When University of Victoria support staff threatened to strike last fall, the university argued dormitory cooks and cleaners should have to stay on the job because today’s students — and here I paraphrase — couldn’t go to the can unless mom replaced the toilet paper.
Well, no, what UVic actually told the labour board was that first-year students in residence are “Millennials” who might have trouble caring for themselves because someone else has always done it for them.
“This generation is the most watched-over generation in history, having a heavily structured upbringing with a significant degree of parental involvement,” the labour board synopsis read.
Good lord, have kids really become that helpless?
Not really, but some of the parents need Ritalin.
Which is what sprang to mind when the old guys hit the ice at Pearkes arena this week. (Stay with me on this.)
Saturday was the last day of the 24th annual Victoria Playmakers hockey tournament — 38 teams of skaters aged 55 and older. That included four teams of players 75 and up, and another two made up entirely of men in their 80s. An over-70 team from Japan has come every year except the one when the tsunami struck.
Naturally, some players tire more quickly than they used to. (He shoots, he snores!)
They don’t party as hard, as proven by the post-game empties. “It used to be 48 beer and six pop,” said tournament organizer Wayne Ford. “Now it’s six beer and 48 pop.”
Nor do their bodies recover as easily. By Saturday, they had more burning joints than a reggae concert.
But they compete hard, and well. Most of the 70-year-olds skate better than I did at 20 (which, admittedly, is still a pretty low bar, kind of like being the best-looking Sutter brother).
Here’s what else they do: They win and lose.
This is counter to a trend in kids’ sport, where nobody keeps score, nobody gets cut from the team and nobody’s feelings get hurt. Leagues don’t keep standings (think of the NHL as run by Karl Marx).
It’s an extension of the rest of life: Can’t flunk students in school, can’t even dock marks for late homework. Children are told to bring Valentines for the entire class, not individuals, lest someone’s heart be broken. (Madness! How else do you know you’re unappealing?) Saddling kids with expectations of perpetual happiness does them no favours.
The mother-henning reaches into adulthood. University profs who hand out sub-par grades must contend not with angry students (who, having tasted failure for the first time, go straight to grief-counselling) but their psycho parents. NPR did a story last year on moms and dads who go to their children’s job interviews, even lobby their kids’ bosses for raises and holidays.
I asked Bob Dawson: Would your parents have berated a university prof?
“No.”
Would they have gone to a job interview with you?
“Um, no.”
Dawson turns 75 this year, making him one of the younger players on the Victoria Blooze. I caught him at Pearkes just before he took to the ice against Burnaby’s BWC Coalminers.
Learning to win, learning to lose, is a life lesson, he says. “Anything you work at or do, you’re in competition. You’ve got to be able to take it on the chin and pick yourself up.”
Protecting Junior’s self-esteem is fine, but at some point you have to stand on your own two skates and learn that losing doesn’t make you a bad human being and winning doesn’t qualify you to be pope. Sometimes you get bad breaks you don’t deserve, sometimes the other team beats you because they’re better, and no, you don’t get points just for showing up. Nobody wants a surgeon who keeps a framed participation ribbon on the wall where the degree is supposed to go.
So yes, they kept track of goals when the Coalminers met the Blooze, the elderly Japanese referee carefully translating players’ numbers in his head before passing them on to the scorekeeper: “Ten, from four and nine.”
One team triumphed, the other learned to die of a broken heart.
Dawson was prepared for either. “If you haven’t blown a five-goal lead and lost in the last two minutes, you haven’t lived.”
