Adult in Training

First off, I’m fine.  The Iron Fist of Death has released it’s strangle-hold on my stomach, and I am able to walk upright again.  I’m sure everyone was horribly worried.  But more importantly, since I turned out to be fine in time to help my aunt move this weekend, I found my next topic of discussion: Hockey Parents.

Because I am crap at unpacking, I drew Hockey Duty this weekend for my nine-year-old cousin.  Today he had a game.  It always intrigues me to see what happens to parents as soon as they get that first breath of icy air in their lungs.  For instance: My mom is – arguably – a normal person.  She can ride the subway without the people around her fearing for their lives.  She successfully holds down a job that requires a lot of interpersonal skill.  She raised two – arguably – normal children.  But put her in a hockey rink and she loses her mind!  It got to the point where in the last couple of years that I played, if she came to a game, she had to sit by herself, because she felt bad for the other parents around her.  Not that she was insanely agressive, just that she was insanely loud, and easily excitable.

When I was at the rink today, I accidently sat with the parents from the opposing team.  It was totally not my fault, since I was sitting on the “home” side of the rink.  But apparently there is like an unspoken rule that everyone sits on the “home” side, and then you spread out accordingly.  However, I was not going to move once I had already taken the time to warm up the hard, plastic seat.  I’m not a vocal spectator anyways, so I was fairly certain I didn’t have to worry about being beaten.  But I ended up sitting with two of the strangest hockey parents I have ever heard.

The first one I noticed was a mom.  She had an accent, and for the first little while, I couldn’t understand why she sounded so familiar.  Until I realized that she sounded exactly like Sandy from “Grease”.  I’m not exaggerating even a little bit.  Even down to the things she would say.  For instance, one of the kids on her son’s team threw a nice check and Sandy cheered: “Oh, good tackle!… Tackle-y thing… check!” When her son’s team appeared to be losing some steam, she said to her husband: “Let’s start a chant.  I want to start a chant, but I’m nervous.  I’m sure there’s some sort of etiquette for these things, isn’t there?”  She made me smile all game.  Which was awkward for me, since her other children were practically climbing into my lap, and my cousin’s team was spanking her son’s.

At the other end of the spectrum, I came across the oddest Crazy Dad I think I ever possibly could.  We’ve all heard about those Crazy Dad’s that beat the shit out of the kid’s coaches.  Or yell at their kids until they cry.  You could easily picture this dad lambasting his kid after the game in the car, but that wasn’t what made him stick out in my mind.  He was sort of polite about it.  Not like Sandy, in an endearing way.  Sort of like he was in counselling for anger management, but wasn’t really getting the point.  He would say things like: “God damn it, Gregory, get up!  Thank you!”  As though he thought that good manners would temper the threatening malice in his voice, instead of making him sound psycotic. 

But what always amazes me about all hockey parents is that they think their kids can hear them.  I mean, I could hear my mom when she yodelled like the love child of Ricola Man and a hyena, but then, so could people in China.  If you’re sitting in the top row of the bleachers and you’re kid is nine, I guarentee that you could promise to buy them a pony for Christmas, because they can’t hear a thing. Half the time they can’t hear their own team yelling at them to get onside.  Wave to them at the beginning of the game, and clap with large arm movements.  Those are the things that they are going to notice.

In fact, you could get by with just pretending to pay attention.  Just don’t be like my mom when she would come to some of my softball games.  Which is to say: Don’t sit in the car reading a book.  It makes it hard to fool your kid into thinking you were watching them.