Kickball

It has been 15 years since I played kickball. I am not kidding, I was 11 years old and it was in gym class when I was in the sixth grade. I remember it like it was yesterday. First period in the morning, dew on the grass and I booted the ball deep into left field. As I was running to 1st base, my feet came out from under me and I ended up coming down on my back. That was the first of a string of injuries in my childhood.

Since moving out west, I have tried to get involved in the community, live outside my comfort zone and meet new people for Swallow and I. I joined a softball team (which is TERRIBLE) but at least I am having fun and meeting new people. I also joined an adult kickball league, we don't have a team name (at least I know of), but I will check into that at our next game. I was pretty excited about playing kickball today, since after all its been 15 years. Earlier in the week, I invited Swallow to join me at the first game. She was all for it, until this morning. Honestly, I can't say that I blame her. I woke up and it was about 30 degrees outside, brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! Oh well, I said I was gonna play, so I got dressed in my layers, woke up Swallow who quickly recanted and basically said "there is no way in hell I am going to go stand out in the cold today!" So, off to kickball in the cold I go, by myself I might add!

I drive over to Washington Park, and find a parking spot right next to where we have the field set up. Finding a parking spot on a weekend day, that close to your activity at Wash Park is literally next to impossible. That should have been my second clue, but of course not! I am the second person to arrive, only to find out that the temperature is in deed dropping. The clouds roll in. Slowly, the rest of the team shows up. We start to warm up, kicking the ball around, blowing on hands to keep them from freezing and running around the bases to try and keep our body temperature up. The game is about to start, when all the sudden here comes the snow. It snowed and snowed pretty hard for about 25 minutes.

I was ready to throw in the towel, when finally someone we were playing with said "this is ridiculous, if we all leave now, we can get good seats at one of the near by watering holes to watch the Av's playoff game and the NFL draft." Those words were like heaven to my ears. I quickly second that notion and before I could turn around, people were picking up the cones and the bases and heading to their cars. I am not even sure what the score was, what inning we were in or who is going to claim the win...we were all about getting out of the snow and the idea of beer flowing was just an added bonus. We did stop long enough to get a group photo of us playing kickball in the snow, but it was a one click shot and on to the cars we went.

As we head to the bar, we all re-introduce ourselves, since we look different wearing a few less layers. I wasn't aware that I had joined a team that had never met each other before. Everyone on this team is relatively new to the Denver area. The day was getting better and better. Apparently, the team all met on meetup.com, a site I had never heard of. As I was talking to the group about meetup.com, I tried to spell it and ended up saying meeto.com for some strange reason. That gave everyone a chance to poke a little fun at me and I got a good chuckle out of it. Since I don't know how to spell, I have now been nicknamed "MEETO." Works for me! We all had a great time, getting to know each other, come to find out there are a few Floridians on the team and few Red Sox's fans. This team really is going to be a good group. It also helps that we are all relatively new to the area, and up to doing new things and meeting new people.