University of Michigan.
Where sorority girls hook up with every frat boy and athletes are seen as gods.
Mia Jones was nothing but a nobody for her entire life, never invited to parties or asked to prom.
Nolan Dubios was the star athlete everyone w...
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Innocence. By the Oxford English Dictionary, it defines innocence as a pure, guileless, or naive person or used euphemistically to refer to a person's virginity.
But the Urban Dictionary and guys define it as a person who are scared of sex, who are pussies for not fucking a girl.
Hockey players are seen as the douchebags of the male population and I can confirm that most are. I on the other hand don't see myself fitting into that category. I may be an 18-year-old virgin but at least I have that type of respect for myself and women, unlike every guy I had ever known. As guys in my life grew up, teammates or other classmates who had sex with every girl in school, I was focused on my future. I never saw the need to hook up with people for the sake of fun. I wanted my life to be meaningful and be able to care for and love someone before I gave it up whether that be tomorrow or five years, I didn't care what others would say about it but there was a time when I did. I made up lies about it but truly only close friends knew that wasn't true.
But I never really did have friends if I was being honest with myself. Yeah, I talked to people at school or at practice but no one truly was ever there for me other than my parents. I never had time for it so I brushed it off every day for the entirety of my life.
Hockey was on my mind all day every day since I was a kid. I never had a day off. Wake up, workout, go to school and during recess growing up I would go to the gym and run laps and do conditioning to maximize my ability on the ice, I wouldn't eat junk food or anything processed which wasn't hard in France because we were like the Americans who eat donuts for breakfast, lunch and diner with a side of Twizzlers and a Coke. Once school was done, my mom would come to pick me up and bring me to the rink. I was in skates the moment I left my mother's womb my dad would say. My dad had played hockey growing up in Canada. He had moved to France where he had met my mom when he was freshly out of college, he fell in love with my mom and stayed with her, and decided to start a family with her in France. I had always admired that about my dad, giving up everything for someone you loved. That was something I had thought about frequently, falling in love and being fine with sacrificing everything for that one person.
After getting the offer from the University of Michigan on a full-ride scholarship for hockey, I knew I needed to take that opportunity. I knew right when the words rolled off my tongue the day I told my mom and dad that I was going to Michigan, that it would absolutely destroy her but as my dad reminded her that he left Canada to follow his dreams, I would be doing the same. I would be moving over 4,050 miles away to follow a dream I had had since I was a kid playing hockey every day outside in the winter, all bundled up like a penguin as my mom watched from my bedroom window, taking pictures of me.
But every day I was gone from home, home being Sète, France, a beautiful town, a commune in the Hérault department, in the region of Occitania, southern France where I lived on the canal and being able to wake up to brightly colored boats floating in the water and children laughing as they played in the streets. Growing up in Sète, every hockey player dreamed of being the next André Peloffy, a forward for the New York Rangers I long for the sense that that city gave me.
