The Week That Was, Back-wise

   Today is Saturday and six days ago, on Monday, I put the garbage out. Afterwards, as I was sitting on the couch, I found myself having a difficult time making my lower back feel comfortable. It didn't seem as if any amount of twisting and turning did the trick. This not usually a problem for me and I tried to figure out what I might have done to trigger this minor discomfort. That's when I remembered the garbage.
   There had been one bag that was particularly heavy. Heavy garbage bags are not uncommon and generally if I need to handle them there are no issues. For some reason I had assumed this one bag was way lighter than it actually was and I'd gotten myself into a body posture that would really only accommodate a lighter bag. Then I tried lifting it. I realized immediately the error I'd made and put it back down but, by then, the damage had been done. It was not that I was in a lot of pain but I did realize I'd gone slightly past my limit. I finished taking the rest of the garbage out, was feeling okay, and then went back inside to sit down.

The way my week went. Or just product
placement, one or the other....

   As I mentioned before, I had a difficult time sitting comfortably. Before bed, I took Doralyn's suggestion and rubbed in some Voltaren. This helped. 
   On Tuesday, I had a day off and did nothing really strenuous until the evening. From 8-10, I went and played pick-up ball hockey. I hadn't played ball hockey since last summer and I hadn't played this particular brand of ball hockey for probably about eight years. You can read about it here, if you want. After this, my whole body was so stiff and sore that it took me a couple of days to recover and I hardly even noticed my back. Then, on Friday, I moved a couple of couches. 
   You might want to ask why I was moving couches when my back was ailing. Well, the short answer is that I thought I could. All through the time I was moving them, I didn't feel a single twinge. In fact the most problematic thing I did on Friday was help give someone a bath at work, wherein the issue was not a weight-bearing one but simply having to lean over the side of the tub for fifteen minutes. Friday night (last night) was the iffiest night of the week, comfort level-wise. On top of everything else, it felt as though I was coming down with a cold, so I've been dosing myself with Vitamin C for the last eighteen hours or so.
   So my plan for the weekend is nothing heavy-duty, apart from lifting the Advil bottle. Normally I'd be doing yardwork this time of year but we're also under a snow-squall watch, so the yardwork might need to wait. Which would be better for my back, actually (unless I end up shoveling a ton of snow!)
   So that's kind of the week that was, back-wise. Just a constant reminder that I'm not the young stud I (never) was, anymore. There's seems to be a fine line between being active so that your body doesn't hurt and being over-active, so that it does.  In this kind of a constant voyage of discovery of mine, I might have tripped over the line a touch!

Unthinkable

   Back on June 15, my ball hockey team lost in a hard fought battle. In the last few seconds of that game, one of our best players, Asa Johnson, became involved in an altercation with one of the opposing players, an altercation which got Asa and the other player tossed out of the tiny bit of the game remaining.
   We were clearing our stuff out of the players' bench and I noticed a wallet still lying there, unclaimed. I picked it up, saw Asa's name on the inside, and took it with me. I ran into Asa, who'd returned to retrieve it, by the boards. I gave him a look what I've got kind of smile as I waved it at him and he smiled and took it from me. At that point he headed off.

   That was the last time I ever saw him.
   This past week, a rather ominous post on our team Facebook feed announced that Asa was missing. Then, later that day, it became known that he had actually passed away. As a team, we were naturally in shock. Most of the players are young and in their twenties and all very vital and athletic. The last thing you suspect is that one of you might die.

Asa

   Although I never saw Asa again, he continued to appear on the team feed in the month before he passed, making comments and joking around. As a result of the altercation at the end of that game, he'd received a suspension and there was much talk on the feed about how long that suspension might be, when would his first game back be and could we possibly talk the league commissioner into letting him come back earlier, that sort of thing. Then the terrible news. To exacerbate the pain, it has come to light that his death was self-inflicted.
   I barely knew the young man. Ours was a brand new team pulled together at the beginning of this season and not a lot of the players were familiar with each other, only small pockets of friends here and there. What made it more difficult for me was that most of the guys on the team were of a different generation, young enough to be my sons. The boys were full of youthful and endless bravado, if nothing else. To a man my age, they all seemed indestructible.
   To me, the unthinkable had happened once again. It was just a few short years ago that one of the players on a team of mine passed away. That time, however, he was an older man in his late forties who had a heart attack in his car on the way home after a game we'd both played in. I had commented to him after that game that he looked pretty winded and out-of-sorts and he himself acknowledged that he didn't feel quite right. I still regret not forcing him to hang around the arena just a little longer until he either felt better or we got him some medical assistance. I wrote a blog post about that gentleman as well and, in an ironic twist, the same day I found out about Asa passing someone out there in cyberspace viewed the post I'd written on the other man.
   For the few brief moments I'd held Asa's wallet in my hand at the end of the last game he played (in which he was named the third star by the way) I noticed the difference between his wallet and my own. His was very thin and unencumbered by wads of cash, credit cards, receipts and appointment cards. His grown-up life had just begun and there had not yet been the opportunity to accrue all the little reminders of debt, meetings, purchases, interest and responsibility---all things of which my own wallet reminds me of daily. I think I almost subconsciously envied him as it passed back into his own hands.
   As I'm writing this, I have my headphones on and, in another moment of irony, the theme from the movie "Glory" has come on. It is a haunting piece of music which plays over a scene at the end of the movie wherein fallen warriors of the Union army are thrown into a mass grave after a pivotal Civil War battle. It is a haunting moment which reflects the loss of life of young men gone too soon. As I reflect on this, I remember it was written by a composer named James Horner, who also passed tragically this year, only a week after Asa's last game. None of this is lost on me.
   It will be difficult to sit in another dressing room someday, looking around, deeply, at all the young faces, and not think about Asa. I will wonder what their lives are all about when they're not on the ball hockey floor. I will also continue to wonder what kind of intervention, if any, might have prevented his death. It might have been something complex and almost unfathomable or, at the right time, it could have been something as simple as a word or two. As we pass though our daily lives, we would do well to remember that we all have that word or two in us and not be afraid to offer them up, perhaps even in the most unexpected places.  
   
    

Welts 2

   Back in December, I wrote a post called "Welts". In it, I bemoaned the fact that it had been ages since I'd been able to glory in a good bruise, black eye or laceration. Apparently I saw them as some kind of ball hockey sporting badge of honour. At the end of the post, I declared that I would play ball hockey again and that I would once again be able to share my welts with the world.
   Of course, I never really knew for sure that this might happen but it did happen! I managed to get back on a team in the spring and we just finished our summer season. Did I suffer body damage? Yes I did! Look see!

   This is just below my shoulder on my right arm. I barely remember how I got this which tells you a little about adrenaline.

   This is one I got on the same night, blocking a shot with my belly. I kind of had to because I had just coughed up the ball to the guy who took the shot. Thank you, Charles!
    Now, I promise this will be my last post about welts, strains, bruises and black eyes because, really, who wants to see stuff like this...? The only possible exception you might see someday is if bone is sticking out through skin. THAT would be hard to resist!!
   

Just A Guy, Lookin' For A Team...

   I was walking through our garage the other day when I looked off to the right, at a variety of different things we have hanging on hooks just inside the garage door. My hockey bag, the one with all my goalie equipment in it, has been hanging there, in the exact same spot, in the exact same position as I left it in, after the last time I played about two years ago. This what it looked like:

Yes, those are cobwebs....

   We have several things in our garage which likely have not been touched or moved in the last couple of years either but my hockey equipment is the only thing which seems to have gathered cobwebs.
   At this point, I can't tell you how hard I'm trying to ignore the implicit symbolism going on here!
   For the last little while, I have been battling a couple of different minor physical ailments, both of which have limited my involvement in sports. For this reason, my ball hockey career has been on the shelf.
   Now, though, I feel almost a hundred per cent. The legs, thanks to all the extra running I've been doing, are actually more muscular than they have ever been and I have this itch to play again.
   Alas, but no team to play on!
   For the past week or so, I have been contacting guys I know who run teams in the London Ball Hockey Association. This is a league I played in back in its original incarnation in the early seventies. I, up until a couple of years ago, had played in its present form for the last 12 to 13 years.
   The problem here is that I am old. I am sixty-one, I look like I am too old to play and I am actually older than I look. But I can still play. I know I can still play.
   As I've contacted guys I know in the league, I have actually almost begged them for a chance to play, told them I'd pay full price for just a three or four game tryout. So far, no dice.
   It actually seems incomprehensible to me that I am not playing somewhere. I just feel so full of ball hockey....ENERGY! As old as I am, I have never been the slowest guy on any team I've played on.
   Now, the fact of the matter is that my goalie days are probably over, the last few times I played, I embarrassed myself greatly and I have no great need to do that again. But I can still play forward or defence as well as a lot of guys I've played against in the past.
   At this point, I am on the waiting list for a spot on a team. Dick Price, the LBHA commissioner has promised to play the "wily veteran" card the next time some team is looking for a player. And, in the meantime, I'm gonna pester a few more guys....