It's a hockey birthday party.

     I tried. I really did. For a whole season, I strapped on these hockey skates, hand-me-downs that didn’t fit right. They pinched my toes and my heel slipped constantly. They hurt. My dad told me a handful of times if I got into the sport, he’d buy me new ones.

     It wasn’t fun. The boys on my team made fun of me because I was small. They treated me differently, and I wanted, so desperately, to be as strong as my sisters, but I just couldn’t do it. So I gave up. I tossed in the towel, and decided I liked soccer more, and pretended, throughout most of my grade school career, that this was true. 

     My dad tried. I didn’t realize this until I look back now as an adult. He took time out of his busy day to coach me and my team. I don’t think he realized how much I hated it. Not him coaching, but my team. My best friends were on the other team. I hated the girls I played with. During school a few of them had a tendency to push me in the dirt during recess and laugh at me and my tattered dirty clothes.

I had already given up hockey; I couldn’t give up soccer too.

It seemed like Taboo in my family.

She’s the youngest daughter. She doesn’t play hockey.

     People recognized me as, “the youngest Erickson” and “Meghan and Kristen’s younger sister.” There was always an added, she doesn’t play hockey.

     The demon in my life at the time always ensured people knew. She’d drag me to her side, grip my shoulder tight and tell everyone I played soccer, not hockey. She was proud of it, which made me hate it even more.

     And then something switched, and it seems as if overnight, she loved hockey, and then her tone changed. “Yeah, she only plays soccer.” Scorn. I heard it all the time.

                “You’re Meghan and Kristen’s sister, right?”

       No, my name is Monica.  "Yep."

                “So, when are you going to start playing hockey?”

       Never.    "Maybe next season." Fake smile. Gag. 

        For a handful of years in a row, some hockey tournament ran in mid-March. And for a handful of years in a row, I spent my birthday in a hockey rink, watching my sister’s play. Then we’d go out to dinner, and talk about hockey, and how the tournament was going. And what my sisters could do better next game. 

       I’d get a handful of ‘Happy Birthday’s’.  A friend, whose brother was on their team, once wrapped a gift for me. It was a radio in the shape of an alien head. It was awesome.

      Sometimes I got to unwrap my presents on the backseat of a moving car while driving home from Canada. Not exactly my definition of a fun birthday.

      It’s hard for me to write this, because I know my dad did everything in his power to make all of us happy. As an adult, I don’t blame him. I don’t hate him, in fact, I love my father. He is the strongest man I know, and the biggest, strongest pillar in my life.  I look back now and realize it wasn’t all bad. I had a few friends at these tournaments. I’m resilient. I bounce back. I actually play hockey now on a women’s team with my sister. I love it.

     Maybe this stemmed from my recent birthday. I just turned 25. I spent it at home listening to the Reservoir Dogs soundtrack on Vinyl.  I bought myself a small cake, and played Tomb Raider.  When people asked what I did for my birthday, and they seemed shocked and I see the pity, I immediately back track and say that was how I wanted it- just a quiet night in, hanging with my pup. And people believed it.

                But it was fucking lonely.  I may or may not have cried.

Aliens, Hockey Players and University Hospital

So last night was Sunday night. I have come to love Sundays simply for the fact my sister and I go play hockey up in Cleveland with an adult pickup team. Well, my sister plays, I go and skate around, then go up to the bar and drink while they start their game.  Last night was especially important cause I had to study for a mid term for the following morning (today.)

So after I skated around for 45 minutes, I clambered off the ice, changed into unsmelly clothes, then hit the books. Not twenty minutes later I look up and all play has ceased. There seemed to be a huge conglomerate of players by the bench, and I assumed they were having a quick meeting. So back to studying I go. Just as I start working on the definition of Mercantilism, a puck smashes into the window right in front of me. I naturally land sprawled out on the floor with beer all over me. Cussing up a stream, which caused the children in the room to start crying, I climbed to my feet and looked out the now rubber-streaked window. And what I saw literally caused my heart to jump into my throat and stop beating. Three of my sisters fellow players stood there with white-stricken faces gesturing wildly for me to get down to the ice. Spilling the rest of my beer on my text books as I grabbed my purse.

 You see, my sister went to the doctor the other day and was suspected of having mono- the kissing disease. Which wouldn't have been a problem, but mono is known to swell the spleen and can rupture if playing contact sports. So as I'm trying to run down the stairs in flimsy flipflops, my thought process was, "Her spleen exploded and her body is filling up with bile and poop and she's going to die and she'll have poop all inside her."

When I got to the ice, although trying to be helpful, her teammates simply made my terror worse. I heared ten different stories about what happened before even laying eyes on my near dead sister, and I was close to murder.
 "She fell and landed on her head,"
 "No she fell and landed on her back,"
"I didn't see her fall, I just saw her faint"
 "She fell and slid feet first into the boards,"
 "An alien popped out of her chest and is now loose in the rink."

I made it to the bench just as they got her up and were moving her to the ice to lay down on a flat surface. I can honestly say, I am very glad at the diversity of her team. We had a paramedic, a plastic surgeon and a dentist helping her out. So now someone can help her with her medical problem, the surgeon can probably sew up the hole in her chest from the alien with minimum scarring, and the dentist can whiten her teeth for her before her picture gets splattered all over the news for surviving an alien attack.

Someone managed to find Kristen's cell phone and I promptly called my dad in a near panic. "Dad! Kristen was attacked by an alien. I don't think she is going to make it, but they called the paramedics and they are on their way."
"Is she okay?" said my dad, always the calm port in the storm.
"No dad! She has a huge gaping hole in her chest!" At this point I'm crying my eyes out while my sisters fellow teammates try to soothe me by patting my back with their massive gloves. still have the bruises to prove it.

The paramedics showed up and I had to hang up and talk to them and get all of our stuff together and find my purse which had somehow ran away. My dad called me about three times ever five minutes for updates, which did NOT help my state of mind.
After a near death experience in the ambulance where a flying saucer tried to beam up the entire vehicle, we made it to University Hospital's ER.

They wheeled her into Room 18. But after being in a small, enclosed room with Kristen they all left as fast as they could. I don't blame them one bit, and I wish I could have gone with them. Kristen smelled like a half-decomposed dead animal rotting and baking in the sahara desert. As one of the doctors left, he patted my shoulder and, while gasping for air, asked me if I could remove everything from the waste down. This is when I knew it was going to be a long night.

Working slowly, I removed her socks, shin guards, skates and padded pants. And as each piece of equipment was removed, I came closer to fainting from lack of oxygen.
I quickly gave up, spurted some excuse to Kristen about how I needed to call dad and left the room. The only problem was her stink had seeped into my clothing. The doctors started handing out gas masks lysol spray to anyone who HAD to enter her room.

After a while,  I think they were scared she was going to pass out from her own smell, so they wheeled her off for some cat scans and xrays, then forgot her in a hallway for a while, until the smell started seeping into some of the offices where the doctors were taking breaks and eating dinner/breakfast, so they had to put her back into her initial room. It got to the point where no one would enter her room. We sat there for six hours until finally someone got the courage to enter the room and explain Kristen wasn't attacked by an alien and had whiplash from falling on her clumsy feet, then discharged her.

We got home at fourish in the morning. I faceplanted into my bed and didn't move until 8:50- the LAST possible minute I had to get up and get to class for my midterm.I gave myself enough time to brush my teeth. Although my professor was understanding enough and is letting me take the test tomorrow morning instead, I can honestly say aliens, hockey players and University Hospital in Cleveland do not mix well with each other.