Saturday, October 13, 2007

Maybe it Is All Small Stuff, But Sometimes, Small Stuff is Big Stuff.

Leaving Krakow is going to be difficult. There's hockey, culture, and oodles of interesting and friendly people here. Examples of each of the preceding three are documented in this post.

The glories of the internet are many and storied. I have discovered them in my time here, and, between ice and roller, I've since been waist-deep in hockey. I can only hope to find similar internet forums in subsequent cities and countries. I even have a login name on one forum, narolkach.pl. I'm amerikanin1215...go figure. I heard about a game on Wednesday, and went in plenty of time to what I thought was the right place. When no one was there at the given time, I started to get worried. Then some highschool kids showed up and started playing. I leaned on two things to give me confidence. First, I was relying on the transcultural bond that sport frequently affords. Second, I was a lot bigger than these guys. Turned out I was a good deal quicker too. They wanted me to show them stickhandling tricks, and they were beyond thrilled (and so was I, needless to say) when I actually did. After a game of 2 on 1 (two of them against me), they got excited and said they'd be back in fifteen minutes. They skated off toward a series of tall, dingy communist flats, and I sat down and assumed that we might just be done for the day. But no. They returned with all their friends from the neighborhood, and we played four-on-four until it was too dark to see anything at all.

Now I'll put in something of an interjection. Those of you who have known me for more than seven years probably remember the Batesville Roller Hockey Association, loose though it was. For those of you who don't, here you go. My hockey background ("career," if you will) began on a cracked and ruined tennis court on a college campus. It lay in the shadow of the modernist deathtrap Smith Science Building. Said building had notoriously moldy airducts and an unusually large collection of sundry preserved...parts...in its basement. On water breaks, I was often unsure if the water tasted of the ducts or the parts. But I digress. I'd play in all weather, whether 35 degrees or 105 degrees...sometimes much to my mother's chagrin. But after a while, there was more interest in Batesville than just me. At the peak of the...okay, I'll be self-important and abbreviate it...BRHA, we had sixteen participants. Because of Batesville's consistent bumper crop of news, we even made the front page of the paper one time. The start of my tenure at Sewanee killed the BRHA, unfortunately, but since the second most-common question I've recieved on this trip is "so how did you end up playing hockey in ARKANSAS?", then this should at least give you some shade of an answer. Here endeth the interjection.

Suffice to say that playing on an unfenced piece of asphalt in rural Krakow with a bunch of people who were younger than me brought back a lot of really fond memories, and a pretty substantial portion of me kept thinking "you know, this is really what athletics should be about...everyone getting together and having a good, competitive time." To put things in perspective, we played to ten goals. The other team wasn't happy, so we played to twenty. We weren't happy, so we played to thirty, and by the time we reached thirty, we couldn't see the ball anymore, so we called it a day.

Remarkably enough, though, the sportsmanship wasn't even the most amazing thing. The thing that touched me the most was the audience we drew. Families with dogs, old men drinking vodka from flasks--about twenty in total, all just enjoying watching us. The most remarkable and enduring audience member, though, was a wheelchair-bound double amputee. He had a great big smile on his face for the whole game, and if the ball went out of bounds, he'd insist on wheeling after it and grabbing it. After the game he said that he used to be quite the hokkejist himself, and that he loved watching such a good game.

On the way back to the hostel, some old ladies who had been watching us play were getting on my bus. One said it was good that we were playing sports; young people get in much less trouble that way. The other said that hockey was becoming very popular these days, and I played well. Unfortunately I couldn't answer very effectively (my Polish is still marginal, and I know better than to try Russian with the older generation), but I thanked them for watching and told them I was glad they enjoyed the game as they got off the bus.

Since then I've played two more games, each one about the same. The faces change a bit, but the atmosphere is just as friendly, and I honestly play better since I have an audience of total strangers watching. The stakes aren't exactly high, but it puts a bit of good-natured pressure on. Between learning street Polish from my teammates (when I say "street Polish," I mean only five percent of it is repeatable. That five percent is composed of pronouns and prepositions) and just playing without barriers, linguistic or otherwise, my roller hockey experiences of the past week have taught me a lot. In my Watson proposal, I talked a great deal about the universality of sport and the power of a game to reach across borders and language barriers. To be perfectly frank, I had no idea. I was making the emotional equivalent of an educated guess. I knew for a fact that if anyone cared about the game like I did, language and nationality simply wouldn't matter, and the field of play would be not just a field of competition, but a field for cultural interchange and learning as well. I can't really express how much it thrills me to find that my guess was correct.

A friend of mine was having a rough time of things recently, and I mentioned in an email that little things make a difference, even if we don't know it at the time. I was trying to find something of substance to back up my point, and I think I have it. I can say with reasonable certainty that we were just playing, oblivious to our audience. But, as a 21-year-old, when you hear an elderly man without legs telling you that he remembers what it's like to play, and that he enjoyed the game, it just hits you. It kicks you in the chest in a way that counterbalances things like unfriendly people in the service industry and a day at Auschwitz-Birkenau. It makes you want to be good at being good.

And that's where I stand.

Doing his best,

J. Brandon Harris

4 comments:

GMarc said...

For me, the small things are where we may see, if we give ourselves permission, the invisible force many choose to identify as God. Just as we have been told to listen for the small, still voice as it whispers to us, opening our hearts and minds while taking the time to observe the DETAILS of everyday life enable us to see miracles all around us. Why are there people in the world expecting fireworks all the time? People want to believe in the smoke and mirrors of men like Benny Hill when sitting under a tree and doing nothing more than taking in the world with every sense we've been given might do far more to heal the empty pockets of our souls. You're learning so many valuable lessons on this journey.

JEEEEEEEEED said...

Yes, there have been a few things and some times that were "much to your mother's chagrin" but you turned out pretty well, if i do say so myself. Sometimes smallest things can be the most aggravating OR the most illuminating...depends on your attitude or what you're looking for. Talked to your cousin Judy the other night and she said your blog is so much your personality and and I have to agree, One of your fans told us this afternoon that he was catching up on your blog and it cracked him up, especially the one about the California girl. I'm so happy for you that you've found lots of places to play hockey and I think you're right about competition and barriers in sportsmanship. The new house continues to be our part time project and the flea market the other. It seems to be working. We miss you. Tell me about your culinary adventures sometime, especially if you've had any home cooking. Stay warm, be safe and have fun, Love you!
Jed

GMarc said...

OOPS! I made a terrible mistake that, the more I consider it, was a Freudian slip of the worst sort. I meant to write Benny Hinn the faith healer NOT Benny Hill the awful British jokester from musical hall/BBC fame who specialized in "wink-wink nudge-nudge" puerile humor.

Having said that, I hope the original comment makes more sense now.

cris_the_great said...

dgeobah
I so miss the basketball court rollar hockey games with you. After reading your latest I feel the urge to get a new pair of skates, my old ones are too small. Out of curiosity, have you seen anyone playing ultimate frisbee, or kickball in your adventures?