Teaching Moments

Today’s parents have so many resources at their disposal that my parents didn’t have. Think about all of these best practices for child rearing, backed by all this behavioral science that allows today’s Super-Parents to Raise-The-Perfect-Little-Super-Johnny. With these hundreds of websites and competing parenting philosophies, you’d think that the end result (from natural selection) would be an aggregate improvement in the overall behavior of kids. Wouldn’t you? Have you been out in public lately?

Well, somehow my Mom and Dad figured it all out (or most of it anyways). They relied on healthy doses of common sense and the lessons distilled from their parents (or in my Dad’s case, Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Jean). Above all, they kept it simple and consistent.

This article from The Blissful Parent talks about standard responses that today’s parents typically employ when confronted with bad behavior by their precious little ones. As I read this article, I reminisced about an incident involving Your Faithful Servant when he was around 10 years old. This incident centered around table hockey, some poor behavior on my part toward a friend, and my Mom’s textbook response to my poor behavior. The Blissful Parent would have been proud.

As I have remarked in past posts, I have no idea how my parents financially managed to provide such wonderful Christmases for us. There was never any shortage of games in our house. In addition to the standard board games like Monopoly, Clue, and Yahtzee, I can remember fondly playing Rebound and the original Pong and various other table sports games like Air Hockey, Sure Shot Baseball, Electric Football, and, of course, Table Hockey.

I must have gone through three of those Table Hockey games between 1971 and 1975. As I recall, the MTBF on the rods must have been about nine months of heavy use. Once those rods were shot and became misaligned and bent or twisted, you were screwed – planned obsolescence I guess was designed into the game. But it was still a great game.

Playing Table Hockey well was a physical endeavor. You obviously required good hand and eye coordination, strong wrists and quick reflexes. There was something magical about the sounds of hearing that puck slide into the opponent’s goal. Different styles were employed. Some kids preferred to conservatively keep one hand on their goalie at all times, leaving the other hand to work the other five rods. I guess this was the table hockey version of that boring Neutral Zone Trap crap that David Puddy’s Devils employed. My style was more wide open and bolder. My signature move was to cycle the puck behind the net between my wings repeatedly to the get the opposing goalie moving and then, either fake a cycle and shoot or pass to my center iceman and try to catch the opponent goalie over-reacting.

The rest of my family didn’t care that much for Table Hockey, but I would play brother Rich when he was home from college and, of course, the other guys in the neighborhood. I was good and confident – nobody in the Ninth Street Alley could hang with me. Of course, not everybody had a table hockey game, so I did have a slight advantage. I can remember honing my skills, practicing puck handling, passing, and shooting by myself. (I know that sounds really sad.)

So one winter day in 72 or 73 at St Leo’s,  I must have been bragging about my table hockey chops because my classmate Joe Bauer challenged me to a series. Joe was a good friend – we attended Grades 1 through 12 together and played 4 or 5 years of school basketball together and 3 years of JMC Rec League in High School after we stopped playing school ball. He was an outstanding ball handler and point guard and good athlete. Joe was also competitive as hell and could get under your skin with the best of them.

So this major Table Hockey series was planned – mano a mano.  The hype was huge. The first set of games would be at my house with a second set of games scheduled to be played at JB’s house. The second set of games never happened because of an incident at the first series of games.

The games at my house were hard fought matches – and I met my match in JB. I think we played first-to-five-goals-wins in a Best of Seven and Joe took me down 4-2. All the games were either 5-4 or 5-3, so it wasn’t like I wasn’t able to hang with JB. But make no mistake, this was a comeuppance for me.

Joe employed a technique that I hadn’t encountered before (IMHO it was borderline illegal, not that I am bitter or anything). He would move the puck to his center iceman in a position where I couldn’t reach him with my defensemen and then freeze the puck for several seconds (sometimes up to a half minute) psyching me out while the tension mounted – a classic mind game. Suddenly he would violently drive his center iceman (and puck) toward my goalie attempting to literally stuff the puck in my goal. Sometimes this move was initiated with such force that the entire Table Hockey board would be moved. Real Art of War stuff. Unfortunately for me, this was a successful strategy for JB – he got me off my game.

As his confidence grew and he took control, the volume of his needling and what passed for trash talking in those days was ramped up. He was in rare form and had me on the run mentally.

By the time JB had whipped me in Game Six, I had had enough and, ever prideful, decided to go down verbally swinging. I was so pissed and embarrassed that, in so many words, I basically told Joe that he had cheated with that drive-hard-to-the-goalie bush league move, that I was tired of his trash-talking, and that he should get the hell out of my house. It was a pretty good rant and felt good at the time.

Unfortunately, my little hissy fit had been observed (or, more correctly, overheard) by my Mom, who was not very pleased with my behavior that entire afternoon. So. with Bauer having departed our house not three minutes earlier, I got the whole wrath of Mom read to me. In a very controlled fashion - my Mom hardly ever lost her temper. She could rain a veritable Cold Fire down on you, but it was never physical and she rarely lost emotional control.

I think the major themes of this teaching moment were:

• There is a proper way to treat your guests – my behavior was unacceptable.
• Nobody likes being around a sore loser – get over it and move on, or nobody is going to want to be around you.

Ouch. Message received – loud and clear. After she had ripped me a new one, Mom (in front of me) picked up the phone and called Joe’s Mom, relaying my poor behavior in painstaking (for me at least) detail to Mrs. Bauer. My Mom then told Mrs. Bauer that I would be walking up to the Bauer’s house immediately to apologize in person to Joe for my boorish behavior. Shit. This was going downhill fast.

I feebly protested and whined for a bit, assuring Mom that I had learned my lesson and suggesting that perhaps an apology over the phone would be sufficient. But to no avail. Not only did I have to accept a crushing home-ice defeat in table hockey and the requisite degradation of my street rep, I had to trudge up to Bauer’s house and apologize for being a jerk.

Before I left the house, Mom gave me a dollar bill with directions to call her after I had apologized to Joe. Mom needed me to pick up something that she needed for that evening’s dinner. At the corner of 11th Street and 21st Avenue where Joe’s house was, there was this corner grocery store (not unlike Crilley’s on 10th Street in our hood).  So I was to call Mom before returning home from the Bauer’s and she would let me know what to pick up. (In addition to confirming that the apology had been made and accepted.)

I made the half-mile journey from my house to JB’s house – up 16th Avenue to 11th Street, past the “new” Wright School, and up the hill to 21th Avenue, where I would turn left to get to Joe’s house. (Funny how I still refer to it as the “new” Wright School – damn thing is over 35 years old now.)

Mrs. Bauer was a a really sweet lady. Within 10 seconds of getting inside Joe’s house, I initiated my perfunctory apology – my plan was to meet the letter if not the spirit of this apology punishment. Before I could even completely get it out, Mrs. Bauer interrupted and said something like “We all have bad days Joe. Why don’t you two guys go outside and shoot some hoops and I’ll warm up some spaghetti for lunch.” Classy. JB had this goal attached to a garage in the alley behind his house. We started shooting around and were back on good terms by the time the pasta was ready. Hey, this wasn’t so bad after all. I am almost sure that my Mom and Mrs. Bauer were running a (quite effective) tag-team on us that day.

It gets better. Before I left the Bauer’s after lunch, I checked back in with Mom via phone to confirm that the apology had been made and to close on the dinner item I needed to pick up at that corner store before returning home.  Well, wouldn’t you know it, Mom indicated that she was mistaken – she had everything she needed for dinner that evening. Instead, she suggested that, since it sounded like I had learned a good lesson that afternoon, that maybe I should take that dollar and treat myself to a Banana Popsicle (my favorite flavor back then) or a Nutty Buddy at that corner store.

Brilliant. Just freaking brilliant. The Carrot and the Stick?