MY LIFE, PART 21: Mom, we need to buy gloves!

I wasn’t even eight years old and I already suspected my goalkeeping stint wasn’t going to be a one-off thing. 

So we needed to buy goalkeeper gloves!

But what do they look like? How much do they cost? Will they have different types to pick from?

Before training session my mom took me shopping. We were pressed for time. We tore into a sporting goods store, I was looking around the shelves, but Mom went straight to the point. She motioned with her finger to the shop assistant. “We need goalkeeper gloves, please. Football gloves, for my son here. We don’t know anything about these things and we’re in a hurry,” she said.

I couldn’t contain my excitement. “I saw the ones the guys have, they’re blue,” I blurted out.

The shop assistant didn’t hesitate. He brought blue rubber gloves with a red circle on the wrist part. This was it!

They cost 39 Czech crowns.

I strode out of the shop, proud as a peacock, carrying the plastic bag with my precious gloves as if it was a treasure. I couldn’t wait to put them on. The gloves didn’t stay wrapped in plastic for long, I wanted to see them, admire them. They looked gorgeous, all new and shiny.

I brushed against a pole. “What if I scuff them?” I thought, scared.

During training I didn’t even want to touch the ground so that I didn’t damage my gloves. But they were actually terrible. Airtight, absolutely not breathable, so after a couple minutes my hands got sweaty and the gloves started to smell bad. Unfortunately I had no choice, these were the only goalkeeper gloves you could get at that time.

Gloves are the symbol of goalkeepers, but for me it was different. I was much happier about getting a hockey stick so that I could go out and play behind the house. I always took great care of my hockey sticks, but in vain. I was an expert at breaking them. No, I wouldn’t pound them against the asphalt in rage, but the more I worried that something might happened to my hockey stick – crack! another player broke it. I didn’t even count how many times I had to play with a stump because we had no money to buy a new stick.

But I admit, I enjoyed my first goalkeeper gloves tremendously. I even took them to bed with me.

P.S. Next week - Chapter 22