Holy Shit, I Just May Be Growing Up

I've played organized sports since I was nine years old. I played little league football and baseball, and did pretty well- I'd say I was maybe a little above average for my age group. I grew up in Casper, Wyoming, and we didn't have anything better to do but play ball every day, so you almost couldn't help but get good.

Then I moved to Colorado, got into high school, and switched over to soccer because I was way too small to play football and baseball. Shit, when I graduated I was 5'1" and weighed about 135 pounds. I didn't rocket all the way up to 5'6" until I was in college. Let's just say I didn't get that many recruiting calls from the football coach.

The thing that always remained constant when I was playing as a kid, and then in my 20's and 30's, was that I was what they call a little ball of hate. I'm sure it was to compensate for my lack of size, but I would work myself into such a competitive frenzy before the game, that once the whistle blew, I was looking for a chunk of somebody's ass. And it didn't matter how big they were.

I would spend the whole game talking shit to the other team, and if I got the chance playing soccer, I would go out of my way to slide tackle a guy, and kick his legs out from under him. Or when I played men's league softball, I would slide into a base hard and try to make contact with the opposing player. And the entire time, I would be running my mouth.

So in other words, I was, well...a dick. I'm not real proud of that fact, but I think a lot of guys go through that stage when they're young. Especially us little fuckers. Hell, I play hockey these days with and against a lot of kids, and I see them getting into scraps, and flapping their jaws a lot during games. It just makes me smile and flash back to another time.

Now that I'm an old fuck, I don't yap nearly as much as I used to. In fact, I'm just so goddamn happy that I still can play a little bit, most of the time I just concentrate on not embarrassing myself.

But make no mistakes- when the puck drops, I'm still a competitive little bastard. I recently wrote an article where I said that I die a little bit every time I give up a goal, and I can swear for three minutes without repeating a phrase. That's no shit. I fucking hate letting the puck in the net. I think you have to feel that way if you want to be any good.

But here's the part that doesn't have to happen. To borrow a phrase from Top Gun, sometimes my teammates get caught in the "jetwash" of my emotions, and I bark at them if they make a mistake. Most of the time it happens when I'm tired (ongoing sleep disorder), and I have a short fuse. But that's not a good enough excuse.

I know that kind of thing happens in adult sports all the time, where the competitive guy snaps, the teammate tells him to go fuck himself, and then they have a beer after the game and laugh about it.

But I don't want to be that guy anymore. At my age, I have a very short time left to play, and I just want to enjoy the game and my friends.

About six weeks ago, there were some things going on with my job, and I went through a period where I wasn't having fun playing, and it showed on the ice. Then one day, I got an email from a teammate, who happens to be one of my best friends. Instead of asking me why I was being a jackoff, he asked if everything was okay, and if there was anything he could do to help. I'll never forget that.

At that very moment I decided that I was going to do everything possible to start having more fun, and keep my emotions in check during games. And I'd like to think I've been pretty successful so far. I haven't said a discouraging word in a long time, and you know what? I'm playing better now than I have in years. There just might be a correlation there.

Then last week, I found out that a kid on our team that's in his early 20's has thyroid cancer. He's going to be okay, but he's going to have three surgeries to clean all the shit out of his system. He just started playing again last week, and he has a terrific attitude about it. In fact, he was in the locker room making jokes about having cancer, and how he was going to get his girlfriend to do all kinds of nasty stuff because he's going to tell her it "might be the last time they ever get to have sex". Only hockey players are twisted enough to clown about having cancer.

And I thought to myself, "You were worried about a men's league hockey game? What a fuckin' idiot. Go play, put a smile on your face, and shut the fuck up."

Last Tuesday night, I think the hockey gods may have been testing me and my new attitude a little bit. We were playing the team that we were tied with for first place, and the game was 3-3 with about five minutes left. We were on a power play, and one of my defensemen had the puck behind my net.

When he skated the puck to our corner to break out of the zone, he got tangled up with one our own players, and they both went down. A guy from the other team picked up the loose puck, and centered it to a teammate that was open in front of my net. I moved out towards him to cut the angle for his impending shot. No problem.

Then, just when the puck was about to reach that guy, my other defenseman stuck his stick out, and deflected the centering pass into my net. We ended up losing 4-3, and dropped out of first place. Between my two teammates crashing into each other, and my own guy knocking the puck past me, it was the perfect "clusterfuck".

Not very long ago, especially in a game that was so important, my teammates would have immediately witnessed the eruption of Mount St. Goalie. I would have come un-fuckin'-glued. But Tuesday night, I quietly skated to the corner, took a deep breath, and didn't say a word. My boy Sam, who is the other goalie in the family, happened to be at the game, and asked me later why I wasn't dropping f-bombs all over the place like I usually do.

The answer: I think possibly, at age 51, I just might be finally growing up.

Then in the last minute of the game, I was on the bench because they had pulled me in favor of an extra attacker to try and tie the contest. The other team shot the puck all the way down to our end, which should have been "icing". There should have been a stoppage of play, and a faceoff in their end.

Well, the referee, who was 19 or 20, waved off the icing, and everyone on our bench screamed bloody murder. He skated by and said, "They can ice the puck, because you pulled your goalie", which is just completely wrong. We never got the puck back into their zone, and time ran out.

The kid was standing near our bench right before the clock expired, and he had one of those "pube beards" where just a few hairs are sticking out of his chin. I leaned out over the boards and yelled, "Hey, by the way! Nice Scooby Doo beard, you cocksucker!"



Okay, so maybe the "growing up" thing is a work in progress...