For a long time I wanted to be a professional hockey player. I dreamt of myself glissading across center ice at the old Met Center with 20,000 jubilant fans screaming my name. It was glorious. Sadly, I came to the realization a few years ago that I was not going to make it as a professional hockey player. However, just because I realized that I was not good enough to make it in the big leagues did not mean I stopped dreaming about it.
When I was a kid I drew pictures. Every picture I drew related to hockey. I would draw my favorite players, goalie masks, team logos, and even myself (scoring a goal of course). One day I drew what vaguely resembled the blueprints of an arena that I later named "The Matt Hickey Memorial Hockey Rink." At that point of my life I did not understand the particular context of the word, 'memorial,' and thus did not realize the self inflicted demise I was predicting upon myself. None-the-less, I confidently believed I was destined to become famous enough to assume the right of having a rink named after me, a la John Mariucci (Mariucci Arena, U of Minnesota), or Joseph and Fredrick Tate (Tate Rink, West Point). All these drawings resembled what was important to me. In fact, they resembled the only thing I ever thought of - hockey. In my life I was going to be a hockey player.
Last week I found myself dozing off in class and habitually took up the harmless act of doodling. After 45 minutes of applying random pencil marks to my notebook paper I looked at the collection of doodles and was suddenly jolted with the feeling of déjà vu. "Have I seen this before," I asked myself. Wayne Gretzky was raising the Stanley Cup, Goldy the Gopher was rousing the crowd at Mariucci and the Minnesota North Stars logo was stringently still pointing north. Incredibly, as if by some trick of the mind, I had recreated my third grade notebook. It had been thirteen years since I last sat in Mrs. Gagliardi's third grade classroom and vigorously produced hockey drawing after hockey drawing and yet I was still turning out the same pieces of art work.
At the end of class my instructor sarcastically commented on the details of my notes, "It looks like you filled an entire page today," he said. My page was certainly full, but it resembled a classical hockey collage much more than the 5 steps to the engineering decision making process that were apparently mentioned in class that day. This was not the first time I spent an entire class period doodling, nor was it the first time in which I doodled excessively and exclusively of hockey.
I am a senior in college and will eventually graduate and thus take that daunting step into 'real life.' In the meantime I continue to struggle through the rigors of a school that throws all the academics at me that I can handle along with military duties that push me way out of my comfort zone. On top of it all, I have committed myself to becoming a soldier in the U.S. Army during a time of war. Yet, with all these things laid out in front of me - things that should occupy my mind - I still inextricably always revert back to hockey.
I think Jon Krakauer said it best when he wrote, "It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough it is your god-given right to have it." But of course no one ever realizes that at the time. In my 22 years of living I have never wanted to be anything other than a hockey player. And even though I realized my dreams were for naught some time ago, I still always relapse back to my passionate desire of hockey when daydreaming about my future.
My hockey career is terminal. In fact, come this spring, I will be finished with my organized hockey days. When that day comes and my final buzzer rings I will take comfort in the fact that while I might not be going to the NHL I will have proudly and gladly allowed the game of hockey to corrupt my life. Just ask all my teachers...
