The one athletic skill I wish I had? Being a good ice skater.

In that brief time of my life during which I competed in scholastic sports (7th through 12th grades), I quickly became aware of my own limitations as an athlete.

I had speed. I was fast, which is useful in a variety of sports.

Until my freshman year of high school or thereabouts, I also had height. I reached my final adult height in 7th grade, then I just stopped growing. If you know me now, you will laugh at the fact that I played center on our middle school basketball teams.

I also had some small degree of power, as evidenced mainly in how far I could hit a baseball or softball, or run over a smaller defensive back in football.

And that was about it.

The list of the things I lacked athletically was far longer. I have never been particularly coordinated, I wasn't born with natural upper-body strength (and never had much desire to put in the work to develop it), and I wasn't blessed with the type of body positioning and spatial awareness that most sports stars have in abundance.

My 8th-grade football and basketball coach, the legendary Mr. Lowell Grimm, once said to me, "Tennant, you're an enigma."

And he was right. I am not only left-handed, I am very left-handed. To the point that I was far more comfortable as a running back carrying the ball on plays that ran to the left than those that ran to the right. In basketball, I could grab rebounds and occasionally block shots, but I was lucky to sink one out of every 10 free throws.

So when I stepped into a pair of ice skates for the first time in my life at the age of 22, I was kind of hoping it was something that would play to my strengths and cover up my weaknesses.

It was not.

Ice skating (and doing it well) is an amazingly impressive feat to me. I can get moving on skates and keep moving, and I can kind of do the snowplow stop if I'm not moving too fast and have sufficient distance in front of me.

But I cannot skate backwards, I cannot do crossovers, and I cannot do the sideways hockey stop. I have tried all of these things over and over and over, and I simply do not have the ability to pull them off.

I think that's why I like watching hockey so much. Even after 30 years of intently following the game, I can't get over how well those guys skate. They make it look effortless.

I make it look painful.

On the plus side, however, I'll bet none of them were ever as proud as I was to be called an "enigma."

South Americans in the snow!

We're three days into The Great Brazilian Invasion. Let me throw some photos at you:

This is the first significant snow they've ever seen. I have a feeling they're already getting sick of it. It's like they're native Northeast Ohioans!

In other Brazilian-related news:

* We're taking Paula and Luiz ice skating today. It will be the first time on skates for both. Ought to be fun! It's going to be interesting getting the correct skate sizes for them, since the Brazilian system of shoe sizing is a lot different than ours. Luiz, for example, wears a size 43 shoe at home. We were at Kohl's the other night and figured out that's roughly a size 11 here in the U.S. Interestingly, Paula (who stands roughly 6-foot-1) has the same-sized foot as my 11-year-old daughter Melanie. Melanie has big feet.

* Paula and Luiz have different accents when they speak...not that I can tell most of the time, but there are certain Portuguese words where it becomes more obvious. In particular, if it's a word that ends in "s," Paula will say it the same way we do: with a "ssssss" sound. But Luiz makes it more of a "sh" sound. Apparently it's similar to hearing someone from, say, Georgia and someone from New England speak American English.

* Chloe and Chris Dorazio took the Brazilians to a high school basketball game last night. Though the home team Wickliffe Blue Devils lost, they had a great time. Paula even brought home one of the small inflatable basketballs that get thrown into the crowd during timeouts. Luiz, Jared, Melanie and Jack put the ball to good use last night, playing interesting living room adaptations of baseball, soccer, football and volleyball.

More to come this week...