The Game

[Paul de Denus]

His left hand hooks like a lobster claw, the weathered baseball mitt all crusty and snapping. On his right, he wears his brother’s beat-up hockey glove, just as ugly and cumbersome. He’s cut a foot off the end of his stick for an easier shot. Behind him leans a makeshift net of discarded hockey sticks, laced and lanced in the snow to serve as goal posts. He fires the rubber ball off a wall some twenty feet away, then quickly flips his stick around, legs splaying like Glenn Hall as he attempts to stop the returning shot which rattles off the lumber, upstairs, glove side. The game goes on for what seems hours as he fires and turns, kicks and flails, flops and bounces about the frozen yard as if it were a slippery trampoline - each miraculous save followed by a heady roar, each mishandled goal spit upon with a savored school yard profanity - until Mrs. Shaver skates out her door and tells him to “stop it already!” as he’s knocked a picture from her wall and completely rattled her glassware and nerves.

[Angela]

Love the tags.  Don't know much about hockey, but do know a thing or two about imagination, and this is full of it.

[Paul de Denus]

@G- yeah, the Peg is my old home town- I remember the Jets (have their old jersey somewhere) I love hockey and wish my folks had let me play pee-wee but no- had to make up for it somehow!!!

[Gita]

Funny that I just finished reading a sports column in the Atlanta paper about how the Thrashers hockey team has left town and been bought by the city of Winnipeg. I was feeling all outraged and nostalgic for hockey, then I found this 6 of yours. Great write! Very creative use of net. Tell Mrs. Shaver to chill.

[Teresa]

You make me wish I loved sports.  That takes a tremendous amount of skill, sir.

[Steve Wayne]

Wow, a lot goes on in that game, for sure.  Mrs. Shaver has a point, certainly.

[Jamie Hogan]

A skillful illumination of the nature of a competitor, PdD. The great ones, in any sport, all have tales of the people they've annoyed and the things they've broken in the name of improvement, chasing the dream. Like BC, I am seriously jealous of how in touch you still are with the nature of youth.

[bolton carley]

i love your tellings of youth and commitment.  no one does it better.