The Most Important Lesson I Learned Playing Hockey

It wasn't the value of hard work. I know it should have been. But I didn't work hard growing up. I didn't skip practices or cheat at drills. I did the minimum required. Any off-season training was coincidence. I played a lot of road hockey. I amused myself by tying pillows to my legs with my Dad's seldom used ties and threw a rubber ball against our living room wall. I played goal with myself. It wasn't a strategy. I didn't have a gaming system or cable t.v. and lived in a small Vancouver Island town. It was teenage survival in a media barren landscape.

It wasn't the importance of team work or teammates. I was a goalie. Teammates had no context for what I did. I didn’t share their hockey concerns. I liked them. Some of them I loved. A few I still do. I think of all of them fondly. But goaltending is a solitary position in a decidedly team experience. Teammates were potential screens, not shot blockers. I viewed most as liabilities. I'm sure most viewed me the same. Hockey did act as a catalyst for growing up. And those teammates were amongst the protagonists in my coming of age story. But it wasn't because of hockey. It could have been basketball, or wrestling, or drama club. Anything that forces young boys together over time will be a crucible of friendship.

It wasn't hard lessons about winning and losing. I learned them. But the odd thing about a team game is the randomness of the outcome compared to personal performances. I've won a lot games when I was terrible. I've lost games and played great. The difference between those performances is small. It's a little luck, good or bad. It's a puck that squeezes through the five hole and goes wide. It's a misplayed puck that results in a goal, or doesn't. From what I've seen, the NHL is still like that. The narrative of each game turns on a few flukes of physics.

It wasn't leadership. Captains were either the best player on the team, or the coaches son. Sometimes, that Venn diagram overlapped. Sometimes it didn't. Instead of leadership, I learned the importance of networks. Who you were, where you were from and what you've done before played a disproportionate role in the selection of travel teams. As boys and young men we didn't try and stand out. We strove for that impossible place of unique sameness. We wanted to be special and different, without separating ourselves from the crowd. Leadership is stuff of the grown up world. 

The most important lesson I learned playing hockey is how to see the world. There is a tongue-in-cheek saying about two types of people in the world--those who split the world into two types and those who don't. In that dichotomy, I do. I separate people by those who compare themselves to their betters and those who don’t. In this blunt evaluation I see people that do as seekers, explorers and friends. I see those that don't as delusional justifiers who over-estimate their importance, intelligence and skills. I realize that's harsh and a bit prickish, but it's my experience.

Playing hockey I learned to compare myself to better players. As a young kid I compared myself to the less skilled and less successful. That was an exercise of ego. I never thought I was good. When I tell people I won provincial championships, played Junior B and on a university team they think I was good. I think about how far I was from my dreams. As I grew up around hockey I learned to compare myself to those who made the show, or should have. I do this in all aspects of life now.

Forget hard work, team work, teammates, wins, losses and leadership. Hockey taught me I'm not good enough. I wasn't genetically gifted. I am short, and have mediocre reflexes. I can't overcome that. Even Ron Maclean's poetic vignettes-as-life-lessons he uses as nostalgic Vaseline to soften the hard focus of Don Cherry's scatter-shot rage did not help. Sometimes the lesson is you can't do it. I learned about hard work in a grocery store, at a fish cannery and in grad school. Now, I recognize it in my youth. I learned about team work and teammates playing Nintendo Ice hockey and watching the NHL. Through those I understood the subtle differences that teammates brought to a game, and the importance of various roles on outcomes. The only lessons I learned about wins and losses sucked. Sometimes I feel good in defeat. Sometimes I feel awful in victory. The difference is random and small and seldom in our control. Leadership I learned from Harrison Ford movies and politics. Only those reluctantly dragged to the front should be followed. If you seek power and leadership, you are not to be trusted. 

I continue to compare myself to those who are smarter, work harder, have more skill and are more successful. I spend my days working at the rink, writing a dissertation, renovating my home, exploring my faults, writing blogs and lectures for university classes, and working hard to raise my children right. I know I'll fail at all of these things, compared to those I wish to be like. But, I'll work hard and get help and I'll accomplish my goals as much as life's constraints allow. 

Maybe I learned more than I thought. 

Birthdays

I am uncomfortable with my birthday.

I'm not uncomfortable with the concept. I quite enjoy celebrating the birth of loved ones. I just like mine to pass quietly. I've never been comfortable with undeserved attention. I don't mind being watched while I play hockey, do Judo, drive Zamboni or lecture. But the feeling of being stared at for something beyond my control brings childish pain to the surface.

It's fucking melodramatic, but childish hurts never go away completely.

They are always a part of who we are. If we are lucky, or work hard to deal with them, they become small parts of a large and stable whole. But they are still there, thinly covered scars. A little irritation will open them.

That's the feeling of birthday wishes for me.

Intellectually, I understand this is ridiculous. I understand, and am flattered, that people care and want to say, "Hey! We're glad you were born". In the moments I'm usually fine. I can accept and enjoy the expression of love. But the anxious waiting brings me back. The anticipation of an awkward exchange from someone I don't know well, whose wishes feel like social obligation, disturbs the nine year old boy in me . He was having a great day with friends until someone pointed, shrugged up their shoulders to their ears, and laughed with their own friends at his fused vertebrae.

I told you it was fucking melodramatic.

But the past is only separated by context. That little boy still doesn't like new places and new people. What if they're mean too? Luckily, I'm a grown up now and I can do what I want. When looking after my children, and the shadow of myself, I try and remember the best piece of parenting advice I ever got. "Of course you can make them do what you need. That's why you're bigger than them".

I can. And I do. I go new places, meet new people and don't let that disheartened nine year old make decisions anymore. But he is always close to the surface of my feelings. His scar never healed. I do my best to keep him safe.

It means avoiding small awkwardness at the price of more love, and birthday wishes.

My Mom and the Legacy of Freedom

My Mom is nice.

My Mom is unbelievably nice.

My Mom is pathologically nice.

In other words, my Mom tends towards co-dependency. I've had a hard time figuring out why. My Dad wasn't a drinker. Like any blue collar man of his era he enjoyed it. A night at the local Legion, or a house party with friends, was the safe space for men of his generation to talk about themselves and their feelings. But, he escaped the genetic disposition for a real practice of boozing. Basically, my Pops was a flyweight. From what I understand of co-dependency my Mom should have married to a serious drinker, a real bottle of scotch a day alcoholic.

Was she just lucky? Was I?

Not surprisingly, the answer is more complicated than Dr. Drew, Dr. Phil and the other t.v. doctors made me believe. My Mom is one of the many results of WWII.

No, seriously.

I don't think my Grampa was a real drinker either. He drank a bit when he was younger, but that is hardly evidence. Like so many men the war changed him. We went from small town British Columbia to big cities and front lines. He was one of the men who moved from heavy artillery to a place in the lead boats as the Allies stormed Normandy. Without being wounded in battle he was thoroughly scarred.

My Mom says he never talked about the war growing up. It is the job of parents to shield their children after all. But, when enough time passed he told us grandkids. We were privy to stories, now glorified, about the war. They were less gory and heartbreaking and more glorious--less Kubrik and more Hemingway. As a child, I was enthralled by his stories of close calls and motorcycle escapes. I marveled at scenes of death, implied to my childish imagination, never fully disclosed.

As an adult I began to understand. I don't mean an adult in the legal or biological sense. I mean a fully realized man who embraces, accepts and works on their flaws instead of hiding and denying their truth. I pieced together my Grampa's story. The war turned him, and a generation of men and women, into a mirror addict. Too many from his generation had signs and symptoms of the disease.It was a too real reflection of their experiences. Those, like my Gramps, without the genetic burden  for alcoholism slowed. They returned, more or less, to the persons they were before.

Time may not heal, but it does provide distance from those emotional and physical scars. Time short-circuits the need to numb emotions with booze for those able to put the war behind them.

My Grampa's story, of course, is also my Mom's story. As the oldest daughter she became parentalized after the war. She had to take care of siblings and her parents more than was healthy. This isn't a story of blame. I only seek understanding and a realization of self.

My Mom's story is my own. I let myself be manipulated for a disproportionate amount of praise. I go out of my way for friends, or colleagues, in an attempt to overcome the feeling I'm not enough. I find too much self worth in others. I wasn't parentalized, like my Mom, but the war resounds in my story too. As my children grow, I'll keep looking in and back to clarify and understand my world.

I hope the echo dies with me.

A slightly more thought out discussion of the Canucks' draft day shenanigans

Everyone with a sense of proportion, not bastardized by hearing too many arguments of false-equivalence that compare Christian fundamentalism to atheism or men's rights to world-wide misogyny, understands Schneider for the ninth pick is an awful deal.

Of course, the contradictory nature of sportswriters meant a lot of carpal tunnel was developed trying to justify the deal. Yes, the Canucks need to rebuild their farm system. Yes, the Canucks are short on prospects. Yes, Bo Hor-whatever-his-name-is, is a good prospect.

But, can anyone tell me that a potential second line NHLer is equivalent to an established number one netminder?

Are you also going to tell me how hard straight white men have it? And is there a war on religion in North America too? Is 'reverse' racism just as bad as actual racism?

Snark aside, momentarily, the return for Schneider is not my real concern. As a fan, this pick signifies the end of this era. The chance for another run at the Cup has ended. The window has closed. The door is shut. (Insert your own clichéd metaphor here).

Gillis's decision to not take Edmonton's offer, which included an actual person, is a decision to rebuild the team. There aren't blue chip prospects on the verge of making the team and pushing for top six ice time. There isn't a Logan Couture to our Joe Thornton to take over the team's offensive duties. We don't have a pair of young stars to let the twins transition into veteran helpers on a cup worthy team. The defence remains suspect. Luongo's head space will be an ongoing couch-psychologists dream. This team can't win.

And that doesn't bother me much. I'm used to not winning. As I've wrote before, I find it comforting. (http://vansunsportsblogs.com/2013/05/14/guest-post-the-canucks-lost-again-a-requiem-for-hockey-dreams/?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed)

What I don't like is the lie. Maybe Gillis doesn't think he is rebuilding. Maybe he thinks there is a way to turn the few prospects he has into assets for a Cup run. Maybe he thinks the twins aren't on the downside of their careers. (For the record, they definitely are). Maybe he thinks Kesler can stay healthy and he can find a couple of cheap shut down defenceman. Maybe Mr. Gillis should make a list of what this team needs, what he has and compare the two. It is easy to see a clear future when you don't sketch it out. Your brain will fill in gaps and gloss over large areas of concern.

Maybe I'm the one missing something. Maybe there is one more run left in this team. Maybe Bo will step right in and add the depth we've needed for years. But, maybe not. I fear we are entering our late-Iggy Calgary Flames era. We have a management unwilling to admit mistakes and call for a rebuild. We have fans who want to believe the magic can be captured one more time.

I hope they are right. I hope I am wrong. But I doubt it.

Who am I?

I'm the type of man who wants to live without attachments and experience the world as Zen contemplation.

I'm actually the type of man who is easily hurt and prone to displays of passive aggression.

I'm the type of man who wants to live a spartan life of rigor, small tastes and stoicism.

I'm actually the type of man who prefers watching modern Spartans clash while eating ice cream in my underwear.

I'm the type of man who wants to take his coffee black.

I'm actually the type of man who likes cream and sugar and a lot of chocolate syrup in my poor man's mocha.

I'm the type of man who wants to be a black belt in Judo.

I'm actually the type of man who stopped going when I got older, tired and received my brown belt.

I'm the type of man who never wants to say "good enough".

I'm actually the type of man who.......actually, I just covered this.

I'm the type of man who wants to be unconcerned with being handsome or chiseled.

I'm actually the type of man who can't let go of that childhood memory of looking different and feeling out of place.

I'm the type of man who wants to be able to fix cars, and sinks and trouble shoot appliances.

I'm actually the type of man who needs a brother-in-law to fix his truck, google and repeated attempts to fix sinks and a consumer culture of disposable appliances to replace broken toasters.

I'm the type of man who wants to be above praise, congratulations and adoration.

I'm actually the type of man who just wants to show off.

I'm the type of man who wants to be an intellectual and academic giant.

I'm actually the type of man who wastes too much time navel gazing and writing meaningless blog posts in hopes of instant gratification.

I'm the type of man who wants to know when it is enough.

I'm actually the type of man who doesn't know when I should have stopped--the last set was better, I think.

I'm also the type of man who can't stick to format or be happy with what I've done.

Or, is that just the type of guy I want to be and secretly I love all praise and am too rigid too often?

Now, I'm confused.

Such is the danger of self-exploration and building a narrative of self.