As I’m driving my son home from hockey practice, I start the conversation by saying, “So . . . looked like a good practice.”
Silence . . .
“I said, ‘Looked like a good practice.’”
“That wasn’t a question,” the boy replies.
I recently spent a week in Florida with my son for a roller hockey tournament. We stayed at the Santa Maria Resort on Fort Myers Beach.
The place was great, like a furnished 2-bedroom apartment with a fully appointed kitchen: oven, stove, microwave, fridge, freezer, plates, bowls, pots, pans, silverware, etc. We went to the local Publix grocery the first day and stocked the place up with food and beverages.
We got all this for about $50 a night less than we would have paid for a room at, say, the Embassy Suites. And when I say “room,” I mean that usually when I travel with the boy, the hotel room is in fact a room and we’re both in it together. That’s a problem because he likes to watch TV in hotel rooms and I’d rather read a book.
But with the 2-bedroom setup — each bedroom on opposite sides of the suite, separated by the main room — I didn’t even know he was there most of the time.
Rating: Four stars (out of four).
My son’s hockey team didn’t do so well at NARCh this time around. They got knocked out in the round-robin portion of the tournament.
That left us with some extra time on our hands, some of which we used to drive up to Tampa to watch the Angels get worked by the ordinarily hapless Devil Rays, 7-2.
We got good seats though! — right behind home plate about 10 rows up.
Completing the hat trick of futility, I arrived back in California to find that the mortgage bank I worked for had laid off 400 people, including me.
The good news is that I did get a severance package, unlike the last time I got laid off (from a dot-com company), when all I got was a handshake and an escort to the parking lot.
Oh, and I’ve got more time to read the last Harry Potter book. I’m really sick of Harry Potter but I do want to find out how the whole thing wraps up . . .
We’re off to NARCh for a week. I hope there won’t be thunderstorms every day like the last time we were there.
Let’s have a look at the 5-day . . .
My son’s roller hockey team won the Pacific Cup final last weekend. For teams in California, Arizona and Nevada, Pacific Cup is the biggest tournament of the year, not counting national championships.
The team will be playing at NARCh in a couple of weeks. His 12-and-under team won the NARCh tournament two years ago, but I’m not as optimistic with this year’s bunch.
The problems include:
I’m explaining to my 8th-grade kid that his mom is pretty attractive for a mom, but he’s not seeing it.
I list off several of his friends’ unattractive moms by way of example, and then ask him, “Which of your friends has a better-looking mom than Mom?”
“Lopez,” he says, naming one of the kids on his hockey team.
OK, I’d forgotten about her . . .
My wife is commenting on the smell of our son’s hockey bag. “You need to air that out sometimes,” she tells him.
“Hockey players aren’t supposed to smell like perfume,” he explains.
“What are they supposed to smell like?” I ask him.
“Sweat and toil,” he says. “Broken bones. And dried blood.”
I know some “hockey families” where the kids — boys or girls — can play any sport they want . . . as long as it’s hockey. They have email addresses like smiths4hockey@hotmail.com (assuming their name is Smith), and from the parents’ point of view, it simplifies things a lot. You don’t have kids getting into one sport, losing interest, moving on to something else. From the kids’ point of view? Maybe not so good. And I actually think it helps kids athletically to do more than one sport . . .
OK, I made a mistake on the hockey jerseys . . .
My son’s playing on a new team this season so I had to order new jerseys for him. They asked me what name I wanted to put on the back and I don’t know why, but I gave his first name instead of his last name.
It’s the only thing he talked about all weekend.
“I had my first name on my jersey in second grade!” he said. (He’s in seventh now.) “Does Steve Yzerman have ‘Steve’” — he draws out the “e” sound to make it sound extra ridiculous — “on the back of his jersey? NO! ‘GOAL, NUMBER 19! STEEEEVE!’”
Every time I tried to talk to him about something else, he’d look at me with a goofy blank stare on his face.
“Did you understand what I just said?” I’d ask.
“Does Teemu Selanne have TEEMU on the back of his jersey? . . .”
The NW Rebels are from Oregon. We saw them play a little bit in the round-robin games. They have one very talented kid, but hockey is a team game.
Final score: Bulls 8, Rebels 0.
The Selects are from Georgia. They fall behind 2-0 on the first shift and go downhill from there.
Final score: Bulls 8, Selects 0.
Extreme Wolfpack is from New Jersey, Like the Bulls, they are 2-0 so far in the tournament.
Final score: Bulls 4, Wolfpack 1.
My son’s team, MPC Bulls Blue, is playing in the NARCh 12-and-under Squirt Silver division. Sixteen teams qualified in this division. Each team will play four round-robin games, after which the top eight teams will be seeded into the quarterfinals.
The hockey tournament starts tomorrow . . . the first game’s at 9 in the morning. We’ll need to be there by 8 to check in, so we’ll have to leave the hotel by 7:30.
My son and I are off to Florida, land of hurricanes and shark attacks, where his team will compete in the North American Roller Hockey Championships.
To parents who wish to lead a quiet life I would say: Tell your children that they are very naughty — much naughtier than most children. Point to the young people of some acquaintances as models of perfection and impress your own children with a deep sense of their own inferiority . . . This is called moral influence . . .
One of the moms from my son’s hockey team tells me that there’s too much “silliness” on the team, that the kids need to prepare for games with a little more seriousness.
My son’s hockey game got completely out of hand. I’ve never seen a game like that . . . they led 11-9 before losing 12-11. My boy had eight goals. Neither team could stop anything.
My son wants an Icee after roller hockey practice, so I give him some money and he skates off to the snack bar.
When I get there, the snack bar girl is giving him the Icee and his money back.
It looks like Dominik Hasek may be ending his retirement.
That’s big news at my house because he’s my son’s favorite goalie, but also another blow to the theory — held by my wife and others — that lots of money plus lots of free time equals major satisfaction, even if your life lacks any real direction or purpose.
Now you might say that Hasek loves to play hockey and that’s why he’s getting back into it.
And I say: If he was having so much fun, why did he retire in the first place?
Thomas Junta, a 275-pound “hockey dad,” was convicted of manslaughter for beating to death another parent, 156-pound Michael Costin, at a youth scrimmage.
The point that Junta was trying to get across to Costin was that Costin’s sons were playing too rough and spoiling a nice, fun game of hockey.
Way to go, Dad!
