The Mean Hockey Stick That Is Mocking Me

My hockey stick is trying to teach me a lesson. Yet I am unwilling to abide to it.

It's a nice, "Mylec" brand hockey stick that I picked up a Savers. I planned on using it for church hockey this season (yayyy! the season has begun!!), that way there would be more sticks for other people, and I would get used to having the same weight and size stick each game; thus hopefully improving my performance. The only problem with this stick was that it had a purple blade. A purple blade is fine, especially when it matches the purple and white stick-part.

But I am obsessed with matching things if it is within my human capability.

My team this year is The Lone Rangers (or "The Loon Rangers..."...don't worry, this is an inside joke type of thing...). We have really really really cool looking colors. A deep gray/charcoal colored shirt, with silver and deep teal accents. I love the colors, and I'm convinced they're the neatest looking jerseys this season.

There's only one problem.
I have a purple stick.
Luckily, I also have one whole drawer dedicated to duck tape.

Before I actually saw the shirts, I was told about the colors. Unfortunately, I thought of the blue/teal color as a totally different shade that it was. I started duck taping the stick-part of my hockey stick, using my light blue colored tape, and my silver for a few stripes. Electrical tape came in the picture too. But before I did all the taping, I started to get bugged by the purple plastic blade. If only it were a coordinating color!
If only, if only, if only.

And then I got an idea.

What if I painted the blade?

The voice in my head starting talking to me and saying:
"Eh, it won't stick. It'll peel off, and you'll be back to purple."
And then I started talking back,
"But, but, but, I just want to experiment! I don't really care if it doesn't work. I just want to do it to do it. After all, it's not like I want to build a homemade bomb or anything. I just want to use acrylic craft paint to change the color of my hockey stick blade!"

And so I did.
...After all, I had made a good point to my head.

The next day, I painted (I did this outside mind you) over the purple, with a nice, light, calypso blue acrylic craft paint. I just used my little paint brushes that we keep in the linen closet. And get this: I didn't even get ANY on myself, or anything else besides the blade! Oh, I was so proud of myself! (this is "miss fumble-fingers talkin' here).
And there is was, a new color on my own hockey stick.

There was of course, one problem.
It scratched off.

Of course, since I had strongly assumed that this would happen, I didn't get at all disappointed. And then, after that was when I used the duck tape on the wood. That turned out nicely too, and it all matched perfectly: The paint, the duck tape ...Ahhhh...

And then the light bulb started switching on again (I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing, looking back on how a lot of my ideas work...).

So here's the thing: I have these wonderful, long, baggy athletic shorts. At the moment they are sitting on my bed. They were basically a birthday present from my Aunt, and I absolutely love them. I really really wanted to wear them to play hockey. There was only one problem.

They are black and white (this is fine, after all, these colors go with anything), but with maroon accent stripe-thingy.

Noooo...

I love the maroon color! I really do! It looks awesome, and I wouldn't have it any other way!

...But it doesn't match with teal and charcoal...!

Now, I am fine with the fact that by now, you are laughing at how extremely silly I am to be such a match freak. Just about anyone would be shaking their head and sneering at me for this. Even I would be shaking my head and sneering at me for this!
But for some weird strange reason, when I'm on a hockey team, I have the sudden urge to coordinate everything. I think this comes from seeing other people wear their color-matching tube socks, and their bright colored bandannas, and all that yadda yadda yadda stuff.
I am usually not bothered by this kind of stuff.
But when I am. I definitely am.

But never fear, I have resolved the delima of the non-matching shorts of awesomeness.

If I can put duck tape on my hockey stick, then why can't I put duck tape on my shorts??
And since I could come up with no excuse to not put duck tape on my shorts (after all, it is easily removed, and it's not like it leaves a mark or anything behind) I did just that.
I was set.
My stick and my shorts matched. I convinced my dad to let me use his black bandanna (thanks dad), and was finished.

Now, the stick blade paint still scratched off easily, but I didn't mind, as long as it didn't come off on everything and turn the other sticks and hockey floor calypso blue. I just figured that by the end of our game, my blade would look like a neon blueberry that had got attacked by a tiger and was bleeding something purple (...what a graphic description...).

But oh, horror!
When I saw the Lone Rangers' shirts, I realized that I had the wrong blue on!

Noooo... (again)

The second thing that went a little wrong, was that the blue started to come off on the floor!
Drat.
...But after all, why should I be terribly disappointed. I sorta expected that little conflict.

So, what with the non-matching blue duck tape shorts, and a stick that they had there, I played my first game of the season.
We did pretty good, and I had an absolute blast! The final score was 9 to 4, with us yelling gleefully for victory.

Even if my favored shorts among all the rest did not match, I was happy.
But when I got home, I had a new task on my mind.
Firstly, I had to get the paint off, and maybe try something else that would turn the color to something with a little more team spirit.
And secondly, I need to swap out the duct tape on both the shorts and the stick to colors more along the lines of turquoise/teal and gray/silver.
The second part of that agenda would be simple. Yet I sorta wanted to kick myself for having just used up nearly all of my teal tape on a bag only a couple days ago. All I had left of that color were a few scraps. Fortunately, I had a lot of silver (thank you Dbug, for getting me silver duck tape for my birthday! It is greatly appreciated!). So now my stick has sliver tape, with a few teal stripes. And my shorts are now black and white and bright, tin foil-looking sliver for stripes.
The only thing now, was to figure out what to do with the stick blade.
And I had an idea.

Before doing anything else, I needed to get the bright blue paint off for good. This meant either scratching it off with a finger nail, or using my handy pair of scissors to scrape against the blade, and take off the color in little flakes. Luckily, one of our friends came over, and to kill the time while I finished with school, he scratched off a lot of the unwanted stuff. And yesterday, I was able to finish with scratching and scraping, and start my new plan.

Plan B: Code: Black Sharpie Marker (...actually, I guess there's not much of a code in that one...).

Now, before I just started scribbling away on my purple plastic blade, I did check and see if the fine line that I drew would rub off. I thought I remembered putting it to the scratch test too, but maybe that experiment slipped my mind.
It seemed to work pretty well, so I went ahead, and started turning what was purple into black. I probably lost a few dozen brain cells while doing this, because of the fumes I breathed in, but I'm guessing I don't have much to lose in that area. And by the time I was done with the whole blade, I was pretty proud of myself. It didn't look to bad. And it didn't seem to scratch off, not at all like the paint did. I rubbed it around on the pool deck in the backyard, and it seemed to hold up okay. And it was then when I thought I had triumphed over the purple hockey blade.
My victory was very satisfying.

...Even if it was short lived...

This morning, I was just doing my school in my room (I'm home schooled remember). Math to be specific. And my brother comes into my room. He starts messing around with my hockey stick and his hockey stick, and eventually ends up hitting the carpet really hard with them. I still don't know why he did this, but I guess we all have the urge to hit the floor really hard with something like a hockey stick every once in a while. Well, just as I was explaining to him the the sharpie marker did seem to come off like the pain did. I looked at the floor where he had hit it with my stick.

I said something like this:
"Yeah, the sharpie doesn't come off like the Paint-- Oh no. Maybe it does..."
And then I basically wanted to kick myself again. Either myself or the person who hit the floor really hard with my hockey stick numerous times.
And then our conversation turned to something like this:

"Aghh! look at the floor!"
"Huh? That? oh, that's not paint."
"No, it's not. It's black sharpie stains!"
"Oh. Well that's not going to come out."

Enter: The feeling of panic that you get when you do something like bang a giant hole in the drywall of the house, or over flow the sink and flood the kitchen.

Thanks to my life-long (or as long as my life has been so far) experiences of spilling things, staining things, ripping things, etc., I know pretty well exactly how to use ordinary hand soap to get sharpie stains out of my bedroom carpet.
Eight balls of paper towels later. I determined that all the black sharpie marker had to be washed, scratched, or scraped off of my hockey stick.

...Here we go again...

When once I had taken it outside in the full sunlight, I realized that the sharpie does not stick the the blade as well as I had thought before. And it did not look as nice and neat as I thought it did when I was in less light. This was when I started wondering if I had ever actually checked to see if it was scratch-proof. Because, as I said, I thought I did, yet, after using a twig to scratch most of the black off, I was pretty sure that it wasn't.

And now my stubborn hockey stick is still, or presumably still, outside where I left it.

I think it's mocking my determination to match. For all I know, if hockey blades had faces, mine would probably be sticking it's tongue out at me.
It's taught me a lesson, yet I think I still refuse to learn it.

Thus is the story of my mean mean hockey stick.

Your currently obsessively-matching blogger,
Plink.