Читать книгу I Am Nobody. Confronting the Sexually Abusive Coach Who Stole My Life онлайн

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And he couldn’t have predicted what would happen next, when things really started to happen. Because I could skate and was large for my age at a time when the worst skater usually became goalie, I had that incredible advantage in the position. Nobody figured out until years later that given the importance of the position, the better athletes should be made goalies. I moved up a year to play with older boys and then was advanced even further to our area hockey team. As far as I was concerned, it was as if the spitting had never happened, and I couldn’t have been happier with my new place in hockey. It’s only when I look back on it that I wish my dad had stood up for me and my right to play the game in whichever position I wanted.

HOCKEY’S PLACE IN Canadian society has been well documented. My first real brush with that zeitgeist was while playing for Heritage-Victoria at age nine in a league that featured several boys who went on to become professional players. Playing in the area league championship gave us two chances to defeat our bitter rivals, Kirkfield-Westwood. I know how funny that sounds, having a bitter rival at age nine, but at the time we were living the dream and hockey was everything to us. Spring was coming and there was that certain smell in the humid air, a smell that means two things in Canada: summer is coming and playoff hockey is upon us. This was back when most hockey was still played outside, so because the ice was starting to melt during the day, our games were scheduled long after the sun had gone down at times that seemed ridiculously late in the evening given our ages. If we won the first game, it was over—we were champions. If we lost, we still had a chance the next night to win in a winner-take-all game.