stuff123

Something that we used to do as kids, here in Canada, is that we would go find our road hockey stick, worn out old tennis ball (the one in the picture is almost brand new—still got lots of hair), ball glove (in case you were going to be the goalie), home built hockey net (wood & potato sacks) and truck all the gear over to local schoolyard. Nobody used the cellphone or emailed a text message. They didn’t exist yet. You just showed up in the playground. You waited for the game to start. So you shot the worn out old tennis ball at the net.

Sure enough, a Johnny 2 would show up and say “Can I play?”. The answer was always yes.

It didn’t matter because after a while you’d just switch.

You did that long enough for Johnny 3 to show up and you went through the same questions. Now if Johnny 4 showed up, well then it was a whole new game. You got 2 teams and now you have to decide who’s gonna’ pair up with who and which one is gonna’ be Montreal and which one was gonna’ be Toronto.

If you didn’t have a second hockey net you got creative. You used the nearest wall, found a rock, a piece of wood, one of your rubber boots. It didn’t matter what you used as posts. You agreed on the rules and you negotiated whether it was in or out. You did this for 5 or 6 hours and the score was probably 824 to 810 but nobody knew the score. It didn’t matter. The game is what mattered. Making new friends was the reward. Not how many guys were in your mob/horde/team/crew. We all took a break and went home for dinner.

And when dinner was done, you trucked all the gear over to the local grocery store parking lot and started it all over again. Stores closed at 6:00 back then and they chained the parking lot access so there were no cars in the lot. They had lights. Once in a while, they even repaved it. It was our Maple Leaf Gardens, our Montreal Forum. We used to negotiate back and forth as to which one it would be.

Everybody was their favourite hero. Sometimes you had to negotiate because you couldn’t both be Johnny Bower.

The tool of choice was your favourite hockey stick and if you used it as a weapon against one of the other players, the decision of the two teams was swift and close to final. You were no longer allowed to play the game until you apologized for your bad behaviour. If you didn’t apologize you were sent home crying because no one would give you the ball. You were dismissed from the tribe.

They weren’t cruel. If you showed remorse they would invite you to play and the game would continue. All is forgiven.

Where did it all go wrong?
How did we forget how to play?
How did we forget how to seek out new friends?

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