How I Used To Entertain Myself As A Child

(reposted from my collectibles blog at http://hellsvaluablecollectibles.blogspot.com/2010/03/peter-zezel-autographed-card.html)

I was always a fan of Peter Zezel. Well, not always, I didn't find out he even existed until the 1986-87 O-Pee-Chee set, but from the moment I saw his card, his name, his position, and his stats - I was fan. More so when I actually saw him play. I liked him so much that I'm willing to pretend he never played for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

What I used to do with hockey cards, in my parents' living room, in our apartment on the second floor of a duplex on Melrose between Terrebonne and Somerled, was take all my hockey cards, and hold drafts, separating all of my cards (from different years) and making new teams up, since most sets I had didn't have complete teams (say, all the Habs or all the Rangers).

I'd have favourites, of course, but I always tried to play it fair, letting the flow of the game - and the eccentricities of our carpeting - do their thing. ''My'' team, Les Nordiques de NDG, was always the one with Patrick Roy in nets, and was usually the only one who got the games where officiating was, shall we say, uneven. In the best of worlds, that Roy team would also have Al MacInnis on defense, but not always. But almost inevitably, it had Zezel at centre.

Each team would be comprised of 7 players (a goalie, three forwards, two defensemen, and a backup player in case of injury), and the puck was one that I took from my table hockey set. I kept full statistics of every game, that I wrote on endless sheets of loose leaf paper, then compile all the stats on other sheets, and actually hold 80-game seasons with full schedules that I'd pre-set by hand. And not just the easy stats like goals and assists, but also penalty minutes, powerplay goals (and assists), shorthanded goals (and assists), plus/minuses, empty-net goals, game-tying goals, game-winning goals, the first goal of a game, shots on goal, faceoffs taken and won, hat tricks... I was NHL 09 twenty years ahead of my time.

And many times, at season's end, he would be in the league top-5 for scoring, close to Wayne Gretzky, Peter Stastny, Mats Naslund, Brent Sutter and Brett Hull. He was even named League MVP a couple of times - yes, I even gave out all the awards, even the Rocket Richard trophy, 15 years before it even existed, known in my league as the Guy Lafleur trophy. Needless to say: Zezel was one of the very best players of the league that played out in my mind.

In real life, though he was a very good player, he was never quite as spectacular: four seasons with more than 20 goals, including one with 33, two seasons with 72 points (one with the Philadelphia Flyers and one with the St. Louis Blues), always among the league leaders in faceoffs won and reliable in his own end. All that, and a tendency to have as many penalty minutes as points. And two Stanley Cup finals as a Flyer, both lost to Gretzky's Oilers.

What I didn't know about Zezel (a Serbian name, originally, although he is a ''good Canadian boy'' from Toronto) was that he had hemolytic anemia, a rare blood disorder. It had messed with his health in 2001, and eventually claimed his life (after a spleen-removal surgery and subsequent brain hemorrhage) on May 26, 2009.

A few months ago, I saw a post on Sal's Autograph Blog, where he had purchased a Zezel-autographed card on Ebay, and mentions his small part in the Rob Lowe/Patrick Swayze film Youngblood (he even made fake hockey cards for his character in the movie, which you can find here). From then on, I was also on the lookout for a decently-priced Zezel card on Ebay.

I hoped it would be as the Flyers' #25, but I found this one instead: a 1990-91 Upper Deck (card #17). He appears as a Blues (even though the Blues sent him to the Washington Capitals in exchange for Geoff Courtnall in the off-season), but unlike Sal's card, which he signed in blue sharpie over a blue Blues jersey, mine was signed in black, which contrasts enough with his white uniform that the autograph seems clearer (and it looks sharp and great!), and the picture as well. And as Upper Deck was known to try to do at the time, the back picture features Zezel in the team's dark, away jersey. The best of both worlds.

Sylvain Mondello Is A Bad Influence

Grade 4 was a fine time. After spending Grade 3 getting accustomed to yet another new school, new surroundings, and making new friends (for the third time in four years), I was finally feeling comfortable somewhere.

NDG is really an ideal place to learn how to live; I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else but Notre-Dame-de-Grâce school for most of my elementary education, nor to also live in the area during my high school years. You've got a decent mix of rich and poor, French and English, and enough visible minorities to teach you that viewing them as different types of humans would be wrong and learning their customs and fitting them into your life if you so choose is feasible.

So when it came to Grade 4, in addition to my neighbours, I had a few good friends I liked to hang out with at school: Philippe-Michel Whitehead, Alexandre Benoît, Bum Min Kim (all holdover friendships from Grade 3) - and Sylvain Mondello. It was also the year I stopped just looking at girls and started talking to them and hanging out with them. Oh, and I had a freak teacher, but that can wait for a later post, too, because I also got her in Grade 5...

So back to Sylvain. Out of all my friends, he was the most like me: borderline rebel, but with a good heart, always good for a laugh and fun time. Philippe, to compare, was a cleaner little kid, but he listened to metal (Iron Maiden was his choice band), while Alexandre was into rap (bad rap at first, luckily it developed into a love for House Of Pain and Cypress Hill, but at first it was terrible). Bum Min was a case of his own. I don't even remember what Sylvain used to listen to, and it's fine that way.

We shared a love for pop culture before we even knew it'd be helpful later in life; we'd make fun of TV ads, satirize TV shows, could talk about movies and sports - all at the tender age of 10. Which made the classes in school pretty dull - they weren't as entertaining as TV - heck, they weren't even as entertaining as we were. We soon became the class clowns, me more than he, but it soon got us both in trouble.

When the teacher made the mistake of seating both of us at the end of the class, it didn't do much good - every single word she said we turned into a double-entendre, saying it loud enough for the whole class to hear; suddenly, we were two stand-up comics excelling at improv in front of a whole audience. By the end of the week, Sylvain was still at the back of the class, but I was right in front, not even in a row, no: stuck to the teacher's desk like as if our desks were conjoined twins.

It was about that time that she set us up with some sort of counselor; to this day, I'm still unsure whether he was the school psychologist or guidance counselor - but he was now in charge of our individual cases. Each day, for a whole month, we had to colour a grid that represented a calendar of sorts in either red (bad), yellow (meh) or green (good), depending on how we'd behaved that day - and have it signed by the teacher (who also had to pick a colour for us), the principal, and our parents; if it wasn't green, we needed to write down the reasons why we hadn't been good, how we'd slipped (and why), and what was needed to correct the situation. If any one element was missing (one person's signature, one explanation that didn't match), we'd get suspended; if it happened again, we'd get expelled. And at the end of the month, if a certain number of non-greens occurred, it also could spell expulsion.

The first week was mostly green, with one yellow. It was fine, and all parties were happy with the situation. Determined to not have to have this system run my life for the remainder of my elementary school years (and perhaps even high school, since they said this was going on 'my permanent record'), and realizing having a yellow in there didn't seem to faze anyone, I tried to balance being a clown with being an attentive nerd (my hand was always raised answering her questions, most times with the correct answer, sometimes with a joke or a pun, many times with both), and I must've done a pretty good job, because some times I'd colour my square yellow but the teacher would colour hers green. Sylvain, on the other hand, couldn't juggle the situation as well as I did and got into a bit more trouble.

He had a knack for getting in trouble, even in the schoolyard. There was this kid named Leano, obviously of Italian descent, a bit chubby stomach-wise but a huge ass - he was a year older than us. At the time, there was an ad on TV for a furniture chain called Leon's and their ad was a remake of David Lee Roth's ''I Ain't Got Nobody'', with the words changed to ''I Ain't Got No Money'', as they offered to hand you their merchandise without paying anything for a full year, interest-free, which I guess was unheard of at the time. Anyhow, Sylvain had the bright idea to change the words to ''Ahhh, Leano bandé'', which, in Québec French, roughly translates to Leano's got a boner, which in and of itself makes no sense and is harmless, but Leano didn't take it so lightly and tried to pick a fight with Sylvain; I had to interfere and contain him while his friends (who, thanks to my playing hockey with them were also my friends, especially this HUGE and STRONG black guy named Trexis Griffin) tried to calm him down. Recess only lasted 15 minutes, but that particular one seemed to last over an hour.

And speaking of recess, I'm not sure if this one happened before or after our colour-coded Month Of Niceness - although it was probably after because of the end result - but there was one time where we went to school one morning, as usual, but at recess decided to bolt. We had had enough, we wanted the day off, and we just fucked off to his place, which was a couple of blocks away from school. The big mistake had been to go in at first, since we had registered as being 'present'; us not being there after recess made it more of a ''missing persons'' case rather than just ''absenteeism'', so our parents were notified right away rather than perhaps eventually. Shit came to a head when the phone started ringing at his place with school, parents and cops calling. We both got a good yelling that night.

I'm not sure if it's because we'd gathered at his place, or if it was because I had the better grades - or perhaps they even did the good cop/bad cop routine to both of us using the same arguments - but an intervention of sorts was planned for me where my teacher, the principal, the councellor and my parents were all telling me that I had a terrific future ahead of myself, to be careful not to throw it all away, and that Sylvain was a bad influence on me.

Now, I wouldn't want to claim to be the ''brain behind the operation'', by any means, but to think that someone, in my life, would have been influential in any way regarding my actions... well, that just can't happen. I'm the type of guy who opens his fridge without even as much as an idea of what he wants in there - nor even a faint recollection of what's still in there. I live two blocks from my subway station and never even know what route I'm going to take and what streets I'm going to cross until I get there. I don't see anyone being able to help make my mind up, not now, not then, not ever. The only ''influential'' people I've met have been my mother, a few teachers, fewer people whose intellect I would respect - people who would show me what's right from what's wrong, even if I didn't always choose the 'right' path - and reading biographies and trying not to repeat every mistake in the book. That's it.

Still, we laid low(er) in class, and in the schoolyard for the rest of the year. We were still funny, but much of the actual 'fun' had dissipated. When the school year ended, he moved to Ville St-Pierre, changed schools, and I never heard from him again. I might have found him on Facebook, though...

I Hate Moving

I hate fucking moving. Everything about it. Yet I can't escape it, it's been with me all my life. By the time I was a year old, ONE, I had already moved, probably more than once. By the time I was three, I'd moved again. Five? Moved. Six was fine, but seven? Moved. Twice.

That was the beginning of a sequence where we'd move either six times in five years or five in six, I'm not sure, but always in the same neighbourhood - all within a few blocks.

And then... all through high school... just one house. The house of my dreams, as it were, with a basement, a main floor that housed a living room (with a fireplace), a dining room, a kitchen, a toilet and a large vestibule (in addition to front and back porches), and a second floor that had three rooms, a front porch and a back veranda. Old, natural wood - everywhere.

But as soon as high school was over, more moving. A year across from NDG park where, younger, I'd spent most of my days playing hockey in the winter and baseball in the summer - and hanging with my dope-dealing friends. Then a year back on Melrose - across the street from my dream house - a tease, as it were.

Then my apartment in the Plateau - the one that good flooded when the Ice Storm hit, in January of '98.

Then came, more or less, a series of more-or-less crashing at people's places and couch-surfing that led me everywhere from Île Perrot to NYC to Pointe-Aux-Trembles to the Plateau again (with many a night in Ste-Julie), before settling in in the neighbourhood I am in now, just in time for New Year's 2000...

But, of course, staying in the same 'hood doesn't mean I didn't change apartments... De Rouen, Logan, Fullum, Joliette, Ontario...5 places in a little over 9 years. And unless something drastic and dramatic happens in the relatively near future, it looks like I'll have to move again in the next 6 months or so.

And moving's such a bitch on some many levels. Packing and unpacking (for a while, I just left most of my stuff in boxes 'cause I knew I'd be out of there before long), either getting people to help out or finding movers, who always happen to cost close to the same as the first month's rent.

And now, after years of alternating living on my own, with roommates, with girlfriends - I have more furniture than my cats and I need, and a whole floor of things I care more about than furniture packed in boxes because I have no room for them on the main floor. And, ironically, that's the stuff I'm trying to get rid of, to sell - everything I have that has some value and that doesn't fit as decoration on my walls and desks. And they're in boxes already, yeah, but I'm no longer sure if all the good stuff's in its own box or if it's mixed with the more common useless stuff, and the only way to find out is to open and empty the boxes...

A few years back, I tried to clear my head and be able to get rid of most of my material possessions. I had over 3000 CDs and 4 guitars, and was so proud of them; I couldn't imagine myself leaving them behind. Now, with the advent of 1TB hard drives, who needs CDs when a backsack of hard drives can house even more music than that? But then, what do I do with the CDs themselves, with the thousands of dollars I put in them?

But I can slip a few hard drives in a bag, and carry an electric and an acoustic guitar and be on my merry way, with little attachments, should the need arise. All I need to do, if I can, is get rid of my other electric and my bass - and my keyboard. That used to bother me, but no longer.

If I could sell my superfluous stuff, maybe I'd buy a laptop and move back to NYC, or couch-surf for a few months. Or head to Gaspésie and shack up for winter. But with a protable computer, portable music, and a couple of guitars, I think I could be happy and make do with anything that would arise.

I think.

I hope.