So where was I?

Floor hockey. I played in the Forest Glade Floor Hockey League for about three years. Both house league and travel. I was an unknown when I started, but I made my way up to the top team eventually. I was small, but quick and had a good shot. House league was house league. Not really any stories to tell. It was the the travel teams that created memories.

We used to travel to Lansing and Battle Creek, MI. And then we had some home tourneys too. There may have been a couple other Michigan cities, but only Battle Creek and Lansing standout. Lansing was where I had one of the more terrifying events of my youth. It was late at night and long after any of the games were played. We were walking from the mall back to our billets house and just goofing around when it started.
Our billet stopped walking and stared out into the dark parking lot for a minute. We looked to see what he was looking at and saw a pair of headlights. Just then, the car started driving toward us. Our billet yelled, “Run!”. We thought he was joking, but then he actually started running. Not sure what was going on, Jeff, myself and the other guy from our team started chasing after our billet. The car kept coming. We followed the billet to railway tracks and started running beside them. No thinking. Just running. Blind fear moving us. Suddenly Jeff was on the ground. It was dark and there weren’t any lights along the tracks. Jeff ran into a tree branch and basically clotheslined himself. He was alright. Just winded. And scared. We all were. Our billet stopped running and we finally had a chance to ask what the hell was going on. Turns out that car had a couple gang members in it and they weren’t very friendly. I have no idea if we were in any actual danger or not for real, but our billet never told us different, so I’m sticking to that story.
In Battle Creek, home of Kellogg’s, one of my billets worked for Kellogg’s and they had a ton of different cereals and treats we had never had before because they weren’t available in Canada. It was awesome. And they gave us a bunch of stuff to take home with us too. Another year, one billet housed half our team. That was a recipe for disaster. They bought us pizza and gave us pop and we were up half the night acting like idiots. Someone took a piss on some leftover pizza and left it on the counter. The next morning, one of the guys who fell asleep ate some. Another guy was given a glass of urine with a straw in it. He was sleeping, so he didn’t know. While asleep, he ended up sucking up some of the piss. It was disgusting. We also, I also, almost burnt down the forest next to their house. We were screwing around in their RV and found a lighter and some flammable liquids and were playing with fire. Thankfully someone put it out before it got too out of hand. When we were running around the house outside, somebody tripped over the down spout on the eavestrough and broke it. They didn’t find out about that until sometime the next few days, I imagine. What a bunch of disrespectful idiots we were.
On the way to one of the tournaments, I had an altercation on the bus. Remember that kid I told you about fighting in class one day? Yeah, it was with him. I had taken one of my dads ball caps to wear to the tourney. At one point, I think I had fallen asleep. I’m not sure. But when I woke up, my hat was missing. I asked the guy sitting next to me and he said he didn’t know. I asked someone else from my team and they didn’t know either. At this point a little panic had started to creep in. It was my dad’s hat. He trusted me with it. Or he didn’t know I took it and I needed to make sure I returned it to its place on the wall when Ingot home. (My dad had a hundred hats hanging on our basement walls.) It was during this mild panic attack that Eric had decided to make a smart ass comment to me. So I did what came naturally to me. I punched him in the face. Solid too. He went down in his seat immediately. When I turned around, the hat had miraculously been returned. No coaches found out about it on the bus. No one ratted me out. The next day at our game, Eric showed up with a black eye. He was on my team. I apologized because at that point I knew it definitely wasn’t him that took it and I thought he deserved that. Smart ass comment or not. The coaches asked how he got it. I told them. But Eric and I were friendly again by then, so nobody got in trouble.

At a home tourney is where I tried my first cigarette. I probably haven’t smoked a whole pack of cigarettes my entire life. That night I bought the only pack I would ever purchase. We smoked a couple out of it and I threw the rest away. Smoking wasn’t for me then and I never really picked up the habit after that. Smoked a bit during my bar hopping college days, but only by bumming off other people and never more than one in a night. If I even finished that one.
The road hockey games were constant and generally friendly. I mean as friendly as friends can be when they want to beat each other at hockey and have sticks to hit each other with to help the process. We even had an unofficial road hockey league. I played for Shenandoah. That was the street I lived on, so that’s the team I played for. Some of the boys played on different teams because it was all based on where you lived. Some of those games got pretty rough. I remember one time, Marc got pissed off at this big guy on either Stillmeadow or Pulbrook. Marc was a little guy too and this guy was playing really chippy. Marc got fed up and two handed this guy right across his back. The guy was twice Marc’s height. Marc’s next move was to utilize one of his best assets. His speed. And he ran his ass away as fast as he could. Lol I stood in shock and awe during this and then laughed. We eventually got back to the game though and Marc never had to deal with any repercussions.
During another street game, one of our friends kept running into the goalie and taking high slap shots at his head. The goalie, Chris, gave Alain one last warning before Alain’a next shot zipped off his head. Chris threw off his helmet and chased Alain down in full goalie gear. Caught him and punched him a few times before Alain’s dad came out on the porch and yelled for it to stop. I went with Alain into his house to console him and Marc stayed outside with Chris. Eventually I hooked back up with Marc and Chris and we laughed about it. It was hilarious to watch Chris chase and catch up to Alain in full gear.
During one other incident after road hockey, Marc and I ended up with a friend’s goalie pads. I think Stephan might have been with us as well. We decided it would be funny to write all kinds of ignorant and rude things on Scott’s pads. Scott, nor his parents were too pleased with us. His dad was really pissed off and was going to make us pay for Scott’s pads. I don’t remember that ever happening though, but I think Marc ended up keeping the pads after that, so maybe his folks did pay for them.
Road hockey is also where I lost my first tooth during hockey. I got knocked on top of the goalie and his reaction was to punch me in the mouth with his blocker on. Busted my tooth in half. That led to my first root canal and first fake tooth. That same tooth would get knocked out again playing ice hockey one night. Both times it got knocked out, it was one of the Rae brothers that did it. Two of my closest friends. Lol Go figure.

This seems like a good time to jump ahead and tell some more hockey stories. When the boys and I got older, our road hockey days expanded to roller hockey leagues. We were usually one of the older teams in the league and we were pretty decent, but there were definitely teams that were better than us. I had a short fuse that used to make Jason mad all the time. He never understood why I had to react to the opposition when they pushed me around. But I did. A lot. I got suspended two or three times. All for fighting. I even fought the opposing goalie once. In my most Matthew Barnaby moment ever, I fought a guy and got tossed. I was so heated at the ref, I threw my stick down toward the hallway like a spear. I hit the sign above the hallway. Right below the seats where the kid’s parents were. They were screaming at me. I ripped off my helmet and threw it down the hallway too a told them to fuck off. Anger management issues were a thing with me for a very long time.