After confessing my secret hockey ambitions to him, I now had an ally in the Iceman. He was wasting no time with the first order of business—finding me a hockey stick.
“Are you right or left-handed?”
“Right-handed, but I think I might shoot left,” I said.
“Ah, good point,” he said. “Come back tomorrow, and we’ll see what you like best.”
It was tomorrow, and the sticks, intimidating and intriguing as the best things usually are, were lined up against the wall.
There are competing schools of thought on choosing sticks. Although mirror twins, the Lamoreaux sisters both shoot right. Canadian programs tend to steer right-handed players to leftie sticks, and American ones tend to do the opposite. In theory, choosing a stick with your dominant hand on top gives you more finesse whereas placing your weaker hand on top gives your shot more power. In practice, you usually go with whatever feels most natural.
My idea that I might be a left-handed shooter had nothing to do with the above, which I did not know on this particular day, but everything to do with how thoroughly inept I am with implement-driven pursuits. If you want a laugh, hand me a golf club, a baseball bat, a racket of any sort—even a joystick.
Although I spent most of my childhood and adolescence in constant motion, I made no progress in sports requiring that kind of hand-eye coordination. When I played softball, I pitched—erratically at best. I either walked everybody or struck out everybody with no in-between. At the plate, I mostly closed my eyes and prayed. That may have been part of the problem.
Basketball was the only sport that made any sense to me. It took advantage of my slightly ambidextrous nature and kept my hotheaded younger self in check. It was far less rewarding to throw a basketball in anger than it was a club, racket, bat, or an accursed joystick. (I still loathe video games with irrational passion, although I always have and still love Tetris.)
So, as Bob Dylan wisely noted, when you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose. And, I would add, when you know nothing, you might as well be open to all possibilities and follow your instincts. Because I was certain I would mishandle a hockey stick, why not see if left might be a little less awful than right? Why not trust the process for the first time ever?
The Iceman selected various sticks and demonstrated how to shoot a left stick and a right stick (although I did not yet know which was which.) I followed suit, taking the one he would hand me next, switching directions and monitoring the results. Honestly, in my hands they all felt beyond awkward and sometimes painful, but one was decidedly less so.
“What do you think?”
“This one,” I said, as I handed him the mystery and waited for his wisdom.
He smiled. “You are a leftie.”
I didn’t think my first hockey lesson would take place in my walking shoes in the wet cement at the back of an ice rink, but I was learning to check all hockey expectations at the Zamboni door, to be completely open to wherever this journey might take me, and, leftie stick in hand, perhaps to slay some old demons along the way.
