Learning a new culture

For those of us who have children, August is when sports programs and various school related activities begin. I am never ready for all this and I have mixed feelings about the transition from unstructured summer activity to busy school and sports schedules

I wanted Harry to be a figure skater. When he was three and four I would take him to the community rink, and taught him the rudiments of skating. He loved it. In Maryland, when I signed him up for skating lessons at five years of age, he was always trying to race the instructor to the end of the line. When no one was looking, Harry would skate and slide, slamming into the boards. The progress reports from skating instructors always ended with “he needs to be in Hockey!”, so I signed Harry up for Hockey clinic. It was a perfect fit.

Then we moved to rural Minnesota. After a couple of years, pond hockey just wasn’t enough, and Harry was asking to play in a league. Living in rural America as it were, it took me some time to acclimate to available resources, which were neither convenient nor in large supply.

On top of that, hockey is a rough sport and this rink was a cold, unattractive place that smelled faintly of rotting rubber and gym sweat. The practice schedule and number of games was crazy impossible. I felt I was consigning a good portion of the rest of my life here, like being in purgatory, because watching his practices and driving all over the state in horrific winter weather for games was depressing. I guess I wasn’t ready for it.

So at signup, I handed the lady the ten sheets of paper containing Harry’s information written four different ways at least seven times, with the check for an unholy large sum of money. Hockey is a very expensive sport, what with the ice time and the 15 1bs of padding and plastic the kids have to wear. It had taken me three weeks to find the website where the forms were, and three days to understand what I was supposed to do with it.

“This is the old form. You want the new form, 6048b and revision date August 8.” She handed me ten sheets of a form that looked disgustingly similar to the one I had just handed to her

“You want me to do this again?” I had developed a serious case of bursitis in the knuckles of my writing hand from pulling weeds over the summer. I was feeling old and in denial about it, plus I was frustrated at not understanding the youth hockey system. It was for me, like trying to figure out how a car engine worked. And that is when I completely blind-sided the poor woman. She did not know what hit her. I began to protest, and worse, as the volume picked up, the speed of my diatribe increased. I was saying things like: “These forms are EXACTLY alike! What a waste of time! I refuse. I won’t do it. Why was this form posted? What’s wrong with you people?” Here I was crazy. I was waving the papers in the air and shaking my head and rocking on my heels till I finished. Her worried expression turned to fear. How could the most mundane comment produce this volcanic eruption? What was my problem? My son was embarrassed. I could see him visibly shrinking, turning away, and probably looking for an escape route.

The woman looked at me incredulously. The people around us stopped and stared. “We posted this new form yesterday; see it’s got a dash b. We only found out about it this week.” Like, geesus woman, I am a volunteer. I have a life believe it or not, just like you, so suck up.

As I learned with Hockey, you do just suck up. It’s got to be one of the most painful, time sucking sports a parent can endure on behalf of their child. Every hockey mom or dad should get a medal for suffering. Hockey parents are just about the toughest group I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. You have no idea what it is like to go on overnights for tournaments in cold dumpy hotels or motels, which are the only kind that will suffer the presence of a youth hockey team (youth hockey teams are notorious!). All this in January or February or March! Blech!

As for me, I spent the rest of Harry’s hockey career trying to impress on that woman that I really was a normal, decent, human being.