The Instigator Rule

Madison is getting pretty good at hockey. Just about every morning, as we wait for her school bus, we crack out the sticks and a ball and take shots towards each other up and down the driveway. Sometimes, we resume play in the evenings, just before dusk.

She's getting better every time...learning how to stop/block shots with her stick, pass, shoot, even one-time a shot. Granted, she chokes up on the shaft a bit too much, but still gets the job done. For Father's Day, I've asked for a goalie stick and regulation-size hockey goal...I figure we might as well take the next step and see how she does with a more standard setup.

Just the other afternoon, I laced up my hockey inline skates and rolled down to the end of the driveway to await her round of passes and shots. It was a nice change of pace for me, although I wish the driveway was more level, because the incline makes it very difficult to maneuver. One day, we'll get her on wheels, too, but that's quite a ways down the road. Heck, she hasn't even mastered bicycling yet, so we'll take that one step at a time.

Boredom set in for her, so we decided to mix it up a bit. She held her stick up with the blade about 3 feet above the driveway's surface. My task was to aim shots at the blade from a distance of about 40-50ft away. It took 10 shots, but I finally hit paydirt. Of course, she'd lost interest by then, so it surprised the heck out of her when I made contact. It was rather funny watching the stick fly out of her hand.

Shortly thereafter, Jen came out and they decided to play a little baseball with a Nerf set Madison owns. Naturally, I started skating and ball-handling up and down the driveway, occasionally taking wrist shots against the garage doors. I must've hit the window sections of those doors at least 6 or 7 times. Luckily, no damage, so it's all good.

What happened next could only be attributed to man's innate need to torment others. There my daughter was, out in the yard, in a near-perfect batting stance, awaiting another pitch from Jen. And there I was, in the driveway, skating in small circles, looking for a new quarry to aim at.

Honestly, when I shot the wrister, I never would have surmised achieving 100% accuracy on my first attempt. I figured I'd graze by the intended target, and my need to antagonize would soon subside. But, NO-O-O-O-O, it wouldn't be that simple, would it?

So, yeah, the shot hit her squarely on her posterior. Let's just say, neither Jen nor Madison were initially very amused.

Of course, being a guy and all, I was rather proud of my precision. Now, in all fairness, the shot was very light and Madison was more shocked than anything else. In the end (no pun intended), we all got a good laugh out of it, but I guess I should select more inanimate objects for my future target practice.