No thing gets left behind

After you've actually forgotten to bring your child to a their own hockey game, there's really not much else you can do wrong that's worthy of repeating. But I'm an equal opportunity screwer-upper so there's a recent incident involving the Boy.

First off, I and most every other parent has been overheard in a malodorous dressing room preaching emphatically to their child, "It's YOUR hockey bag and YOUR equipment, so it is YOUR responsibility to make sure everything is in it." This line is generally uttered after it's realized, often too late, that some piece of equipment is missing. For instance, these very words were no doubt uttered when one of the Boy's teammates forgot his pants for a game more than an hour from home. Dad, in this case, resorted to seeking out the closest Walmart and purchasing the cheapest pair of pants he could find. Post-game, the same pants, all pricetags and stickers still intact were returned to said Walmart, having served their purpose. I bet you didn't know Walmart rented hockey pants? Well now you do.

This past season the Boy's team was entered into a tournament at Niagara University, Home of the Purple Eagles. Cross-border tournaments are different and fun. You get to travel to a different place and generally play a bunch of different teams. But out of town tournaments are always also a little hectic with having to pack clothes, snacks, beer, equipment, the dog who will be dropped off at friends or the kennel, beer, passports, directions, etc., etc., etc.

I took the Friday off work to give us plenty of time to drop off the pooch and take our time getting to the first game on Friday night. Before we left the house I asked the standard question "Did you double check your bag to make sure you have everything?"

"No, but mom just washed a bunch of my stuff and threw it all back in. I haven't touched it since my last practice," was the response.

We did arrive early, checked into our hotel and proceeded to the rink, which was a little off the beaten path. Niagara University isn't really close to anything - save for a couple of outlet malls. At the rink, as usual, Dad, Mom and Sis headed up into the stands to watch the game that preceded the Boy's, while he went down for the pre-game warm up with his teammates.

About 30 minutes later and 30 minutes prior to the first game of the tournament, the Boy came trudging, ashen-faced up into the stands.

"What did you forget?" I asked almost immediately.

"Actually, what did YOU forget?" he half-sarcastically replied.

My mind almost immediately doubled back to a mere 24 hours before when I obediently dropped off and then picked up the Boy's skates from the regular sharpening place. I went from the sharpening place to another rink in town where I had an errand to run and I didn't want to leave the seriously over-priced footwear out in the open in the backseat of the car. I prudently placed the skates in the safe recesses of trunk. Safe and sound. Out of sight and now quite unfortunately out of mind.

I don't need to tell you that, of all the pieces of equipment you can forget, skates are a pretty high on the list of necessity. And skates are not nearly as easy to replace with a quick trip to the local Walmart or Canadian Tire. Skates don't grow on trees south of the 49th parallel like they do up here in the frozen northern homeland. Skates generally need to be worked in. Today's skates, with their near NASA-approved technology, are typically "baked" and molded to fit the foot for maximum comfort and effectiveness. A wide range of options and scenarios were quickly tabled and just as quickly untabled.

1) The Boy would simply miss game one, Dad would endure immense shame and ridicule and we'd find somewhere to buy a cheap pair of replacements for game two.

2) The Boy would simply miss game one (still not Dad's preference) and then Dad would drive back two and a half hours across the border to retrieve the skates from the trunk and return in time for game two the next morning.

3) The Boy would simply miss game one (an increasingly likely but unceasingly unpopular scenario) and then Dad would meet Mom's father (who would need to be cajoled into the role of skate courier) at some agreed upon halfway point.

Only one other option remained. How about checking to see if the rink's pro-shop happened to have a pair of skates they could loan the Boy? As luck would have it, the local Rink Rat (as they are affectionately known) did think he had a pair of skates he could lend the Boy, but he would have to find them and they would need to be sharpened. In fact, what the Rink Rat found was a vintage pair of skates which were at least a size too small and seriously lacking in ankle support.

We nervously watched the pre-game skate at the Boy tried his damnedest to make the instruments play the tune. These skates simply weren't up to the challenge and the Boy sat dejectedly on the end of the bench as the Rink Rat set off to see if he could locate another pair. To his credit, he returned with an only slightly larger, but somewhat sturdier pair for the Boy to try. Far from ideal, the Boy got through the game on these newly borrowed wheels. We were indeed indebted to the Rink Rat who went out of his way to help. Maybe he had a kid whose skates he had somehow unwittingly and unintentionally forgotten in another country?

The game itself was not pretty as our boys fell to the competition 4-1. To add insult to injury, there was a melee at the end of the game which saw three players from our team incur game misconducts. Suddenly opportunity presented itself as at least one of the three ejected boys happened to have nearly the same sized feet as the Boy. "Sorry about the game misconduct, but I guess you won't be needing those skates then?"

As luck or unluck would have it, depending on your perspective, another game led to another player's ejection and another prime opportunity to borrow some steel. Another pair of slightly smallish skates were loaned and the Boy was able to play, albeit with increasingly sore feet.

The crisis was somewhat averted and the Boy was able to play in all three games. The team did not advance beyond the round robin and that was probably for the best as far as at least one family was concerned.

The moral, of course, to this particular story is....Always check YOUR own equipment bag and NEVER rely on YOUR increasingly old man to have the presence of mind or basic ability to transport any of YOUR equipment or YOUR SISTER for that matter to its required destination.

#imahockeydad