I went out to play soccer last night at Afrim’s Sports in Colonie, and at one point I overheard a member of my team saying, “Goalie? Well, I’ll try. I haven’t played goalie since third grade. Do you think it’s like riding a bike?”

I’d been wondering the same thing myself. Until Sunday, I hadn’t played soccer in about 10 years, and I hadn’t played competitively since I was 18, when I resolved never to play soccer competitively again in my life. But I’m not averse to the idea of playing soccer, only to the idea of playing competitive soccer, and when I ran across a little item on craigslist seeking female soccer players “of all skill levels,” I decided to give it a go, despite my secret fear that the team would be comprised of 23-year-old Olympians. Still, the phrase “all skill levels” seemed like a secret code, intended to suggest a certain lack of competition and make out-of-shape slugs like me feel welcome, and I decided to take the advertisement at its word. The worst thing that could happen, I figured, would be that I would hate my team. Or blow out my ACL.

Anyway, I’m here to tell you that playing soccer again after 10 years is not like riding a bike. You can’t just pick up where you left off. I feel pretty comfortable saying this, because last week I rode a bike for the first time in about 10 years, and it was way easier than running around and playing soccer for the first time in a decade. I’d never met anyone on my team before. We were constantly switching positions, and so occasionally I was called on to do something I’d never really done before, like make a throw in. My coaches never allowed me to make throw ins when I was actually good at soccer, and it’s not like 10 years of not playing soccer has somehow improved my throw-in ability. But we were playing six on six, and I was just glad nobody tried to make me play goalie. So I sucked it up, and took the throw ins.

I didn’t dare ask anyone else how old they were, but I suspected I was the oldest person there, or one of the oldest people. Our ringer was a recent Siena College graduate, but I heard another woman say she hadn’t played soccer in at least 10 years and that made me feel a little better about myself. In some ways, it was a bit like high school, when I played our cross-town rivals for the first time and was tormented by their fleet-footed striker. I’d never played against anyone as good as her, and she was always running around me, despite my best efforts to stop her. There were a lot of moments like that the other night, when members of the opposing team just ran around me, and I feel like I was directly responsible for at least one of the goals scored on our team.

But what did I expect? Your footwork and speed tends to decline as you get older and, as I keep reiterating, I hadn’t played soccer in 10 years. That’s a long time. As long as nobody on my team cares about winning — and there are disturbing indications that one or two of my teammates just might care about winning — I think I’ll be fine.

Over the weekend I heard about the sad death of the novelist David Foster Wallace, an Ithaca native who committed suicide at the age of 46. I can’t claim to be a huge David Foster Wallace fan, but I did read his short story collection, “The Girl With Curious Hair” and his 1,000-plus page novel “Infinite Jest.” There was a period in the late ‘90s when “Infinite Jest” was the thing to read on American liberal arts campuses — my friend Dave read it for a winter term project — but I got to it a few years ago, lugging the brick-like tome around for a couple months and puzzling over the novel’s copious footnotes.

In some ways, “Infinite Jest” was a joy to read, a sprawling, endlessly creative novel about tennis, addiction and the deadening effects of mass entertainment and the endless pursuit of pleasure. It also featured some of the more inventive prose I’d ever encountered. If “Infinite Jest” was a movie, I’d probably give it 3.5 stars, because as unique and entertaining as it was, I found the ending vaguely unsatisfying. It just seemed to peter out, which was maybe the point, but if an author is going to ask me to read over 1,000 pages I want an ending that satisfies. You don’t hear me complaining about “Anna Karenina” or “Moby Dick,” do you? Even so, “Infinite Jest” is worth a look, particularly if you like writers like Jonathan Safran Foer, Dave Eggers and Jonathan Franzen. As books go, there’s nothing else quite like it. Click here to read more about David Foster Wallace in the New York Times.