Browsing Karen's excellent array of photographs, I found a bunch from the semi-final game the Seals played in Vegas last year. Not wanting to beat a dead horse, but hoping to give myself some closure, I looked. In every photo, I look like shit -- almost standing up straight most of the time, hands right next to each other like my stick was a golf club (what was I thinking there???), completely out of position, you name it. I'll own up to what I need to work on as a player, those pics were a very humbling set of reminders about what's missing from my game, or at least, what was missing then.

But it also reminded me that I had very little fun at those games. The stress was ridiculous -- I spent that ENTIRE GAME trying not to throw up, being so nervous that I wasn't good enough to be there, that the 'established' players didn't like me, wouldn't ever like me (and in truth, many of them did not, choosing instead not to waste their time on anyone who hadn't been on the team the previous year), that we wouldn't win. When we lost 3-1, it was a self-fulfilling prophesy in a way. And of course, I had to ride back with the trophy, since the winning team was on my plane.

Bottom line, I never really felt like a Seal. It was more like being in middle school all over again, with somehow even more to prove and people who were equally unkind as those awful middle school kids, just less obvious about it. Granted, I still have a couple of friends on the team, but for most of them, we weren't friends before and we're not friends now. I will always be bitter about being cut, but hopefully looking through those pics one last time will let me lay that time to rest.

And get ready to kick some ass in Vegas with the Burninators, a group of my friends before, a group who will be my friends after. Burn on, Burninators! May the ice be a pooling mass of water after we've Burninated.

Build your own Burninator!