  Synapses fire, fast twitch muscle fibers contract and for at least six tenths of a second, it is all going great.  Lesson in life number one – always enjoy the tenths of a second when things are going great. 

Sensitive dependance on initial conditions.  See above on starting out a physics major.  Chaotic systems exhibit sensitive dependence on initial conditions, where small differences in the initial conditions, however miniscule, are magnified exponentially as the dynamics of the system play out.  Which is to say, who knows where Scotland ran off to?  As the rock left my right hand, Newton took over.  I tumbled / slid past the Piggly Wiggy line and lost sight of my first curling stone hurled in competition. 

A touch “heavy”, as they say.   

Everybody was too nice to laugh.  Which is to say, everybody but me.  Because it was hysterically funny.  Apparently, the Swiffer thing in the left hand creates a tripod for balancing.  Good to know.

So went my first curling game.  Only falling once, and making some shots that were not truly awful, it was fun enough to come back to, so I’ll finish out the six-game Friday morning league over the next several weeks. 

It becomes clearer over time that joining a fire department is not just joining a team, it is joining a second family.  Like any family, you’ll become involved in things you never would have done on your own.  You’ll not be good at some or most of them but you’ll do them because a family member does them.  It’s how I started skiing, fly-fishing and watching Sponge Bob, among other life-enhancing endeavors. 

It’s now how I started curling, semi-comedic helmet prop at the ready.