Wellwoods Origins: Tales from the Waybackwhen (Volume 1)

 Warning - this story takes place before POGs were a thing.

I was recently asked by the fine folks at HNIC's Play On! to write a blog post about my most memorable street hockey moment for a contest they're running.  I had lots to choose from, but after much deliberation the obvious choice was to go ALL the way back to the fateful day in 1992 when I had my very first encounter of the street hockey kind.  Here's my 500-word entry:

My First Street Hockey Game
by Morgan Tierney

My love-affair with the game began at the tender age of 7.  My family had just moved from a busy street in the city to a house way out in the ‘burbs.  I vividly remember spending my first night in that house, surrounded by scary stacks of cardboard boxes.  In the morning I was awoken by a sound I’d never heard before – the clatter of hockey sticks on pavement.  Being a somewhat “alarmist” child, I automatically assumed that aliens were behind it and that we were all going to die.  I got dressed and crept out onto the front lawn to investigate. 

It probably didn’t take my neighbours’ kids long to notice the tiny girl gawking at them bug-eyed, but they played on as though I was invisible.  I had never seen anything like this before – children playing in the street?  Unsupervised?  Did they even have parents?  Were they feral?  Should I call the police???  The whole thing was too much for my poor little brain to handle, so I just stood there, frozen and mute. 

In the minutes that followed, I became absolutely fascinated by the game.  The dekes, the shots, the flurries of activity in between yelling “Car!” ...I didn’t understand any of it, but it was hypnotic.  Now that I knew these wild Street Children weren’t a threat, I had one goal and one goal only.  I had to get in on this.

“Can I play?”  I squeaked, inaudibly. 

Shockingly, they didn’t hear me.

Gaining a bit of courage, I walked out onto the street, into the middle of the game.  I figured that if my neon-yellow 90’s windbreaker didn’t attract their attention, my purple tie-dye baseball cap definitely would. (did I mention that I was a really, really cool kid?)

Sure enough, someone yelled “Time out!” and the game stopped before I could get trampled.  The boy who I assumed was their leader came over and looked down at the scrawny girl who had wandered into their game.  He was 10 years old, but at the time I guessed he had to be at least 18.  I was terrified.

“Can I play?” I’m actually not sure if the words came out or if I just mouthed them.

And that’s when that 10-year-old boy looked me right into my Extra-Thick Nerd Glasses® and said four words – words that would change my life forever.  Four words that still echo in my brain every time I uncover a mysterious bruise, or twitch myself awake in the middle of the night.  Four words that would kick off thousands of hours spent outside in the dead of winter, playing a game that would only end when the sun went down on or when I got hurt by the ball.

“You can be goalie.”