Robb Schiller

Last week a good friend Cole asked if I would share a story of mine.  He was speak­ing at sta­tus, you can lis­ten to the teach­ing here, on what God feels about the cir­cum­stances in our lives.  I was able to write a piece about a hockey game over a year ago I was arrested after, I really enjoyed the writ­ing process and had a lot of fun telling this story, hope you enjoy.

Teeth

The beer leagues are gen­er­ally referred to as the beer leagues for one vital rea­son.  This is when mass con­glom­er­a­tions of washed up old hockey play­ers roll into the ice rink with 30-year-old equip­ment, a cooler full of Mol­son and end­less sto­ries about the glory days when the Islanders used to win the Cup.  These leagues are noth­ing more than orga­nized pick up games.  The teams bat­tle and vie for their chance to hoist Lord Stanley’s repli­cated tin-foiled card­board cup. It was a game in one of these beer leagues that I took a step deeper into my under­stand­ing of emo­tional depth and ended up going on a law­ful adven­ture.
Now, one thing you have to under­stand about this glo­ri­fied pick-up league is that any man, old or young, big or small becomes a ter­ri­to­r­ial time bomb when armored with hockey equip­ment. And none of the ice war­riors fit this descrip­tion bet­ter than the goalie.
I moved to Florida almost 3 years ago from the hockey-smitten state of Michi­gan.  As soon as my fam­ily made the tran­si­tion my Father, brother and I began play­ing in Orlando’s only… and pre­mier beer league.  We would skate every Sun­day night chas­ing down the tin foil cup game after game.  I can remem­ber dri­ving up to the RDV Sport­splex stoked because I knew some­thing wild would hap­pen every game.  Look­ing back on one spe­cific game more than a year later I still shake my head in bewil­der­ment.
We were play­ing the only other com­pet­i­tive team in our league that night and the game was closer than Click and Clack. And then the unseen began to sneak its creepy lit­tle head out from around the cor­ner… But before I go on, another thing you need to know. Just a week or so before this game I had a con­ver­sa­tion with Josh, the Josh, the pas­tor Josh mind you, a con­ver­sa­tion about loos­en­ing the chains that bind our emo­tion in this cul­ture as males.  And as he told me a story about let­ting his emo­tions go one after­noon dur­ing an episode of Oprah he encour­age me to do the same, let my emo­tions go when they begin to press against the walls of my heart…
I remem­ber the play start­ing and mov­ing up the ice with my brother, I took a shot as I moved past the blue line and it ric­o­cheted off the goalies hel­met and into the glass behind him.  My brother skated through the crease in front of the goalie and tipped him a bit off bal­ance, noth­ing out of the ordi­nary but they exchanged some choice words.  The play was whis­tled dead a minute later and all seemed nor­mal.
As I began to make my way to the bench I heard some blab­ber mouthing and turned just in time to see my brother get blindly checked in the back by the goalie of the other team.  As instantly as this wreck­age unfolded I remem­bered that con­ver­sa­tion with Josh encour­ag­ing me to let my emo­tions go, I took two strides toward the goalie and reared my elbow let­ting my fist cov­ered by my glove meet his face­mask for two quick jabs.  The first clearly star­tling him and the sec­ond more focused knock­ing him to the ice because our eyes meet for a won­drously emo­tion packed mil­lisec­ond before con­nec­tion bring­ing out more dis­gust in this atroc­ity.  In a flash of a whirl of real­iza­tion of what just took place my body flooded with adren­a­line.  I made eye con­tact with my dad, who in the penalty box gave me grin­ning thumbs up.  The ref­er­ees then quickly grabbed me and to the cheers of my team­mates was escorted off the ice, I turned to see my neme­sis spit­ting blood on the ice as I was kicked out of the game.  Being taken off the ice and kicked out of the game can make a hockey player feel really good, and I was filled with an emo­tion I hadn’t felt before.  This bal­anc­ing act of Joy for stand­ing up for my brother min­gled with fear for a bru­tal retal­i­a­tion.  The next few moments I stood tall and as my team­mates came into the locker-room and announced the game had been can­celled because the goalie was furi­ous over the loss of his teeth, I didn’t shrink at all.
The next step I could not have pre­pare for at all.  Amid all the ruckus I heard peo­ple say the police were get­ting involved, but this does not hap­pen in a hockey game, peo­ple lose teeth all the time.  Only a few moments after this con­ver­sa­tion began I heard a voice call my name into the locker room.  Walk­ing out­side I meet a nice man who worked for the Mait­land Police Depart­ment and wanted to ask me a few ques­tions about what just hap­pened.  In utter aston­ish­ment, my emo­tions quickly turned con­fused and con­cerned.  I answered all the ques­tions and was actu­ally expect­ing the entire con­ver­sa­tion to make it out of the rink in time to make the sec­ond ser­vice at Sta­tus.  Curve balls come in life is what they say, and this moment I will never for­get.  The offi­cers spent some time mulling over the evi­dence and then asked no one to get alarmed, that a for­mal arrest would be nec­es­sary.  I ini­tially was really bummed out I wouldn’t get to make it to sta­tus.  I would then spend the next 12 hours hand­cuffed in the police car, going through every­thing at 33rd and wait­ing for my can­celled bail to get trans­ferred through.  How­ever I was super stoked to eat a plate full of cook­ies my mom made for me when I got picked up at 6 am.