An Ice Hockey Primer

First published August 26, 2005

All the time my son was growing up I coached his ice hockey teams. This means that I spent years standing around ice rinks, plotting complex strategies and line combinations so we could get the drop on teams like the Linda's Craft Center Penguins.

Now most hockey parents know the game, and they can locate a rink from over a mile away by the smell of Zamboni fumes. For the rest of you, here’s a primer on youth ice hockey in North America.

In hockey, we have clever names for each age group. When they first start out, we call them “Mini-Mites,” and “Mites.” In about the fourth grade they graduate out of the personal parasite class, to become “Squirts,” then “Pee Wees.” After that we call them “Bantams” for a couple of years, just so we can get them through puberty.

In high school, when they stand six feet or taller in skates, we repeal that tiny shred of dignity and call them “Midgets.”

Wherever there are programs for children younger than “Mini-Mites,” we call them “Atoms,” the name-inventing guys having completely overlooked bacteria and viruses.

Ice hockey is played with “pucks” and “sticks.” Pucks are small hard rubber discs, designed to elude anything made of wood. Sticks are made of wood.

We give these sticks to the children, whose idea of fun would pretty much be hitting other children with sticks, then we penalize them for doing that. This confuses them, which builds character.

“Checking” is a little-understood part of the game, not to be confused with “Giving The Manager A Check,” which every hockey parent understands. Basically, checking consists of the player gliding across the ice, then crushing another player into the boards. The kids enjoy this because it makes a lot of noise and scares their mothers.

We don't allow them to check until they are about eleven years old, so they will have more permanent teeth to knock loose.

At each end of the ice there is a “net” or “goal.” Each team has a player called the “goalie,” whose job is to stand in front of the net and get hit by the puck. Occasionally a team will “score a goal,” which consists of players raising their arms in wild celebration if the puck happens to miss the goalie and roll into the net. The team who celebrates the most is declared the winner, and the other team files a protest.

The “officials” skate around wearing striped shirts and blowing whistles. Their job is to enforce “the rules,” which were made up by “Canadians.” Making up these rules apparently involved drinking a great deal of “Molson,” because there are a lot of things about hockey, like “Icing the Puck,” that nobody can really explain.

A hockey game is divided into three “periods,” making it just about impossible to have a “halftime show.” This actually works out pretty well in the long run, since the marching band would probably just keep falling down on the ice.

The “other team” is made up of children roughly the size and temperament of a combat Marine battalion masquerading as third graders. Their flagrantly criminal behavior during the game is somehow never detected by the officials, despite the fact that their many transgressions are helpfully and repeatedly pointed out by your team’s alert parents.

After the game, the players from both teams are usually laughing and swapping wedgies before they have their skates off, while the parents are discussing class-action lawsuits.

People sometimes ask me if trudging through all those ice-covered parking lots outside the practice rink three hours before dawn, in the middle of winter, with my son asleep over one shoulder and a bag of tiny pads and skates over the other, was worth it.

Yep.

Copyright © 2005 Michael Ball

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If I Only Had A Bike

First published August 19, 2005

Ok, I realize that I write a lot about the differences between men and women. That’s because there are just so many differences, and most of them are a lot of fun to write about. So get over it.

For instance, the other day I happened to overhear four kids, two boys and two girls, all in about the fifth grade, exchanging fairly typical ten-year-old-kid banter. Suddenly one of the boys shouted at one of the girls, in that universal taunting sing-song that seems to have been genetically hard-wired into every child in the history of the world, “You don’t have a peee-nis!”

Without missing a beat, the little girl replied, “Oh yeah? Well, you don’t have a bike!”

And there we have it – a perfect illustration of the fundamental gap in priorities between the male and female of our species. And guys, I hate to break it to you, but the girls are way out ahead of us.

You see, men have a pathological tendency to get distracted by things that are completely irrelevant to the situation at hand, while women are more prone to stay focused on things that matter – like their ride home.

For adults, who would presumably have moved beyond chanting about who has what body parts, an obvious example of this might be Sports Fandom. Women can apparently enjoy watching a game, then move on to things that actually affect their lives.

Weird, huh?

On the other hand, men feel the need to embrace any sport they watch in pretty much the same way they approach a foot-long chili cheese dog – with a whole lot more enthusiasm than it probably deserves.

To illustrate the point, my wife and I are both passionate hockey fans, but she can usually go right to sleep after our team drops a game. As for me, I’m still pretty upset about the Red Wings trading Adam Oates for Bernie Federko back in 1989. And don’t even get me started on the Tigers and Kyle Farnsworth – that wasn’t even a month ago!

And then there’s the actual playing of sports. I have a female friend who likes to play ice hockey. She likes it a lot. When she’s on the ice she throws her heart and soul into the game and skates like crazy. Then she touches up her makeup and gets on with her life.

When I skated in a men’s hockey league a few years ago, you’d have thought I was playing for an NHL contract extension. I was stupid enough to lay down (I went down on purpose – really I did!) in front of slap shots. I would beat myself to a bruised pulp trying to keep up with bigger, faster, younger, stronger players. I’d try not to limp too much when we headed to our cars after the game, because I didn’t want the guys to think I was some kind of pansy.

And if my wife was still awake when I dragged my groaning carcass into the house, she would simply smile, shake her head, then head off to do something useful.

Which brings us – somehow – to our kids and how they approach sports. Next week, we’ll talk a bit about youth ice hockey.

Copyright © 2005 Michael Ball

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My Grass Is Never Greener

First published August 12, 2005

Ok, I’d just like to know who made it a law that a perfect lawn of rich green grass is good, while all the crap that actually wants to grow in your yard is bad.

First, a little background: I bought my house from a retired gentleman whose sole mission in life was to make sure that no blade of grass in the lawn was longer or shorter than any other. He was a compulsive grass guy. As a result, on the day we moved in I had the most beautiful yard anybody had ever seen.

By the next afternoon feral cats stalked their prey in my crabgrass Serengeti. By the lake, waves of golden dandelions swayed gently in the breeze. A large section of the front yard looked a more like the Baja peninsula than anything I’ve ever seen in Michigan – my son claimed he spotted a vulture sitting on a cactus over by the porch.

So how did this happen? How did the word get out to all the weeds and varmints that the old sheriff was gone and the new one didn’t know his Weed ‘N Feed from his 2-4-D?

All I can figure is that there is some sort of botanical underworld organization for chickweed, plantain, and all the other plants deemed “outlaws” by the Code of the Suburbs. And, like good gangsters everywhere, they moved in and took over the minute the territory opened up.

For a while I tried to be a kind of lawn-care Eliot Ness, slinging my spot-weed-eradicator bottle like a Tommy gun, ruthlessly hunting down and blasting everything that wasn’t good old law-abiding Kentucky Blue Grass. While this was pretty satisfying in a Dirty Harry kind of way, it wasn’t all that effective – for every offender I’d “rub out,” two more would spring up in its place.

So maybe it’s time for us to work on repealing this botanical version of the Volstead Act. I once saw a house in Las Vegas, where watering can present a problem, in which the occupant had paved the yard with concrete and painted it a more or less grass-like green color. This individual was clearly capable of thinking outside the box. Why shouldn’t the rest of us?

First, why can’t I have a lawn consisting entirely of creeping charlie? It’s green, and you never have to mow the stuff. Plus, I’m pretty sure there’s nothing short of a nuclear blast that will kill it. The only down side I can think of is that creeping charlie smells like mint, so it might be kind of like living on a giant Tic Tac. Could be worse.

And who says you shouldn’t cultivate a prize-winning dandelion patch? You could go to dandelion shows and have dandelion home tours, where people go around and gawk at the very best dandelion gardens in town. You’d have little bouquets of dandelions on the table, in stunning arrangements garnished with sprigs of thistle and ragweed.

You could even get out of trouble with your wife by sending her a dozen long-stemmed dandelions – as long as you also sent her a diamond bracelet.

Ok, maybe all that is not such a great idea after all. I wonder what Astroturf costs these days?

Copyright © 2005 Michael Ball

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On Plumbing

First published August 5, 2005

Not too long ago some plumbing broke in our house. This came to my attention when somebody flushed the toilet upstairs and the ceiling in the basement family room crashed down onto one of the cats.

After giving the cat a bath and a mild sedative, my first impulse was to set up some colored spotlights, designate the area an Ornamental Fountain, then sell the house.

It turns out my wife wasn’t quite ready to sell, leaving me with the options of either never using the upstairs bathrooms again, or fixing the pipe. We also had a plugged-up drain in the bathtub, so I got in the Yellow Pages to find a plumber.

The first guy I reached said he could get to us sometime in November, 2015. The second one could come over in two weeks, but he wanted an immediate cash deposit that would cover his next 18 Mercedes payments.

I finally found a small ad for “Kevin the Plumer,” and rationalized that skill with pipes probably didn’t have all that much to do with spelling. As luck would have it, Kevin had some time on his hands, and he didn’t require a deposit, so we agreed that he would stop over and “have a look.”

Kevin showed up in a pickup truck that was pretty much held together by the dirt caked on it. An apparently random collection of rusty tools, connectors, wire, ladders, brackets and bits of pipe had bounced around in the truck’s bed for years, fusing into a sort of grimy abstract sculpture.

Kevin himself was well-matched with the truck, wearing a brown quilted jacket, stained by years of contact with unthinkable substances, and the name “Alvin” inexplicably sewn on the front. He carried a plunger and a small sledgehammer.

Kevin started with the bathtub. He considered the clogged drain thoughtfully in silence for a few seconds, then attacked it violently with the plunger, spraying the bathroom walls and ceiling with black sludge. He had just picked up the sledgehammer and was gazing at the porcelain tub with the hungry look of a crow eyeing road kill, when I stopped him, handed him a $50 bill and thanked him for coming by.

Shaken by my experience with Kevin, I decided to do it myself, with help from my friend Paul. Paul is not a plumber, but he has lots of cool tools and he knows what most of them are used for.

A few days later Paul showed up with new parts and a fairly comprehensive selection of cool tools. We quickly established a working rhythm, Paul whaling away at the pipe, and me slapping tools, pipes, brackets, or beverages into Paul’s hand as he needed them.

The job actually went fairly smoothly, except for accidentally cutting the phone lines. And the electricity. And a couple of supporting ceiling joists. And that little fire. And, of course, what we now simply prefer to call the “pipe-clamp mishap.” In any case, we eventually got everything installed, spliced, reinforced, extinguished, bandaged, and cleaned up.

So if you are ever faced with a similar situation, and you are not yourself a plumber, I advise you to:

a.) become a plumber;

b.) buy some colored lights, then call the realtor; or

c.) get to know Paul.

Copyright © 2005 Michael Ball

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