Herb II

“Dad, will you coach my dek hockey team this season?”

“Mine too!” My daughter piped in.

After my perfect season as a substitute coach, I couldn't say no to their requests. Also, being well into middle age, I am apparently developing senility and have forgotten how dangerous dek hockey is.

“Coach, why don't you have pads?”

I looked down to see one of my players (That's all guesswork. He was encased in impenetrable shin guards, elbow pads, gloves and helmet a good three sizes too large. Since he was still standing upright, I'm fairly certain he was a human boy.) swinging his stick painfully close to my bare ankles. My first response was, “Because I'm stupid and want a painfully slow death.” But I've found middle-aged sarcasm is lost on the younger generations. (and my sense of humor is lost on pretty much anyone.) I gave a thoughtful look at, what I was fairly certain was his face, and said, “ I don't know.”

This was enough of an answer and he went off to chase a ball or whack at one of his teammates. (In truth, those are pretty much the same thing.)

After a few minutes of loosely regimented drills, (I was still trying to work up the nerve to get within striking distance (a mile) of their sticks.) it was time to go over fundamentals. We needed to cover the rules.

I learned about the importance of rules. My son and daughter were having their own Stanley Cup in our driveway that weekend.

“Why did you stop us?” my daughter demanded, stalking over to me.

“Slashing,” I explained as I stepped away from her stick.

Her head tilted a little to the side as she took in my verdict. When in trouble, my daughter has two modes. The crushed, world ending sobbing side and the let's-learn-so-we-won't-get-caught-next-time mode. “But I was going after the ball.”

“The ball wasn't near your brother's head.”

“It bounced.” I have give her credit, she didn't even pause.

“You were chasing your brother, swinging your stick.”

“You said to attack the ball.”

“You were screaming that you were going to kill him.”

“That's slashing?”

“That's attempted homicide, but they don't call that in hockey. The closest thing is slashing.”

After this, I thought it would be a good idea to go over the basic rules with my team. We called a huddle in front of the net. “Ok guys, listen up.”

“Those two birds are watching us play.”

“Birds don't watch dek hockey.”

“What are they doing then?”

There's one thing about an adult teaching kids, usually the kids are looking up. At this age, they are easily distracted. (The birds were watching us. I could tell from their laughter every time I ducked.) I crouched down so there would be fewer distractions. “Ok guys, listen up.”

Eleven helmets dropped and looked down.

“Why are there holes in the dek?”

“That's so water will drain.”

“Last season, it rained really hard and the corner was filled with water.”

“I know, I skidded through it like this...”

“GUYS!”

“Yes coach?”

“Let's focus. We need to cover some of the rules.”

“I know the rules, coach!”

“I got called for tripping once.”

“We'll cover tripping in a minute.” Maybe there was a hint of desperation in my voice. “Ok, guys. Who knows what high sticking is?”

You'd think, after two kids and surviving my wife being pregnant twice, I'd have a better grasp on cause and effect at my age. I had eleven armed and armored kids gathered around me... listening intently.

You might be wondering, what does it sound like when eleven sticks are instantly raised from the ground to straight in the air? I can tell you...

It sounds like a middle-aged man screaming in panic followed by eleven kids giggling. The giggling is what hurt the most.

“Coach, why are you bleeding?”

“I had a bloody nose once. I didn't get hit by a hockey stick though.”

“What hit you?”

“I ran into someone's head.”

“Ok, guys, sticks down,” I said, still dazed.

You know, I think they giggled harder this time when I screamed as all the sticks sliced back down.

“Coach, you should have to wear a helmet too.”

I can understand why Coach Herb had a reputation for swearing.

Out of Warranty

“Since you're over forty, we need to run some tests.”

In case you are wondering, the Caucasian, male kidney (for all I know, it could be all kidneys, I hate to make broad sweeping statements.) is only good for forty years. After that, you need tests before you can do anything.

I found this out recently. Over the past two weeks, my neck and shoulder have been “twitchy”. This is my medical term meaning it hurts enough to remember, but not enough to actually do anything about. Well, yesterday, that “twitchy” went into full blown “is amputation an option.”

Now, I've gone through four knee operations (not the wimpy arthroscope stuff either. The real chisel and hammer, bone shards flying kind.), a fractured toe (definitely not gout, so don't even think it.) and child birth. (Yeah, I know my wife “had” the baby, but I suffered through the labor. (You might want to grab another cup of coffee, this is going to be a long side track.) I have a pretty cool bone disease. I get extra growths throughout my body. At one time, I had one on the middle finger of my left hand. When people would ask why four knee operations, I'd either make up a story about land mines and guiding the insurgents through the mountains of Afghanistan, or sometimes tell them the truth. Through my twenties and thirties, I got immense pleasure, especially at work, showing what the disease did. I could legally and morally give anyone the middle finger.

I lost this passive/aggressive outlet for my deep-seated frustrations when my daughter was born. My wife somehow mis-planned the epidural and didn't have it in place at the third month. So, when we got to the hospital and the anesthesiologist was overbooked, we resorted to the age-old “squeeze the husband's hand” method of pain relief. Well, after the blessed event (she let go of my hand) I saw several things. The growth on my middle finger was gone. My wedding ring was a wedding oval. Oh, and I had a beautiful, wrinkle-covered daughter. That's, from what I've heard from unreliable third parties, when I passed out the first time.)

So, I'm no stranger to pain. Today, it was bad enough for a trip to the doctor. After an initial examination, it was determined that an x-ray was in order. A few doses of radiation and it was back to my room to wait for the Dr. to read the film and come back. At this point, I just wanted something to ease the pain until I could see my real Dr for a long term solution. A few minutes later, the emergency room Dr did just that. “Do you smoke?”

“Not really, an occasional cigar.”

“The x-rays show a spot on your lung. You're young and healthy, so I'm not that worried about it, but want to get another angle on the x-ray.”

While the pain in my shoulder didn't stop, I wasn't really noticing it any more. The doctor was rather attractive and thought I was young. Then the words “spot”, “lung” and “on” seeped through. A young doctorette though I was young and healthy even with a spot on my lung. I still had it.

I went back for more x-rays and then back to the room to wait for the young, cute doctor. That's when I found out there's a warranty on the adult male kidney. And I was no longer young and healthy. A CT scan was ordered because the second set of x-rays were inconclusive. My middle-aged kidneys needed to be tested to see if they could handle the dye used in the CT scan.

There is a bit of good news though... In order to get a more accurate x-ray so they could conclusively say they weren't sure what the spot on my lung was, the radiologist had me grab my left elbow and attempt to place it behind my right ear. While that was physically impossible, it did move whatever was “twitchy” back to where it should be.

Now that the immediate pain was gone, I was able concentrate on what the doctorette had said... I was no longer young.

Practice

This spring, I got a terrifying email. “Dek Hockey practice”.

Oh, the email started off innocently enough (I'm paraphrasing. Reading the email still gives me panic attacks). “Parents, the kids have had a great season, since playoffs start on Saturday, we're going to have a practice Friday night to show them positions.

Let me explain dek hockey, if you are not familiar with the sport. It's hockey, with a ball. They play it in an enclosed area, like hockey, but instead of ice and skates, they have a ball, shoes, shin pads, elbow pads, gloves and a helmet. You may think it's enclosed to keep the ball in. That might be true, but the real reason is; when you give a group of 6-9 year olds wooden sticks, federal saftey laws require that they be separated from the public.

The email went on to lie that the parents would only stand in the positions. I'd just gotten over a severe case of a mutated Ebola-SARS-Swine-Avian flu attack. (I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't fought off this mutated virus, it would have swept across the world with devasting results.) I figured I owed it to my son to show up and support him. After all, it was only to show positions, help them figure out where they needed to play...

The first drill sounded simple. When the ball goes into the corner, the kids are supposed to pass it up the boards. (the main point being not to pass it in front of their goal...) The coach passed the ball into the corner, a kid ran after it, passed it up the boards to a waiting teammate. “Fathers you pressure the kids.”...

There are several things wrong with that sentence. The kids were armed with deadly weapons. We were outnumbered. The kids were armed with deadly weapons.

After several hundred trips into the corner, almost as many bruises on my shins and a growing desire to whack one of the little monsters, they called a break. Fathers against sons, in a game that would go down in history as one of the bloodiest battles. Up and down the dek we raced, sticks flying, parents crippled and kids laughing evily.

I've read enough medical journals (ok, my wife has nagged me enough about junk food and exercise) to know that seeing dark spots are not a good thing. When I started seeing double, it was time to sit down. (Ok, it wasn't so much a decision.) Two heart attacks and a stroke later, the “practice” was over and I was allowed to seek propper medical treatment.

This fall, when the email came, my wife finally found me, curled up in a ball whimpering.

“What's wrong?” I think there might have been some worry in her voice.

“Dek hockey practice...”

To my horror, my son was right behind his mother and sent up a cheer. My only hope of ignoring the email and explaining to my son how it hadn't been delivered was gone.

However... this time would be different. I was healthy, the Ebola-SARS-Swine-Avian flu had been completely wiped out.

“I'm going to beat you so bad.” my son started off with the trash talking on the way to the practice.

“Oh yeah? I'm going to bury you so deep they won't be able to dig you out.” I countered.

“That was good!” (He needs a little work on the whole trash talking.) “We'll, after we get home, I'm going to throw away your keys!” (Again, we're going to have to work on this.)

How did I do this time? I made it through the practice on my feet. I even managed to play with a broken ankle. (I found out that the official dek hockey ball, while about the size of a baseball, is made out of rocks and probably pleutonium and spikes pop out right before it hits your ankle.) Did the parents win? Well, the coach was the kids' goalie and the team's regular goalie was ours. While the adults played their best, our goalie pretty much summed it up when he wanted the parents to shoot on him.

However, I did win the face off against my son at least once. I think that was because I went for the ball and he went for my ankles. So, while techinically I won the face off, he wasn't the one limping. “Old age and experience will beat youth and skill” might be true. But when youth comes armed with hockey sticks and a thirst for blood, old age doesn't stand a chance.

Paintball

“So, daddy, do you think you maybe shouldn’t have gone to play with those kids?” My son asked, in a tone I’m sure his mother had been teaching him the previous five hours. The subject was raised by the state of my pants and my limp as we walked across the parking lot from the ice cream shop.

It had started very innocently four weeks ago. One of the kids (anyone closer to my son’s age than mine I guess is categorized as a kid now. I’m not sure when that happened. When your own son thinks a twenty-one year-old is a kid compared to you, it’s probably best not to think too hard about it. Instead, I added a few more pictures to the photo album I will show his first girlfriend.) invited me to play paintball. He and his friends were going for his twenty-first birthday.

Now, you might be thinking someone of my advanced age would be too old to play paintball. If so, you don’t need to tell me. My wife did, her mother did and so did several friends. I think I even got some spam about being too old, but I don’t read so well without my bifocals now. Another point that was raised is the well-publicized fact that it hurts when those little balls hit you.

When you’ve been hit in the crotch by a thirty-five pound missile yelling, “Daddy!” when she sees you, a paint ball doesn’t seem so intimidating. Add in two consecutive kids with springs in their legs and impeccable timing. You’d think I’d catch on the first time my son bounced straight up into my chin; or my nose, or my mouth, or my eye.

So, even with all the well-intentioned bashing of my failing health do to my age, I thought it’d be fun and asked my wife if I could go out and play with the other kids. With permission in hand, I RSVPed.

Being the senior citizen among this group, and twice the age of the guest of honor, I’ve started to feel my age. Maybe my step has a little less pep now than it did ten years ago. But damn it, I am not old. (It’s true, if you repeat a lie enough times you start to believe it.)

I put my orthopedic shoes on, trimmed my beard so the gray wasn’t as noticeable and got dressed for a fun afternoon of paintball last Sunday. I left the house with my travel mug of coffee. (I know it wasn’t that long ago that I had the conversation with my wife. “Why do your parents and my dad always have to have coffee when they go anywhere. If it’s midnight, we have to wait for them to find their travel mug, (always look in the car first) fill it, then creep out to the car." They never drank it, but they had to have it.)

Before I go any further, I should say there was one person that was supportive of my endeavor. My wife’s brother remarked that I should do well, since paintball requires cunning. I’m sure he didn’t mean that since I was old, it was a good thing I still had some of my senses left and would hopefully use them instead of trying to keep up with the kids.

There’s a paintball place right next to our house. It’s a huge building and there’s a field (notice the word field. Meaning, flat, open space, often with the complete absence of hills of any kind) right next to it. This is what I expected. I didn’t expect the overgrown trail that led into the Western Pennsylvania Jungle.

We were armed and given a bag of paint balls. After I picked up the ones I dropped, (Ok, you try and pour a stream of marbles into a small hole when your fingers are cold) I got loaded up and we were off. The course was, for lack of a better word, vertical. I’m pretty sure I saw mountain goats laughing at us as our team followed the path to our fort.

The objective was simple. Find the other team’s fort, capture their flag and bring it back to our fort. Whoever accomplished this; won. Then I realized what I’d gotten myself into. Someone actually asked, “Who wants to charge the other fort?”

Believe it or not, several people volunteered. I wasn’t one of them. I was looking for a comfortable place to sit, where I could watch and shoot the other team. The ideal place would have a table and a cup of coffee.

Our team won the first game. Our chargers had them pinned down and no one made it to our fort. After waiting for several minutes, I went to check it out. Apparently, a limp and muttered swearing at each rock you stumble over is the perfect camouflage for humans. I made it to a place right above their fort without anyone seeing me. From there, I was able to pick off the last of their defenders.

We played for five hours. I ended up covered in mud. I still have the bruise on my thigh and bubble on my knee from where I was hit. I’m sure I have several other bruises, but hopefully the overall pain will keep them masked until they heal.

On the way home, I lifted my travel mug, full of luke-warm coffee in a toast--I’d kept up with the kids. Next time, I’ll suggest we play on a Saturday, so I have a full day to recover. As I drove home, wincing at each bump, I drank my coffee. I may be old, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to not drink the coffee. Hopefully I’ll remember where my mug is tomorrow…