I started playing hockey when I was six years old. There was an amateur kids hockey league started by some local parents in my town. Our coach was a local real estate agent who named his son after a hockey stick. Long after I finished playing hockey, I learned he got divorced. Not much of a surprise. I remember his kid was a shitty kid. His other kid, the younger brother of hockey stick, became somewhat of a friend of my brother and me, but he was so ill-behaved that I don’t think my parents wanted him around much. I remember he scratched up the ceiling in our house and pissed in a box on two separate occasions. He was the kid that joined my brother and me to going to the science centre when my brother slapped the kid. The funny thing is, I remember hating hockey stick, but I don’t remember why. I remember somebody reminded my dad about hockey stick years later and he agreed that he was a shitty kid, which leads me to believe he was, in fact, a shitty kid, but still I don’t recall the specifics. I remember one time we had hockey practice and we were all skating around before the practice and hockey stick said something to me, to which I responded,
“Shut up, hockey stick”.
I saw my mom in the bleachers in the corner of my eye as I said that, and for the rest of the lesson, I was afraid of being yelled at for telling another kid to shut up. I was certain I was going to get it on the drive home. But we drove home afterwards, and it never came up. I figured she must have not heard. If she did, she knew hockey stick was a kid that needed it.
This hockey program went on for many years. I would’ve been 12 years old when I stopped doing it. I didn’t enjoy it that much most of the time, I didn’t like the kids in it, and I didn’t like the long drives to the games. We had to drive to neighbouring towns for pretty much every game which I thought was ridiculous. We hardly had any games in our town, we were always driving an hour or more away. So every kid on our team was exhausted from the long drive and the other team could get off the couch 10 minutes before the game started. But the game was a good thing for kids, especially boys, to be involved in. That’s why I did it, and why my dad didn’t let me and my brother quit.
I also played soccer and basketball. I don’t remember for how long. Soccer didn’t last long at all. Basketball lasted for one year, or one season, however long that was. I didn’t do it afterwards. I would’ve been really young when I played soccer. My brother played it a little bit after I did as well. I think he did it more than I did.
MyShelf 