Finding 35

5. Growing up in a skating family

It is interesting when you think back when you were a kid how your development is different from that of other people.  My elementary years were much like everyone else’s except different.  I was what was called, a rink-rat.  That is, I spent a lot of time in skating rinks.  Not being old enough to be left home alone, I spent much of my time going to skating rinks with my sisters when they had figure skating lessons.  It is amazing how much time you can spend looking for hockey pucks in skating rinks.  And I was always amazed at how many hockey pucks get lost in the bleachers, or behind the boards in these old rinks. 

My two sisters, both older, four and a half and seven years older were seriously into figure skating.  My whole family was.  From as far as I can remember, I was in skating rinks after school.  Mary Angela (the oldest) and Elizabeth were competitive figure skaters.  There were in competitions it seemed like every month, doing figures and free dances, and skating pairs, axles, toe loops, and doing footwork.  I remember my mother sewing figure skating dresses, my sisters bleaching the laces of their skating boots, and my dad splicing music for skating programs on 8-track tape. Even to this day, when I hear the music from old classical recordings, I instantly associate it as skating music. 

There would be write-ups in the newspaper, and pictures of Mary Angela and Elizabeth with awards. Elizabeth was trying to compete at the same level with Mary Angela even though she was 3 years younger.  That must have been tough.  Perhaps that is why Elizabeth moved to dance after figure skating.  Only later did my parents realize that this made Elizabeth unhappy, having to compete with Mary Angela.

My family was so into Figuring Skating that they made my father President of the Dartmouth Figure Eights Skating Club.  The irony of this was that neither of my parents could skate.  I recall seeing my dad skate once, and lets just say it wasn’t...graceful.  But he had fun!  Only now, some 25 years later do I understand why my father was President of the skating club for those years.  As a banker, he understood how things were organized, and he knew how to get things done, and in those early days of the skating club, it wasn’t very organized, and he thought it could be so much more.  Mary Angela told me that dad didn’t want the job, but that people involved at the time felt it should be a man in charge (oh how the days were different back then) and he signed on to help make the club better.  They began bringing in instructors from other bigger cities and bringing some formality to the organization.

But for me, it just meant spending weekends eating chocolate bars and pop in cold rinks, watching the canteen french fry fryer slowly heat up and liquefy the mass of cooking oil, rolling hockey pucks on benches, and hanging out with lots of teenage girls.  This would have meant something if I was older, but being 6 years old, it was no big whoop.

I did meet two twin sisters in skating that would turn out to be elementary friends throughout elementary school.  Michelle and Nicole Baiocco.  Twin sisters that I would be teased about for what seemed an eternity at the age of seven.  Oh how being 7 years old seems like forever!  Their family was very different from mine, but figure skaters they were.

While my sisters figure skated, I played hockey.  I started skating very young.  Being in a rink all the time, what would you expect?  When I started playing hockey, I was one of the few kids that could skate backwards.  And because of that, I was always playing defense, and I shot left.  Minor hockey was a way of life for me from primary to grade 8.  I don’t think my dad ever missed a game.  We had hockey practices on Saturday mornings, or the occasional night, and games on weekends, and the occasional tournament.  I wasn’t on the best team, but I usually had the highest number of penalty minutes for our team.  Not only was I a fast skater backwards, but I could crosscheck.  Apparently, that isn’t allowed, and is good for a 2-minute penalty.

Every year I was on the all-star team of our league, but I think there were 4 leagues, so no big deal. I played hockey up until Adam, whatever that is, back in the days when you were allowed to check-but not crosscheck. 

I have two distinct memories of my scorching hockey career.  When I was about eight years old, and I was on the ice behind a kid on my team with the puck, he was just outside their blue-line, I was behind on the left.  I yelled out to the kid to pass the puck.  He didn’t.  Instead he went to take a slap shot, yes, from outside the blue line!  I was at about center ice, anyway, his stick comes up, and hits me in the face and I am knocked down to the ice.  This was before they had mandatory face-masks.  I was hit above my left eye, and blood was everywhere.  I remember the coaches jumping over the boards and running, and before I knew it my dad was one the ice.  Blood spreads very quickly on cold ice.

Turns out I had to get stitches, and the nurse gave me a sticker for my shirt that said I was a great patient or something like that.  It made me proud.

My second vivid hockey memory was of my dad drilling holes into my hockey helmet later that afternoon and screwing a new facemask onto the helmet.  There wouldn’t be another accident like that, ever.

I can still feel the tiny scar underneath my left eyebrow.