Hjorring Nights
I was sitting with a couple of player dads I randomly met at an outdoor pub in Hjorring, Denmark. We were there for the internationally renowned Dana Cup Party…I mean Tournament. I was coaching 17-year-old girls from the Milwaukee area. They were dads of 17-year-old girls on a team from Wausau, Wisconsin.
It’s oddly exciting when you’re in a foreign country and run into someone from your city or state. You can’t help but talk to them and see if you share common experiences or possibly even friends. Have you been there? Did you see that? Do you know so-and-so? She’s a stitch. No, he’s in prison. Yes, she got a nose job alright. Great family, it’s a shame about what they found in their cellar.
At some point in our scintillating conversation high school sports came up – the favorite topic of middle-age dads forced to watch their kids’ athletic endeavors while reminiscing about their own glory days. The two Wausau dads rambled on about their high school football state championship run or maybe it was their state runner-up run or sectional regional conference title run or Running of the Bulls run. At one point one of the dads exclaimed, “I’m surprised you never heard of our team?” I wanted to answer, “Your surprise astounds me.” I remember little else of what he said, though strangely I do recall they averaged nine yards a carry. He drifted off into detailed descriptions of the heights and weights of the offensive line, and I drifted off watching teenagers from around the globe exploring the quaint Hjorring streets while drinking excessive amounts of alcohol and hoped my team wasn’t involved.
The teenage years are magical, myth-making, Molotov cocktails of misery and majesty muddled into a confusing mix of dendrite growth, hyperactive hormones and impaired inhibitions. Nostalgic teen memories are the tattered remains forming the fabric of our lives. C’mon, admit it – who doesn’t love the teen movie? Movies like American Pie, The Breakfast Club, Cooley High and American Graffiti define generations. We all have our favorites. My wife prefers Footloose, Clueless and Better Off Dead. I lean towards Ferris Buellers Day Off and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I can return to those movies decade after decade and still relate to their angst, ambivalence and casual cruelty.
Not long ago I was talking to a high school classmate (I’ll call Aaron), whom I didn’t know well but had always liked. We were in a club together and then he quit to join a new club. He told me the real reason he quit was because of one person (I’ll call Hank). Hank is a friend of mine to this day, and it saddened me to hear Aaron say that. Aaron is a successful guy and a great person but so is Hank. Hank, however, was a shit in high school. I think he realizes that now. He was one of those guys who made fun of everyone, often mercilessly. And I was always a willing observer, and if I’m honest about it probably egged him on from time to time. Point is I never said, “enough is enough.” Aaron was a casualty of Hank’s mistreatment and my passive acquiescence.
The Wausau men were still talking high school football. “Our defense was awesome. In fact, our D-line was basically our O-line. Those guys could really move people.”
Speaking of moving, I thought to myself, maybe I’ll slip a couple of tables over and try out my non-existent Danish on the that nice looking couple. Maybe it was the note of desperation in their story telling that bothered me. Maybe it was their presumption that I should care about their teenage glory days.
When I was a junior in high school, I scored the game winner in the state semi-final. I kind of remember it. It was an overcast day at United Serbian field. The ball was served into the box from the left side. I, playing right midfield, made an impeccably timed far post run, slipped past my defender and met the black and white Adidas Tango ball off the half volley. Even now, my instep tingles recalling the exquisite contact of foot against leather. The ball traveled on an upward trajectory with stunning velocity to shake and shudder the two-ply twine on the left side of the goal. Yeah, I remember every damn detail!
I glanced at my watch – 10:00 PM and still bright as midday. The sun barely set in Hjorring in July. One of the guys was talking about his high school football team’s defensive stats: “We only gave up 5 points per game on the season. Yeah, we were real aggressive, created a lot of turnovers.”
Sometimes I get aggressive with an apple turnover and try to eat it in two bites, I considered saying while still tingling over my game winner in ’86.
“And boy did we party after those games,” one of the Wausau dads chimed in.
11:00 PM now, still light out, and it looked like the party in the Hjorring town square was just getting started. Mercifully, one of the parents of the kids I was coaching arrived and sent me on a reconnaissance mission to keep their daughters out of trouble. I waded into the young crowd feeling too old to join in but still young enough to envy them.
A couple of minutes into my mission, I spotted one of my players, Melinda, sitting on the curb cuddled between two leather-clad boys. She held a cigarette expertly, tapping the ash with her index finger. Her other hand held a bottle of beer, which she also sipped expertly. Melinda had always seemed shy and nervous. I figured she spent weekends at home watching movies with a few close friends or reading teen lit. I had no idea she liked carousing with the Hells Angels and knocked back beers like an off-duty cop.
After a unintelligible conversation with Melinda’s new friends, Hans and Groper, I moved her away to safety, sanity or sorrow (she could decide in the morning) and continued on my mission to ruin my team’s night. Inside a dance club I saw two of my players performing tongue exercises with some euro-swine. Another girl, whose father I’d known since I was 17 years old, was sitting on the lap of some guy who looked like he might be a roadie for Motley Crue. On the dance floor most of the other girls on the team were dancing energetically, holding beers high, like the trophies they were supposed to be playing for in the morning.
Watching my girls party, I imagined the Wausau dads back at the table deep into graphic descriptions of their post-game parties now. Lots of beer and girls, maybe some skinny dipping in the lake, beer slides, drunken rides on snowmobiles and, oh yeah, the time Moose woke up naked on his neighbor’s lawn cuddling with their lawn gnome. “He’ll never live that one down,” they’re saying as I’m wrangling my team together and wishing I was back at their table. I’d tell them the story of this night my junior year of high school, jumping from a second story window and I’m running down the streets of Milwaukee and … no one cares about your stories either Rob.
By 1:00 AM I had rounded up the girls. Safe and secure as a team again, we walked (some stumbled) slowly back to our accommodations soaking up the last vestiges of light in the northern sky. One girl tried to run off for one more rendezvous with Sven. We lassoed her back into the fold and the world’s greatest (and shortest) love affair ended. Love stricken and inebriated, she might not realize it now, I thought, but 20 or 30 years from now she’ll have this bittersweet night to get her through the dark hours while lying in bed next to her snoring and farting husband; perhaps she’ll even wonder what happened to Sven, what her life might look like right now if she had been just a little bit quicker dodging that damn coach and made it back to the arms of Sven.
