Way back in eighth grade, I was on a travel hockey team and we had a game in Hamilton, Ontario against another bantam team, which was about a four-hour drive from Cleveland. The plan was to drive east, stop in Shaker Heights to pick up two kids who would be guest-playing on our team, and continue on to Buffalo for the crossing.
About half an hour into that trip, I realized I hadn’t brought my hockey gear. My father all but dropped a tire-squealing U-turn on the cross-town thoroughfare and proceeded to use all of his fighter-jet skills scorching back to the west side in our Ford Econoline, and berating me the entire way back home and on to Shaker Heights.
The thing was, we had a game that evening, and now we were cutting it close. Plans might have to change.
Plans such as our plan to stop at the hockey store on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, where it was rumored you could find any brand of hockey gear in the world, including the new-fangled Lange hockey skates with the molded plastic boot and blade frames. No one in my town had them, and I wanted a pair. In fact, I had the cash to buy them.
“I don’t think we’ll have time to stop at the store,” my father announced as we made our way through customs. “It’s getting tight.”
“But I need to get those new skates,” I said.
“We’ll stop on the way home, Sunday,” my dad said.
“But I have to get new skates. I didn’t bring my old ones because you said we could stop. I’m buying the Langes.”
I wish I could say that the rest of the trip to Hamilton was the maddest my father was with me, but there would be times that made him even madder. Some of that is on him, but pretty much all of the anger for that trip was on me.
In my defense, I was a stupid kid. That’s what you get for trusting a stupid kid.
Since then, I’ve been an extra-careful packer. Like insanely careful. We’re taking a couple of multi-day trips and if you saw me pack for them you’d think I was shipping out overseas to war. I have the trauma of that hockey trip (and probably a few other childhood situations) to thank for it, but now I pack medicine, power supplies, journals, pens, backup pens, pen refills, backup blank journals, books to read, backup books to read, ebook readers to read, extra cash, extra credit cards, greeting cards, my laptop, my iPad, and two iPhones.
If it’s something I use in the course of a week, I have one or two with me for these weekend excursions.
The packing is exhausting. I don’t care that I don’t use three-quarters of the stuff. I can’t bear the thought of being away from home and forget something. It crushes me.
Yes, I know you can swing by a Target or a Walmart and dig up pretty much anything, but those stores can’t take away the crushing feeling pressing in from all sides if I don’t have the watch-charger or my preferred brand of flushable wipes with me. Maybe there’s something a counselor can do to help me with whatever phobia this is, but I also can just make sure I don’t forget anything and then it’ll be fine.
My first job out of college required me to travel constantly for over a year and it burned me out, but I got pretty good at the travel packing. Like, I pull it off.
It was way harder traveling with our kids because I tried to think of everything they might possibly need in addition to what I might possibly need. That meant toys, games, comfort items, snacks, clothes, and select collectibles.
The final takeaway is that I don’t travel well but I have a couple of major trips coming up. I’ll figure it out but I really don’t find trips relaxing. They are a low-key form of torture that would probably make me a celebrity in the self-BDSM subreddit.
What I enjoy most is returning home to the familiar settings and furniture, the desk with all my things stowed in baskets and drawers, and the comfort of falling into bed exhausted knowing that whatever I needed was within a few steps, and that my preferred brand of flushable wipes would be in the toilet when it’s time to poop come morning.
It’s arguably the most first-world privilege to know that you have a safe space and lots of things safely stowed there for your use, but that’s how the world has made me.
The hockey games in Hamilton were kind of a disaster for me. To begin with, I was the weakest player on the team, and was only given a spot because my father knew the coach and they needed bodies on the roster to play. I improved over the course of the year but never got as good as my teammates.
I did buy those Lange skates at the hockey shop, having backed my father into a corner. If we hadn’t had two guest players in the car, I’m pretty sure he would have turned the Econoline around and headed back home.
The skates were beautiful but the blades got a half-assed sharpening at the shop, so I was useless in the first game, unable to accelerate, falling with every turn, and sat the bench until we got the blades fixed.
The Canadian players were much better than us as a whole and we had our asses handed to us each game. These were considered “friendlies,” not part of any league, and the coach was under no illusion we might win. He wanted us to learn.
I learned about the importance of packing and logistics that weekend, as well as the power of minor emotional trauma to cast a faint shadow over the rest of your life. I also learned that, despite my screw up, my parents didn’t go out of their way to make me feel bad. They enjoyed themselves that weekend, socializing with the other parents and our hosts.
You can’t let a dumb mistake sour your opportunities to have fun. Cut yourself some grace while traveling. Life is too damn short to be angry all the time.
Meanwhile, at My Writing Desk…
Having a surprising amount of fun with the revisions of the novel. It’s slow going because novels are too big to hold in their entirety in your mind at one time, so I have to read chapter, remember what I was going for, apply the feedback, and rewrite accordingly. But I dropped some fresh bangers in there and that’s the fun part.
Maybe You’d Like
This week I’m joining giveaway called Free Short Story ThrillFest (Mystery · Thriller · Suspense)
https://storyoriginapp.com/to/EcmZyiv
Next Picayune
I think I’ll be coming at you in two weeks, getting back to an every other week schedule, to promote another giveaway. Thanks for reading the Mickey Picayune!
All the best,
Mickey
P.S. For those of you who picked up a copy of Ashley Undone recently, nothing helps like reviewing the book. It can be anywhere you’re comfortable reviewing books, and here’s a link to the Amazon page where you can do that if you don’t know anything better. (Thanks in advance.)