Squad Goals

I’d like to tell you about one of the most emotionally confusing days in my life.
I played in a hockey league growing up and to that it was organized just meant that all of the kids got their gear on and found the ice, but what happened beyond that was controlled chaos.

One day, the team we were playing against didn’t have enough players show up, cuz who would’ve thought that kids wouldn’t want to wake up at 5 a.m on a Saturday? So my coach sends me over to play on the other team. The optimist in me would like to think that the rationale behind this decision was “oh, we better send them one of our best players” while the pessimistic side of me heard “You are the weakest link, goodbye!” (If you have a hurtful hypothesis about the choice, do like your mama said and keep it to yourself) My normal teams jerseys were blue and the other teams jerseys were red so they threw a yellow penny on me and called it a day. The other coach asked me my name, but he asked in that same tone of voice that you ask people if they want the last slice of pizza as you put your greasy paws all over it (I know, I know, you never ask that) Because of my penny the coach just called me “Yellow” the whole game. “Nice skating, Yellow! Way to go, Yellow!” I was offended for two reasons: 1. Mark is a one syllable name, it’s not that difficult and if you’re not going to use the information then why even ask. And 2. Although most kids my age think of “yellow” as 50% of the colors mentioned in a Wiz Khalifa song, thanks to Monty Python and the Holy Grail (a statement rarely ever used) I know that calling someone yellow is calling them cowardly so I felt as though he was shouting at me for being afraid of something in the 8th century, but at the same time I felt proud of myself for being so young and still having that knowledge. To compound the confusion, I scored two goals that game and scoring a goal against my usual team left me very uneasy. I was like “Do I celebrate or apologize?” My usual team ended up winning the game 6–3, so my additions to our adversaries accounted for 66% of our goals. I was heckled and hassled in the locker room and I was upset because “my team” had lost, but in one weeks time, order was restored and I got my team and my name back.