MORE AROUND THE VILLAGE (K)

In one humorous instance, a famous college coach from across the pond came to Mekkar’s family home to offer him a future based scholarship to play hockey in North America. The coach had seen him play during a match against his team on a previous travelling tour. The pitch was that Mekkar could play the game he loved and gain a college degree at the same time, along with minimal cost to his family due to the sports scholarship. Some in the village, along with Mekkar, thought it was maybe just to make contact with him and get a solid future commitment and signed on the dotted line from him for later on. Mekkar was still a teenager at this point.

Mekkar was back visiting his home village for a couple of those days but he was over at his best friend Lasse’s house. Fortunately, Mekkar’s mama Sirga had a friend of hers, who spoke good english, over at the house at that time when the coach arrived. (Mekkar would be filled in as the details of this exchange later on). Anyway, the coach knocked on the front door along with another individual who showed him where the house was. Sirga immediately knew it must have been a stranger because they approached the front door which wasn’t the norm here because of past episodes. The door bell chimed. Sirga answered the door with her friend and translator next to her since Sirga hadn’t learned english yet. The coach asked if Mekkar was home.

Sirga was now on the offensive and asked to see some type of identification. She bluntly stated back through translation, “What do you want?” in a suspicious tone of voice. After this question was relayed back to the school representative, the coach was taken aback, visibly frustrated, and turned around to walk away. Then, Sirga taunted audibly in her native tongue at the departing school official, “This guy came half way around the world to not even spend thirty seconds, how stupid. Well, I don’t want my child to go to that school because they are too easily intimidated”. The coach couldn’t comprehend a word that Sirga had said. Sirga and her friend laughed out loud regarding this whole encounter. Just like that, this brief multi lingual exchange was over.

Later on, when Mekkar heard about this, he felt that someone had led the coach there and were hot on the trail and there might be more on the way. The rub is that if Mekkar would have been home during the coach’s visit, he would have rejected the offer anyway. His focus instead was to play professional hockey as soon as possible. It would take a lot of convincing on the part of some of his own coaches, parents, friends, and teammates to have Mekkar wait to perform at the higher echelons of the sport until later on. Especially if he were to make an Olympic or National team or travel internationally on an All-Star squad. Those advising Mekkar told him to enjoy the experience and not to rush it because these situations do not come around very often. They said to him that if it ever happens, it was meant to be.

In hindsight, this focus was a short term viewpoint on the part of Mekkar and later turned out to be a big mistake. What he failed to see, due to his youthful desires and dreams dancing around in his skull, is that an athlete’s sport career is only just a short part of one’s overall life span. That is based on a seventy year or more span of an individual’s potential lifetime. But, Mekkar had doubts and conflicting thoughts just like everyone else. Mekkar felt that maybe he grew up way too fast, in comparison to others, and didn’t get to be a kid long enough during his formative years. Mekkar entertained this thought circling his brain at intervals, Hey I am going to be a child as much as possible, for as long as I can, because I have experienced the other. Maybe it was some type of syndrome to delay adulthood, perhaps?