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Patrick’s hockey team didn’t win many games when the season started. Most of the kids on the team, like Patrick, were only four. There was only one other team in the division whose players were as young as theirs. Most kids didn’t start playing until they were five or six, but Patrick and his friends wanted to play. His parents and their friends had put their kids on the ice when they were two, and by the age of four, most of them could skate as well as they could walk. After a lot of discussion, they decided to form a team, focusing primarily on having fun and teaching good sportsmanship, followed by developing skills. They knew that playing against bigger kids would be hard, but it would be fun to get to really play.
Clint was one of the coaches, so he was at every game. Marcy tried to go to every game too, but on rare occasions, she had to miss a game. Once was because Patrick’s cousin Madeleine was born, and Marcy had to go take care of his cousins Matthew and Claire. Another time, near the end of the season, another nurse at work got sick, and no one else could cover for her. “Don’t worry,” Clint reassured her. “Patrick and I have everything under control.”
“Yeah, Mommy, we’ll win the game for you!”
Marcy smiled and said, “That would be great, baby, but remember, the most important thing—”
“Is to have fun! I know, Mommy,” Patrick told her.
Looking at Clint, she said, “Someone’s getting a little shaggy,” as she glanced down pointedly at their son. “I was going to take him to get a haircut today before the game.”
“I’ve got it. What time is the appointment?”
“I usually just take him to the kids’ cut place. They don’t take appointments; you just drop in.”
“I’ll take him before the game.”
“If something happens, they’re open tonight until seven, so you’ll have time after the game.”
“We’ll take care of it before the game!”
“Thank you,” she sighed. “I’ve got to go or I’m going to be late.” She kissed Clint and dropped a kiss on Patrick’s head, then grabbed her keys and left.
“Come on, bud, we’ve got to get going so we’ll have time to get your hair cut before the game.”
“Okay, dad,” Patrick said.
Nearly an hour later, they had finally found all of the pieces of Patrick’s uniform. Marcy had washed it and put it in his bag, but he’d taken his socks for show and tell, and taken his left skate out of his bag to show his friend Nicholas, who was only three, so he’d know what real hockey skates looked like. He’d shown his friend Genevieve his jersey when she showed him her tap shoes. And his helmet had somehow fallen out in the back seat of the car after practice. By the time they left the house, they barely made it to the rink in time to warm up with Patrick’s team. There had been no time before the game for a haircut.
Patrick’s team, the Lightning, did their off-ice warm-ups, then took the ice for their on-ice warm-up. Patrick was focused and wasn’t paying attention to the other team until he heard his friend Derek, standing behind him in line waiting his turn to try to shoot a puck into the net, whisper, “Wow!”
Their division was U7, so while teams could have kids as young as four, the youngest age allowed in the league, most players were five, six, or seven, as long as they turned seven after December 31. A few kids on Patrick’s team had already turned five, and most of the rest would soon, but Patrick, who was the youngest, wouldn’t turn five until after the end of the season. He was also small for his age, so he was used to everyone being bigger than he was. He rarely paid attention to the size of other kids; however, when he looked up to see what Derek was talking about, he was stunned by the size of the players on the other team, who were taking laps around the rink. “They’re playing us?” They couldn’t have been more than seven, at the oldest, but they were big for their ages, whatever they were, and were much, much larger than Patrick’s team.
“Yeah, I think so,” Derek said.
The player in front of Patrick, Jamie, sighed, “We’re gonna lose. Again.”
“Remember, we’re here to have fun,” Patrick said. “And you don’t know. Anything can happen. We just have to go out and do the best we can.” He was parroting what his father and the other coaches always told the team, but he really believed it.
When the game began, Patrick was the center, facing off against a boy at least a head taller than he was. “Why did you pipsqueaks even show up? We’re gonna wipe the ice with you!”
“We came to have fun!” Patrick replied.
“Losing is fun?”
Just then the puck dropped, and Patrick got it, quickly skating around him and passing to his teammate, Nina. She took the puck down the ice and passed it to Derek, who then passed it back to Patrick, who scored. When he returned to center ice for the next puck drop, he glanced up at the center for the other team. “Losing isn’t always fun, but that was!”
“You little—” Patrick didn’t hear what the boy said, because the puck had dropped again and he took it and again skated around the larger boy.
Time and again, Patrick’s team outmaneuvered the other team. While the players for the other team were substantially bigger, the kids on the Lightning were faster, more agile, and were team players, happy to pass the puck to another player who had a better chance to score. The Tigers, their opponents that day, were mostly puck hogs, so the Lightning were able to block their attempts to score by swarming a single player. Since they were unwilling to pass to a teammate, the Lightning quickly learned that they only had to cover one player. By the end of the period, the Lightning were up four to nothing.
They skated to their bench. The coaches congratulated them for how well they were playing, and pointed out that the work they’d done to learn to play as a team was paying off. “Are you having fun?” Clint asked the kids.
“Yeah!” Most of them shouted back.
“I’m bored,” Jamie complained. She’d been playing goalie, and the Tigers had had very few shot attempts.
“I’ll play goalie!” Patrick volunteered. As the smallest child on the team, he wasn’t an obvious choice for a goalie, but he always put his all into every position. As the children got older, they would start to specialize in one or two positions, but at this point, the coaches wanted them all to learn the skills required for each position. Clint looked at his friend James, the head coach, who shrugged and nodded. Clint helped Patrick into the goalie gear. By the time he was done it was hard to see that there was a little boy under all the padding and other protective gear.
When the intermission was over, all the players on the Lightning had switched positions. The Tigers clearly thought their luck was changing, but they’d done nothing to adapt to the Lightning’s playing style, continuing to rely on brute strength and size to win. Patrick was rarely called upon to block a shot, but cheered his team on from his place in front of the goal. He did give up the only goal the Tigers scored during the game, a shot into the top corner of the net, where he just couldn’t reach to block the puck, but he didn’t let it discourage him. When the game ended, the score was ten to one in favor of the Lightning.
Both teams hurried off the ice to make way for the Zamboni that would smooth the rink for the teams playing the next scheduled game. The coaches for the Lightning hurried their players into the dressing room as quickly as they could, away from the Tigers, gathered in the bleachers, whose head coach was angrily pointing out mistakes to the team and calling out specific players, several of whom were crying. As the parents came in and began to help the kids remove hockey gear and get back into their street clothes, James and the other coaches talked to them about the game. “First of all, great game! I’m so proud of all of you!”
“We won!” Nina yelled, sounding a little amazed.
“Yeah! We won! We won!” The rest of the team joined in.
“We did,” Clint said, “but let’s think about how we won. What did we do differently this time, so we can try to do it again?”
“I saw lots of passing, great job sharing the puck, everyone,” said one of the other coaches.
“And I noticed we were skating smart and fast, but with control, so we had a lot fewer falls than we sometimes do,” said another.
“You all kept your cool, and didn’t let the other team get to you,” said a third.
“And you all supported each other,” said James.
“And I’m wearing underwear from yesterday,” Derek volunteered.
“What?” his mom gasped. This was clearly news to her.
“Daddy didn’t lay it out for me, and the drawer was too high,” he explained.
“Uh, I worked late last night and my husband put the kids to bed and I thought laid out their clothes for today,” his mother explained.
“That’s okay, Derek,” Jamie said. “I just put my socks inside my skates. I don’t remember the last time I put them in the hamper.”
“Eww. Definitely finding and washing all your socks as soon as we get home,” her dad told her.
“No, we can’t!” She protested. “It’s good luck. Uncle Bob said so. Like when baseball players or hockey players get all fuzzy at the end of the season.”
“Yeah, we can’t do that, so we have to do something else!” Nina said.
Another boy, Mason, pointed to Patrick. “Maybe we won because Patrick is fuzzy.”
“What?” Patrick asked.
“Your hair. It’s all fuzzy and curly.”
“Oh. Mommy says I need a haircut, but we didn’t have time before the game.” He ran his hand through his sweaty hair, now sticking up in all directions and curling more than it had been earlier in the day, when it had been clean and combed. “We have to go and get it cut on the way home.”
“But then we’ll start losing again!” One of the other kids protested.
Taking charge, Derek said, “Who thinks we should wear the same underwear without washing it until the end of the season?”
Only one kid raised his hand.
“Who thinks we should not wash our game socks until the end of the season?”
Jamie and two other kids raised their hands.
“Who thinks Patrick shouldn’t cut his hair until the end of the season?” Most of the kids and nearly all of the adults raised their hands. Patrick didn’t vote. He didn’t want to wear dirty clothes, and didn’t think he’d mind letting his hair get a little longer, but he didn’t want to disappoint his mommy.
Clint and James tried to bring a little reality back to the group. “We won today because we played as a team, and we used all the skills we’ve been working on all season,” James said.
Clint backed him up. “This is the first time I really saw you guys click out there. All those things we coaches keep talking about, you did them today. That’s why you won.”
“Yeah, and Patrick’s hair,” said Nina.
“Patrick’s hair had nothing to do with it!” Clint protested, but he could see in the eyes of his son’s teammates he had lost the battle. Logically he knew a missed haircut hadn’t brought them luck, the kids were just finally starting to use the skills they’d been developing all season, but that didn’t change what they believed, and belief was a powerful thing.
* * *
“Let’s get home and make dinner for your mom so she doesn’t have to cook tonight after work,” Clint said. He knew Marcy wasn’t going to be pleased when she saw Patrick’s hair, and decided a little damage control was in order. When they arrived home, he had Patrick help him as much as it was safe for a four-year-old to help in the kitchen, and once they had assembled the chicken, mushroom and rice casserole and put it in the oven, he took Patrick in for a bath. By the time Marcy came home from work, Patrick was clean and dry and was coloring at the kitchen table while Clint assembled a salad.
As Marcy walked in, Patrick looked up and exclaimed, “Mommy, we won!”
“Did you?” She said. “That’s great! Did the celebration take so long you didn’t have time to get your hair cut?”
“I can explain,” Clint said. “Someone had taken most of his uniform out of his bag and it took so long to find it we barely made it to the rink in time for warm-ups—”
“I don’t know how my helmet fell out of my bag,” Patrick protested, as if that had been the only item missing.
“And then when we won, we started talking about what was different about this game.”
“The other players were giant!” Patrick told her, holding his arms above his head to demonstrate.
“And while the coaches were trying to convince them that they were just using the skills we’ve been teaching and were clicking as a team, the kids started pointing out things that were different, and someone noticed that Patrick’s hair was a bit—”
“Fuzzy,” Patrick supplied.
“Long,” Clint continued. “One of them compared it to when baseball or hockey players don’t shave during the playoffs, and the kids decided that since they can’t exactly grow beards or mustaches, this was the answer.”
“So are they all growing their hair, or just Patrick?”
“I’m not really sure,” Clint confessed. “But they’re convinced it brought them luck, and while you and I and the other parents know that this had nothing to do with the win today, if they believe it did, and that changing it will change future outcomes. . .”
Sighing, Marcy said, “I understand. But as soon as the season ends, haircut time, young man!”
“Okay, Mommy,” Patrick said with a grin.
To Clint, she said, “There was no alternative?”
“There were, but trust me, this was definitely the least disgusting option.”
* * *
To the surprise of the parents and coaches, the Lightning continued to win. They chalked it up to a combination of hours of practice spent learning and honing the skills necessary to play hockey, and a tendency of other teams and coaches to underestimate the team consisting of the youngest and smallest players in the league. The kids, however, attributed it to Patrick’s increasingly wild curls.
Marcy watched in dismay as Patrick’s curls seemed to get longer and more out of control by the day. She didn’t think she’d ever seen someone whose hair grew so quickly, and the end of the season couldn’t come fast enough for her. Several weeks later when they finally finished their last game, as the kids were celebrating, she said, “On the way home we can finally get that mop cut!”
“No!” Derek wailed, having overheard her. “What about the tournament?”
“What tournament?” Marcy asked.
“Remember, we talked about it,” Clint reminded her. “It’s not for another month, because the older kids have playoffs. This is the first year that U7 teams are allowed to sign up. They don’t get to do the full tournament, just pool play, but the parents voted at the beginning of the season to participate.”
“That’s right,” she said. “I remember. But I didn’t realize it was so long after the end of the season. Isn’t that the weekend before T-ball starts?”
“Yeah, it is. But we can make it work.”
“Does he have to keep his hair long until then?”
“No, but I think the kids might riot if he cuts it and then they lose a game.”
“I thought they weren’t even supposed to keep score at this age.”
“I mean, technically, they don’t. We don’t have a scoreboard, and the league doesn’t keep any stats, but we coaches do, and trust me, we don’t have to tell the kids if they’ve won or lost. Unless it’s a tie or nearly a tie, they know.”
“Fine,” Marcy said, grudgingly giving in. “We’ll cut it after the tournament, but before the first T-ball game. I can’t deal with him growing it any longer than that. I swear, I could give him pigtails, and by the time he plays in the tournament it might be braidable.”
“Deal,” Clint said, before turning to the kids and announcing, “Patrick’s mom said he can wait to cut his hair until after the tournament!”
He was greeted with a round of cheers from the team.
* * *
As the years went by, Marcy learned to make sure Patrick’s hair was cut before the start of the season, because at some point, the team would inevitably decide that in order for them to win (or to keep winning, or make the playoffs), Patrick would need to avoid cutting it. The first few years she tried to argue, but by the time Patrick started middle school, she just accepted that by the end of hockey season, and sometimes baseball season, his head would be a wild mop of curls.
At university, Patrick played baseball for his university’s team, surprising many who knew that hockey was his first love. However, as he grew older, his small stature had proven to be more of a hinderance on the ice than on the baseball diamond, so hockey became an off-season intermural activity, although he remained an avid fan.
* * *
David did a double take when Patrick walked in the door carrying a large crate of hand-dyed yarn. “Was the salon closed?”
“Huh?”
“I do pay enough attention to know that today was the day you would usually get your hair cut when you were out on your vendor runs, and you clearly did not get it cut, so I’m assuming the salon was closed for some reason. Did it burn down or something?” David asked as Patrick set the crate down.
“Uh, no, not to my knowledge. As far as I know the barber shop is still standing and was probably open for business,” Patrick answered as he ran his hand through his barely longer than usual hair.
“Was your stylist out sick or on vacation or something? Did they cancel your appointment?”
“They don’t make appointments, you just drop in, and again, as far as I know, my favorite barber was at work today.”
“So, why . . . ?” David asked, gesturing at his husband’s head where an errant curl had just managed to spring up at an odd angle.
“The Leafs . . .” Patrick began.
“What do leaves have to do with anything? The trees don’t have any leaves right now.”
“The Toronto Maple Leafs,” Patrick tried to explain.
“Toronto has special maple leaves?”
“No, it’s the professional hockey team based in Toronto. They’re called the Maple Leafs.”
“What does missing a haircut have to do with sportsball?”
“Hockey is a sport, but this is ice hockey, so there’s no ball involved,” Patrick said. David stared at him blankly, clearly waiting for an explanation or something to tie the sport he had no interest in to his husband’s slightly longer than usual locks. “The Leafs haven’t made it to the playoffs in . . . a while. Several years, as a matter of fact. But they’re playing pretty well this year, and they have a decent shot. Definitely not a guarantee, though, so I thought they could use all the help they could get.”
David shot him a look that suggested he had suddenly decided to answer the question in another language, one David had never heard of and had no hope of understanding.
“When I was a kid, my first year playing hockey, my team almost always lost. We were the youngest team in the league, and we were the smallest players. The coaches made sure we had fun, though, and focused more on learning to be good sports and developing skills. Well, near the end of the season, all that work paid off, and we won a game against a team of bigger, older kids that no one thought we had a chance to win. I needed a haircut at the time. According to my mom, my dad was supposed to take me to get it cut on the way, but we were running late, so he was going to take me after. But after the game the other kids decided my hair was the reason we won. My dad and I eventually convinced my mom to let me grow it out for the rest of the season, although I don’t know if she would have let me do it if we weren’t winning. But we were. We won the rest of our games that season. So every year, at some point, I’d stop cutting it, to try to get a win or to make the playoffs. Sometimes I did it for baseball, too. My mom hated it, but eventually she stopped fighting it. In university I only played intermural hockey; I wasn’t anywhere near big enough to make a university team, so I mostly stopped letting it grow out. Sometimes I ended up doing it for baseball too, but we were more likely to do things like not wash our game socks when we were younger, or try to grow beards by the time we were in university.”
“You don’t do that now with the baseball costume, do you?” David asked in horror.
“No, David, I wash it after every game and every practice.”
“Oh, thank God. Now tell me what this has to do with a team in Toronto?”
“They’re my favorite team, and I really want them to get to the playoffs, and hopefully win them. And logically I know that letting my hair grow has nothing to do with whether they win or lose, it wouldn’t even if I was on the team, but it’s what my team always did for luck, and the Leafs are going to need all the luck they can get. I promise I’ll cut it at the end of the season, or whenever the Leafs are eliminated.”
David breathed out slowly through his nose. He was beginning to understand. And he could accept Patrick skipping a monthly haircut. “So when is this over?”
“It depends. I guess if they get mathematically eliminated from playoff contention, I’ll cut it then. But if they make it to the final round of the playoffs, those are in late June.”
“Patrick, it’s still a week ‘til February! You know your hair grows really fast! What’s it going to look like in five months?!”
“Kind of long and curly. You can call and ask my mom to send pictures.”
David rolled his eyes. He knew it wouldn’t cause any actual harm, so if Patrick really wanted to look like some kind of rock musician or something, he guessed he wouldn’t argue. At least not too much.
* * *
A few weeks later, Patrick’s team, whatever it was called, won a game. He’d been watching on television, and David came in from the kitchen where he’d been working on new display ideas for the store when he heard Patrick’s gleeful shouting. “What?” He asked.
“The Leafs won!” Patrick exclaimed. “I want to celebrate!” He then promptly dropped to his knees and began working to open David’s fly. A few moments later, he was pulling David’s cock from his underwear, and David was surprised to find his cock was apparently also very excited by the outcome of a hockey game. Patrick mouthed at the head for a few minutes, before licking a stripe up the thick vein along the underside and then sinking down as far as he was able. David gasped and reached for Patrick’s head, sinking his fingers into Patrick’s silky locks, and oh, this was new. Patrick’s hair had never been long enough to pull before, but now David could tangle his fingers in it, using it to position Patrick’s head the way he wanted it, pulling slightly to elicit a moan that nearly caused things to be over far too soon. By the time he was done, David was feeling relaxed and boneless, and Patrick’s hair was a chaotic mess of curls. He stood and kissed David, letting him taste himself, before saying, “I’m going to go make dinner, but I want to continue this celebration after we eat.”
Suddenly, David found himself in the position of fervently wishing a sportsball (sportspuck?) team the very best of luck, because he was now in no hurry to see Patrick cut his hair. No hurry at all.