This year for my birthday I received a really cool gift. My parents were kind enough to get me a sweet visor for my hockey helmet. It looks something like this one:
At any rate, I was super stoked to take this visor out to the ice and skate my guts out. My birthday was in April, and the current hockey season started on 2 May. I was able to use the visor for the three games that have taken place so far. The new team, the Warriors, is pretty great. It's different from the last team because we're all sort of strangers to each other with a few connections. I like this because everyone is more inclined to get to know each other and become friends. I think it's a great environment for building a team, even though we're not the best at playing together.
Well, the third game was quite the adventure. We were playing against "Hogan's Heroes", and things weren't looking so well. Our positioning wasn't the best, we weren't watching where we were passing the puck, and things were generally just not going our way. At one point we were down 7 - 0. It was pretty bleak. Well, out of nowhere we caught on fire. In a short period of time we made 3 goals without a single return. This brought the score up to 7 - 3. In the middle of this frenzy I was able to get the puck and make my own little drive against our opponents. As I crossed the ice into enemy territory, I was quickly approaching their goal. Between the net and myself were three players. Two of them were up and the third was the goalie. Not to be discouraged I pressed on. I decided that I needed to quickly get off a shot and continue forward to catch the rebound in the case that it didn't work as I hoped. Well, as is a risk with sports like hockey, I took a blow from one of the opposing players. Now, this wouldn't have been so bad, except for a couple of things. For one, his stick went high. As you know, I don't have anything covering the lower portion of my face. This is a recipe for trouble. On top of this, the stick hit me in the mouth. I know this isn't the smartest thing I've ever done, but I wasn't wearing a mouth guard either. Let me tell you that a stick to the mouth isn't pleasant. Another thing, my lips were apart exposing my teeth, which are currently encompassed by braces (they were at the time too, fortunately). Let's just say I felt my teeth move upon the impact. Needless to say, I said a few choice words. I remember words such as ouch, poop, and other various words of color flying out of my mouth in a very appropriate fashion (If you believe that something is wrong with our relationship, because I definitely released a strain of words that Jesus wouldn't be proud of). I then made the mistake of swallowing. If you've never swallowed a mouthful of blood, you won't understand just how gross that was. Don't get me wrong, I'm the guy that sucks on my wounds when they bleed, but bulk amounts of blood going down the ol' tube is anything but delicious. I didn't make that mistake again. I quickly noticed that my bite didn't feel right, and with that came the realization that my teeth might be missing. I felt them and found that all my teeth were still in my mouth and relatively where they belong. I thought about playing on, but then I remembered that the refs wouldn't allow that with the copious amounts of blood flowing from my gums. This led to me getting off of the ice and getting my family to take me to the dentist. During my quest to get out of the ice rink I accomplished something I didn't even realize was on my bucket list. I spat blood out just like in the movies when someone takes a hit to the mouth. It was super legit. After what seemed like an eternity of bleeding and trying to figure out where to go, we got my dentist to agree to meet us at his practice. That's where we decided that my teeth were going to be alright... provided they don't die (which they still might, seeing as this incident happened a mere three days ago). Well, my face wasn't the prettiest it's ever been, but I feel like it was probably the bloodiest.
Well, as you can see my teeth weren't in the same position they used to be in. I found out that my braces were very likely the only reason one (if not more) of my teeth didn't fly out. I felt pretty vindicated about telling my dad I needed braces at that moment. From this experience I've learned a couple of things. I've learned that I should invest in a mouth guard. It's very important that I get one of these to protect the precious items in my mouth I'm trying to straighten out. I also now feel like I'm a real hockey player because I took some real damage. It also hurts a lot to eat with your teeth knocked out of position in a less than orthodox fashion.
