As part of a traveling roller hockey team, I spent most of my summers hauling around five to six players in a green minivan, lovingly called The Hockey Mom van. (In fact my license plates were HKYMOM. How dedicated can one get?) This didn’t just involve the players. No, they came with a tremendous amount of stinky hockey gear in large bags equally as pungent. That was how they smelled after airing them out and before playing a game. After putting three to four games under belts with no time to air out the gear, it smelled putrid. I found it appallingly interesting that each boy had his own funky odor and each bag its own particular smell.
My son would place his hockey bag on the back porch with all the gear laid out in the hopes the sun would deodorized them. In the summer he left them out all night. One day we were to travel to Vancouver to a practice and we were running late. He grabbed the gear, shoved it into the bag and off we went. It was rush hour and the forty-five minute drive turned into an hour and a half. On the way I started to smell something sweet and cloying and oh so bad. I instinctively knew it was the smell of death. I asked the son to start emptying his bag and as he withdrew item after item, he checked all over for the culprit of the smell. Finally, he came to the skates and low and behold, a poor little mouse was found, dead as a door nail. I figure he crept into the skate in the middle of the night hoping to find a home and instead found his demise. When is a smell so bad it can kill a small rodent? When it’s a hockey smell.
There were times, though, when this odoriferous situation played in our favor. Like the time we traveled to Langley, Canada for a four-day tournament. The boys were probably fifteen at the time and in the zenith of bodily emanations. Most of the parents were able to attend, but for the few who couldn’t we offered to chaperon. At that time the husband and I had matching green minivans. (Don’t ask, long story.) We loaded the six boys into my van and their gear into the husband’s and traveled up I-5, crossing the border with little trouble. I had stored their sticks in the ski rack mounted on my van and this did cause some laughter with the Canadian border guard. The tournament proceeded at a brisk pace, the boys playing anywhere from three to four games a day.
The time finally came to load up and travel back down the highway and enter our own country. At that time crossing over into the USA was a bit more detailed then getting into Canada. As we lined up, the husband in front and me following, I noticed a border guard speaking with and gesturing to the husband. He was pointing to the back of the van and clearly asking him to unlock it so it could be inspected.
The husband willing complied. Up went the door and forward stepped the guard. You need to understand that after playing for four days the gear had taken on a life of its own. The stench was tremendous and in retrospect, I never figured out how the husband took it for the six-hour drive home. But, back to our vigilant guard. He opened up the van’s back door, stepped up ever so arrogantly, and then stopped in mid stride. Looking horrified and turning a shade I had never seen, he closed the door and retreated several yards. He then notified the husband he could proceed on and go home.
It is my theory that if one wanted to smuggle small contraband into and out of the country, just put it in a hockey glove or skate. No human on earth wants to go there except for the owner of the gear. How those boys, or any hockey player for that matter, doned these items game after game without retching is beyond me.
Another trip entailed flying to Las Vegas in July for a national tournament which lasted eight days. Yes, this was insanity . . .July in Vegas . . . with 14 fourteen year old boys. Not all parents could manage the time off, so we again offered to chaperone three of them and off we went to Sin City. Now, Vegas in July hovers around 103 degrees during the day with the night-time cooling off to a nice 100 degrees. We found that the gear could not stay in the rental car during the day or night for fear of melting. And we didn’t want to find out what it would do to the odor. Dutifully, after every game, those boys lugged their bags up to their room in the Excalibur Resort. I bought Febreeze for them to spray the gear with; I washed the jerseys in the bath tub every night; the boys showered again and again. No matter what we tried we couldn’t get the funk out of the gear. One day, as I was passing their room, I observed the housekeeping staff, masks on, Lysol firmly grasped, heading into the fray. We left a big tip for them at the end of our stay.
It was finally time to head to the airport and bid this neon city adieu. We approached the check-in counter at the airport and placed the bags, one at a time, on the scale. for some unfathomable reason the clerk requested permission to open one of the players bags. Alrighty, I thought, have at it and good luck. She leaned over, unzipped the bag and immediately drew back. And then uttered the best line ever during the past eight days; “Is there something dead in there?” I pondered that and decided in a way there was. A tournament that ended with not one win; innocence lost forever; and my olfactory senses that had deadened over the last eight days. But, I answered with, “No, just hockey equipment.” She motioned for the owner of the bag to rezip it and processed our tickets, tagged our bags and never made eye contact again. Thus ended our misguided tournament in sunny Las Vegas.
On a side note, it’s funny how we thought taking fourteen year olds to Vegas would elicit them into playing winning games. For the one and only time in their young lives they didn’t care about winning or losing. They basically played just enough to get through the games so they could get back to either the pool or walking the streets and seeing the sights. So many times we had to empty their pockets of the questionable literature that is given out on the corners of the Strip. They also memorized the bill boards advertising girls, girls, girls, For years to follow, a few of the boys retained those bill board phone numbers in their disgusting teenage minds.
There came a time when the HKYMOM van started to absorb the smell. It ended its life with those license plates and that odor lingering in the atmosphere.
The end of an era both for the van and this HKYMOM. I am now HKYNANA and hopefully my grandsons will lead me on many a new adventure. I figure I’m immune to the scents now and will gladly fill my car with more boys and gear.
magicalmess 