If you take one piece of advice from my thirty years of accumulated wisdom this month, I hope it's this:

Don't play rollerblade basketball.

I was on my way out to skate up and down the bike path that fateful day (February 2, 1994, for those following along on the calendar). I'd already started to pack on the poundage at that point -- I was teetering on the brink of 200, and was hoping some intensive cardio would tamp my gut back down. So in-line skating had become a way of life for me, and nearly every day I'd go out around the neighborhood, or further if I could get away with it.

But Mike and Chris were shooting hoops in the driveway, and somehow the ball found its way into my hands. So I shot it, and it went in.

I probably don't need to describe the mini-adrenalin rush making a basket brings. After that, it was difficult to break myself away, especially since the skates made me suddenly faster than Chris, which had never happened before.

But then I took The Shot.

I was coming out of the gravel by the street, ball in hand, losing my balance out of bounds. So, as I'd done in innumerable basketball games before, I tossed up a shot. Only unlike those previous games, I didn't have a flat surface on which to plant my weight.

My right foot twisted, wobbled. I compensated, leaned left -- too far left -- fell -- landed on the side of my knee. The patella sheared into two, the ligament holding it in place snapped, the tendons inside the joint tore.

I managed to hobble inside and get the skates off. My mom (thank Zeus she was home that day) came in, saw me sitting on the recliner, white as a sheet, my knee nearly the size of the ball. Within seconds, I was in the car on my way to urgent care.

Recuperation took nearly three months. I wore an immobilizer brace for a week, until they could schedule the surgery. My doctor hunted down stray kneecap pieces arthroscopically before flaying the whole thing open anyway to nail down the ligament. I was in a cast from hip to heel for four weeks, and then spent six more weeks in the prison of physical therapy every Monday and Wednesday from 3:30 to 6.

But it paid off. I walked better on that leg than I ever had. Of course, my right leg paid the price -- I later sprained that knee coming down a flight of stairs. Honestly, though, I'm just glad they both still work. My therapist, upon watching the arthroscopic surgery video, turned to me awe-struck and said, "It's a wonder you can still walk at all."

I've been on in-line skates once since then (an attempt to impress a girl, which was stupid because the one that mattered got upset), and I can't play serious basketball without a knee brace anymore. One day, I'll walk with a cane, and then I'll be stuck in a wheelchair. These bastard joints of Satan will have to be replaced with steel and silicon so I can move at all without wincing. And it'll all be thanks to the travesty that is rollerblade basketball.