Lack of ambition is not a career plan. But all of my life I’ve been sticking to my no-plan plan and it seems to be working.

For me. At least I’m still around.

I’ve read about people who’ve had a burning desire since childhood to be a doctor or a lawyer or a sea captain… what have you. Not me, no fiery ambition, ever. What I loved to do, all of my life, was to play. And read,when I wasn’t playing, mostly about sports.

Growing up in a house beside a dead end street was the perfect playing ground for neighbourhood kids to play endless games. Road hockey and even baseball when we were still young. Later, an Englishman organized a soccer league in our town and as I grew older there was always pick-up baseball and soccer in the local parks and of course hockey on the outdoor rinks. Kids of all ages and sizes. And of course a lot of fistfights. No lawyers, not even parents, were ever involved. Nowadays I see flying pigs as often as I do kids playing unorganized games. (The blog title is, of course, One Grumpy Old Man.)

I always tell my kids that I was fortunate to grow up in the greatest city (Montreal) in the greatest country (Canada) at the greatest time in the history of the universe (the Baby Boom era).

But as anyone who has ever lived will tell you, all good things must come to an end.

1980, as I remember it, was the year of reckoning. I had just returned from an undistinguished six month stint in Edmonton, Alberta, supposedly in-training as a manager at the Hudson’s Bay Company, but mostly aimlessly wandering the floor changing up the record selections in the Toys and Music departments. (they were side by side.) Before that I had had a stint playing hockey in Europe but had returned home because I was homesick. And prior to that I had had four wonderful years playing hockey at Bishop’s University and the Universite du Quebec a Trois-Rivieres. And oh, yes, going to school.

I was back home now, ‘between jobs’ and as my parents probably remembered it, a little too content with the status quo. My father had been a French Canadian orphan from the downtown Montreal working class neighbourhood of St. Henri who had risen to the top of his profession as the Director of the Council of Ministers of Education in Canada, now based in Toronto. My mother was a farmgirl who had led every class in every school she had ever attended.

They must have been disappointed.

I had just applied to Teacher’s College at Bishop’s University, for lack of anything better to do. One of my siblings, Terry, was around the house and eager to stoke the fire. You know those sibling rivalries.

“So, David.. you didn’t make it in hockey,” he began, smiling as he pointed out the ending of my first aborted career, “you don’t want to work as a landscaper and painter all your life (jobs held in my teens and early twenties as a student) and your business career was dismal.” I was about to say that the pot was calling the kettle black as Terry was also underachieving and had had even less experience than I held. But my father was standing nearby, listening intently and inhaling his cigarette with one long drag. My brother could sense he had me staggering and moved in for the knockout punch. “If you don’t make it in teaching then you’re just about done.”

My father nodded slowly in agreement and then blew his cigarette smoke out through his nose, no doubt envisioning a future for me similar to the fate of Howard Mosher, a man who lived in a tarpaper shack on a gravel road near my grandfather’s farm and who was so confused he had many times told me the story of him tackling a bear in the woods, armed only with a kitchen knife. One time my grandfather had wryly noted, “The sad part of that is that it’s probably true.”

Samuel Johnson once said that the fear of hanging concentrates a man’s thoughts wonderfully. I managed to hang on to that feeling through 31 years of teaching, twenty-six of which were in high school but included everything from Grade One phys.ed. to college -level English. Well, that was E.S.L. in France, but saying college-level English sounds more impressive.

Now I seem to have found my niche in retirement. And the smooth motion of skating allows me to continue my lifelong love of playing even now on oft-injured and osteo-arthritic riddled knees.

But how do the French explain it ? Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. Without either parent or siblings around to point out my lassitude my daughter has happily jumped in to fill the void. Recently I asked her about her day teaching at the Carleton University Hockey School and then mentioned that she had awakened me coming in at 2 a.m. that morning

“And what did you do yesterday, Dad?” I replied that I had read the papers. I went to the gym. And oh, did I mention the fact that I had taken your turn walking Jasper?

She looked at me. Unimpressed. “So… nothing.”

She turned on her heel and walked out before I could even mention that I had also watched the Montreal Canadiens defeat the Philadelphia Flyers 5-0.

A pretty damn busy day, if you ask me.