in it.
“I heard you are a good player,” she said to him finally.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Jim replied. “There are a lot of good players, but I try hard.”
“Good,” my mother said as they pulled up to Essex arena. “Have a good game.”
“Thank you for the ride,” Jim called back. “I’ll try to score a goal for you,” he added, “maybe two.”
My mother shot back, “yes, maybe score two goals.” Jim only smiled as he hurried to the front of the car to get his hockey equipment out of the trunk. “Do you need a ride home after groceries?” she asked.
“No,” Jim replied, “my parents will be here.”
“Good,” she replied and drove away. Jim didn’t know that his parents would be there. They always tried to be, but today was one of those days when they weren’t sure if the car would be fixed in time to get there. But it didn’t matter greatly to Jim, except that he loved to have them there. To run the seven miles home after the game, even lugging his equipment, would be child’s play for him.
Inside the arena, Jim hurried through the lobby of Essex arena, down the corridor, stopping briefly at the water fountain for a drink of water, slowing down at the swinging doors to open them slowly, before walking quickly to Dressing Room Three.
Outside, his coach said, “We’re glad you’re here. We thought we would have to send the posse out to look for you.”
“Sorry coach,” Jim said as he opened the dressing room door and went in.
Inside the room, everyone knew Jim had arrived as soon as the Corvair had pulled into the driveway at Essex arena. Several members of the team saw him riding in the front seat of the Corvair, as it made its way to the arena door. The team had posted a watch for him. It seemed that everyone in Essex knew when Jim Mahon arrived at the rink. The atmosphere in the rink would change, the moment Jim came in. You could feel his greatness, even as he walked into the rink. It wafted as though through the air. Everyone picked up on it.
”Nice car,” someone called out, “where did you get it?”
“It got me here,” Jim answered, as he pulled his hockey socks over his shin pads. “I’ve got to score two goals today,” he said finally, “at least two.”
“That should be no problem,” a teammate replied. “You always score two.”
“Well,” Jim replied, “today, it’s important.”
“It’s only an exhibition game,” another teammate added. “Not for me,” Jim thought, but didn’t say.
Jim Mahon was, and had been, a superstar from the time he was a child. Everyone knew it. Everyone felt that way about him. It was a strong internal belief we all had. Everyone felt his greatness, yet no one accorded him privilege. He was simply our friend. He was too big and too powerful, even in Grade One at Sacred Heart School, to be considered a prodigy. And he was too nice a guy to be considered a superstar. “Aren’t prodigies and superstars supposed to have imperfect attitudes?” Even as a child, he was the most humble superstar anyone could ever know. He could simply do it, all of it, not only best, but so much better than the rest of us, that it was beyond belief, and yet he was doing it moment by moment right there in front of us, right there in front of our eyes. Everyone knew he was the best. It was simply a fact. Everyone who knew him as a child had a quiet, intense, strong belief, that he would be the best in the business, whether as a hockey player, or in whatever sport he selected. That was just a fact, as far as we were concerned. No one had to say it.
But to him, we were superstars too. He let us walk right along with him, as though his success was partly ours. That is the way Jim Mahon wanted it to be. He wanted it to be that way so much so, that he took it for granted that we would share in his greatness, a greatness that he didn’t seem to know he had, or if he knew, he certainly didn’t display it. Simply put, we had a chance to grow up with the best. He wanted all of us to share in his successes. He wanted us to share in the glory that was rightly his. In his view, he was simply one of us, a farm boy, a tomato picker, and a real nice kid. In fact, Jim never talked about his athletic exploits. Instead, it was usually us saying things like, “Did you see that play by Jim Mahon?” or “Jim and I had a good game on the pond. Jim got 12 goals and I got one.”
3
EARLY LESSONS IN LEADERSHIP
I — THE MARBLES STING
Marbles was a man’s game, or so we thought. We played marbles while the girls skipped rope, usually skipping in complex patterns while calling out their catchy rhymes and songs. The girls would sometimes invite us in to give it a try, knowing full well we would get tripped up quickly if we tried to skip through their intricate patterns. Still, they invited us to give it a try, but we seldom joined them. It was marble season, and marbles were very important to us.
We played two main games—pots and straight marbles. The concepts in contrast to the skipping games were simple and easy to understand. Pots involved placing several marbles inside a large circle drawn in the dirt, called a pot. Each of several shooters would then, in turn, shoot their marble at the marbles in the pot. Each marble out of the pot was kept by the player who had shot it out.
The object of straight marbles was to hit your opponent’s marble with yours. If you hit it you got to keep it. Usually, the game was simple, but sometimes there were complications. One such complication occurred in a game between a Grade Two student and a Grade Six student. Usually, older boys won the games against younger opponents, sometimes, because they set new rules as the game progressed.
On this occasion, the Grade Six boy rose to shoot his marble which lay four feet from his opponent’s marble. The Grade Six boy announced that he would shoot a shot which he called “Ping Standers”. The word, ping, was intended to describe the sound that was made when the marbles collided. The word, standers, was used to describe the fact that the shooter was standing as he shot, unlike the shooters in straight marbles who usually shot from one knee. The Ping Stander’s shot enabled the shooter to hold his shot marble directly over the target marble at the approximate height of the distance between the two marbles as they lay on the ground, four feet in this instance. The younger boy’s older brother, who happened to come along at just that moment, intervened and threatened to ‘knock the older boy’s block off’, if he took the younger boy’s marble.
The Grade Six boy ignored the threat. He held the marble above the competitor’s marble, carefully lining the shot up, the older brother now serving as self-appointed umpire and rules’ interpreter. The Grade Six boy held the marble aloft for what seemed like a long time before letting it drop. We all held our breath as the marble dropped. A great cheer erupted, the spontaneous kind, as the shooter landed about two inches away from the target marble.
The younger boy also cheered showing a look of relief as he took his shooter in his hand. As he prepared to make the short two-inch shot, one that was almost never missed, he noticed how his right hand shook, likely from nerves. He took the marble in his right hand, formed a fist around it, and then slid the marble out of the fist, so that it would land against his thumbnail at the apex it made with the first finger. He then set his hand down to the ground for the two-inch shot. He was surprised how cold his hand felt as he set it down to the ground. He forgot to carefully measure the shot as everyone continued to rejoice at his good fortune. The young boy shot the marble with his thumb and started to celebrate as the marble rolled from his hand, missing the target marble and settling again two inches away.
The Grade Six boy could have easily made the shot, hit the target marble and walked away. Instead, again, he announced Ping Standers, raised the marble two inches above his target, dropped it on the marble and reached to claim his prize. Before he could reach it, the older brother dove in, knocking him sideways.
“You can’t call ‘Ping Standers’ unless the shot is at least a foot high,” he declared.
No one had ever