Monday, January 4, 2010
The "Equipment Malfunction" Story
It was an ordinary day. It’s a Saturday and Carol, Tad and I are headed to another hockey game. Our son Tad plays for the Lancaster Firebirds in a youth hockey league. This afternoon his game is at The Skatium Ice Rink in Haverford, Pennsylvania, a town in Delaware County which is to the southeast of us. Last night Tad slept with three of his teammates at Kevin K’s house. Besides Tad and Kevin, Rodney B. who is the leading scorer on the team and Russell M. the goalie were there. We picked Tad up about a half hour ago at Kevin’s house and loaded the goalie’s equipment as well as the other three boys’ equipment in our van. If you have ever traveled with hockey equipment, you’ll know what the smell is like. SWEATY!! And we had four sets of it after a game on Saturday. Tad traveled with us since the other car was full. They gave us directions to the rink, since they couldn’t leave immediately. Directions sounded easy, since the rink supposedly is off of Rt. 30E. The key word is SUPPOSEDLY! This is pre-cell phone era and pre-GPS era. We got lost!! We stopped for directions three times and each time got different directions. One time we stopped at a neighborhood corner store near Philadelphia. I got out and told them to lock the doors until I got back. I went in the store and the cashier was behind bullet-proof glass. He had no idea where Haverford was, let alone an ice rink. Well, after two hours of searching and game time in five minutes, we made the decision to find our way home. Tad was not a happy camper. He would have to explain why we didn’t get there. After all we had the goalie’s equipment and the other two boy’s equipment. About an hour later we got home and stretched out in front of the TV to try to unwind after our crummy day. About two hours later the door bell rang. Tad answered the door and found his teammates standing there. Boy were they worried!! They thought something terrible had happened to us on our way down and stopped to see if they could help. We shared our story with them and they told us the other team supplied them with equipment for the game. All was finally well at LDubs’ that night. They promised us they would never ask us to bring the equipment with us again!!! It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy. PS - In pix, Tad is the center player in the back row.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment