“Thanks.”
“You OK?”
“Yeah.”
“OK. Goodnight. Good game. Goodnight.”
He closed my bedroom door and went back upstairs. That’s the last thing I remember about that night, and the only thing I remember about that entire year of hockey.
I CONTINUED TO progress quickly in hockey. By 1975, when I was eleven, I began playing for the St. James Canadians at what today would be considered the AAA level. I eventually became one of a small group of players in the city who played at that level in every year of eligibility without ever being cut. I was usually at or near the top of our league statistically in “goals against average” while playing on a team that often finished only in the middle of the standings. As I moved through the ranks of age-group hockey, I was becoming known outside of my local area and was being scouted and recruited for both junior and college hockey teams.
But I wasn’t close to being the best athlete in my family. My brother, Doug, was blessed with a remarkable physical make-up and coordination, the kind of guy who later in life could pick up a set of golf clubs after not having played in a year or two and score in the mid-70s. And my sister, Dawn, blew us both away by becoming a nationally ranked swimmer, a national age group record holder, and later a champion triathlete.
Yet, while all three of us seemingly had a common bond through sports, something that would connect us and bring out all of the emotional support that a functioning family needs to provide its members, that wasn’t the case. I was always on my own as the eldest, while Dawn and Doug were more of a team. They were simply naturally more comfortable with each other, they were more fun to be around, and they were cooler kids at school. Unlike me, they had many friends. Me, when I was young I was always a little different, off by myself, intellectually a bit older than my peers and with different interests.
All three of us were always straight-A students, but I wasn’t just a straight-A student, I was a straight-A-virtually-perfect student. I could tell that I was ahead of the rest when my kindergarten teacher let me lead the flashcard vocabulary program. She had figured out on the first day that I could read all of the words, pronounce them correctly, and give their proper meanings.
Not only that, but I completely kicked ass at nap time.
The next year I was dragged out of my class to perform a reading test for another teacher who had heard about me. I became a bit of a circus act, and I was increasingly asked to solve puzzles or answer questions on command for others to show just how smart I was. But I also had a most amazing teacher, Ms. Belding, who always made time for me. She took me aside and set me up with my own academic program. That elementary school of mine—Arthur Oliver—is long gone, but I hope she isn’t.
Ms. Belding was the perfect teacher for me because she kept challenging me while encouraging me. She started giving me my own schoolwork during class. I loved it. I was getting from her what I wasn’t getting at home: somebody who understood me and my need for more. And while schools now rarely advance young children ahead of their natural grade because they better understand the social and psychological risks this presents to students not old enough to interact appropriately with older classmates, she and the rest of the staff at my school only ever did what everyone thought at that time was best for me.
It wasn’t long before external educators were showing up at school and I was being pulled out of class to be tested by strangers.
“Greg, today we have something special set up. Don’t worry. It will be fun. Here, come with me, we’re going down to the office to meet somebody.”
And with that, I got up and went with Ms. Belding, the class snickering behind us as she held my hand, oblivious to my immense crush on her.
I was introduced to a woman who was pleasant yet who also seemed overly serious about what we were about to do. I was tested on a set of materials, with blocks, math puzzles, timed tasks to perform, language puzzles, things like that. At one point she broke into a wide smile and thereafter was more akin to a best friend. She told me that I was the first person she had tested who had managed to solve one particular puzzle.
About a week later, the same scene played out. I asked why I had to do it all over again and was told that they wanted to make sure that my score really was what it was. All I know is that the next week I was moved up a grade. A week later, I was at the top of that grade too.
I was “academically gifted,” as they say, and if I in any way make this out to be a potential weakness I also understand how that will come across. I did well at school and was moved up a grade and probably could have been moved up a few more. I was a parent’s dream. I was, to anybody looking at me from the outside, a massive success. How could any of this in any way ever prove to be a problem?
Today, children are rarely accelerated through the school system ahead of their age group as it is better understood now that school is as much about life as it is about education. School is about learning the basics, learning how to learn, learning how to socialize, and gaining the ability and confidence to facilitate your own development. If you aren’t developing emotionally as well as academically, you’re in a very dangerous place. And with all that was going on, I was in that dangerous place, an isolating place.
When I moved ahead in hockey, at least I had my school friends. When everyone figured out I needed more in school, they reasoned I could deal with it because I was already playing sports with older kids. Except, by moving me up a year in school, they took me away from the very group of kids who were keeping me socially integrated at my emotional level. As large as I was physically when I was young, I was not an emotionally strong child. I was not ready to live in a world where my hockey and school peers were all older and more emotionally mature.
Because of my size, I wasn’t exactly a normal-looking kid. I was the one in the center of the back row in all the school pictures, the kid with his head sticking up while his neck sits next to the smiling faces on either side of him. Everywhere I went I felt as if I didn’t belong, and that was imprinted on me at a very early age. Emotionally, I was a gentle soul, very much like my dad in that regard, though fortunately I had also acquired my mom’s aggression, which gave me a drive he never had. Emotionally and socially I was a late bloomer. Although physically large, I was very late to reach puberty. And because I was already finding it difficult to fit in, the last thing I wanted was to look different, to actually be different. Yet I was different. I kept growing and growing, I started stumbling over my limbs, I started to gain weight as my body anticipated a puberty that just never seemed to kick in. It was a very difficult time for me. I was a giant with the voice of a choir boy and an athlete who was now bumbling and having to work hard just to keep up at the back of the pack while running laps or doing other training drills that I had once led.
After having started out as very athletic and extremely coordinated, I went through several years of being very tall but also chubby and somewhat uncoordinated. I struggled to keep pace with my height and lingering fat, and had a body composition I thought would never change. Yet, while I was tripping over my own legs, I was still able to fight through the extra weight and keep succeeding at hockey at the highest levels as patient coaches could see in me both my natural talent and my willingness to work at least as hard as the hardest worker on the team.
By age fourteen I was again truly becoming an athlete. I was active in football and other sports besides hockey and had no difficulty excelling at school while keeping up an extensive list of extracurricular activities.
But a disconnect between the reality of who I was and who I thought I was had been cemented. The negative image I had of myself from those difficult times stayed with me longer than it should have. Further, that image, formed by others too, probably stayed with them longer than it should have.
I had just turned fourteen and was away at a hockey tournament in Thunder Bay, Ontario. One afternoon, we had nothing to do between games and were hanging around in one of our hotel rooms. Somebody came up with