The Missed Appointments
Have you ever missed an important appointment? The kind with a doctor you’ve been waiting to see since Expo 67, or beside the bed of your wife giving birth to your first child? As for me, when I look back at the milestones in my life, all the major appointments I missed were somehow tied to sports.
Chronologically speaking, I was born in 1975. From then until 1979, the Montreal Canadiens won four consecutive Stanley Cups — all of which I missed. Too young to appreciate them and too unaware to even think of enjoying them as they happened, because, as history has taught us, it would never happen again. Fast forward to 1988, a time when I was young, a bit of an outcast, and stuck in some kind of invisible vice. On a dull spring evening, while umpiring my first baseball game (one day I’ll tell you why I ever took that job), the pitcher threw, the ball bounced before landing in the catcher’s glove, the batter yawned, and I, nervous as ever, called it a strike. A coach shouted at me in English, hurling insults I’d never heard before, and I asked myself, “What am I doing here?”
My rendezvous with baseball returned six years later, during a legendary series between the Braves and our beloved Expos, who were riding high at the time. The series drew record-breaking crowds at the Stadium, and I had a ticket to the decisive game for first place. I didn’t go. That ticket is still tucked away, unused, in some secret box I no longer remember the owner of.
Between those two events, my friend Jean-François and I joined a football team. We were 15, intoxicated — by life, alcohol, wild nights, and sometimes fresh fruit. We paid the $75 fee, a fortune for teenagers. My long-armed friend was made starting quarterback after just one practice, and I played defensive midfield, or something like that. We played one game before retiring, returning to our intoxicated ways. A foolish decision, the hallmark of teenage indecision.
Then there was June 20, 1992. I sat in the Montreal Forum during my first year of NHL draft eligibility. I had quit hockey at age 11, but who knows when your lucky day might come? Roman Hamrlík was picked before me, and the Canadiens ended up selecting the towering David Wilkie. The following year, unaware that the Habs were about to go all the way, I went to Paris with my girlfriend. We were young, we were wild, and I was a fool. I left — what an idiot — from June 2 to 16. The Canadiens lifted the Cup on the 9th and held their parade a few days later. I heard the news on a beach in Nice. I was f… furious.
I’ll skip over the years and my reconciliation with playing and watching sports (I never umpired again), and fast forward to today, where I now stand before an appointment I won’t miss for anything: the one offered by the Centre Multisports through the Horizon 2035 project. I’ll be 60 then, and I’ll finally be able to say, during a talk in honor of my perfectly average cholesterol level, “My friends, sport doesn’t make you live longer — it makes you live younger. Good evening!”