My brief and illustrious hockey career started and ended in ninth grade gym class. Believe it or not, a public school in upstate New York somehow afforded twelve flimsy hockey sticks in its inventory, in addition to some makeshift goals made out of the finest vinyl netting and PVC pipes. Half of us donned blue pinnies that smelled of sweaty onions, then soon we were off to do the hockeying. And the puck? A plastic, hollow version of the real ones. Better safe than sorry.
Our gym teacher for this fifty-minute class was some barrel-chested redhead who I think was also one of the football coaches. We started with our usual warm up stretches and sit-ups, absolutely the best exercises for the upcoming absurdity at hand. The school building had two gymnasiums, and we were scheduled to use the more run-down one on the second floor. None of my gym classes announced what we would be doing beforehand, so it was sort of a fun surprise to see what we were about to get ourselves into once we opened up the doors to that old basketball court.
As we sat in a circle at center court, our gym teacher stood in the middle and offered a basic overview of what the hell hockey even was. But I was no fool! I knew. I KNEW. Sort of. I knew about Wayne Gretzky and his Edmonton Oilers while in middle school, scanning the "scoreboard" page of the sports section mornings while sucking down a few bowls of Frosted Flakes. What I didn't know at the time, however, is where the hell places like Edmonton or Winnipeg even were. I also never actually saw a hockey game until NBC started airing the All Star Game, shortly around the time Gretzky was traded to the Los Angeles Kings. But who cares! I was ready to lace up our non-existent skates and get into it that gym class.
Our teacher decided we were going to rotate through all the hockey positions so we could better understand where and what the positions can and can't do. I was handling things okay!
Until it came my turn at goaltender.
In case you don't know, I wear glasses. Fuck contacts. I have worn glasses for a very long time. For gym class, this was no different. However, in a game where a puck is flying at your face, I was in need of some more protective gear for my dumb eyeballs. Since the school did not have any hockey masks, the goalies on this day got to wear the next best thing:
Those are safety goggles, dear reader. Typically you find these goggles in places like SHOP CLASS, not GYM CLASS, but here we are. Since I am blind, I had to wear them over my glasses. And of course they're not authentic shop class safety goggles unless the lens part is completely scratched the hell up. Did somebody's fucking cat use these as a play toy? It didn't matter, I had to wear them.
Well lo and behold I couldn't see SHIT. Couldn't stop any shots, couldn't see well enough who had the puck, and I simply got roasted between the pipes. I was getting PISSED. I threw my stick and yelled "I CAN'T SEE OUT OF THESE DUMB THINGS!" before throwing them on the ground as well. And with that, redhead meathead teach tossed me out of gym class. For the rest of the class, I sat alongside a wall, sulking, until class was over. If I had to guess, in my brief goaltending duty I easily recorded the highest goals against average of all time in any organized hockey game, ever. It's hard to set records in sports, but for me and my natural abilities, let me tell you it was easy peasy.