They say you’re built upside down when your nose runs and your feet smell, so forgive me today for dipping into the “archives” while I battle the remains of a pesky flu that, like our gang problem here, refuses to go away.
Given that the Special Olympics B.C. Summer Games started last night in Abbotsford and runs all weekend, this “encore presentation” seems appropriate:
My former neighbour Kevin, once the Roberto Luongo of winter street hockey in Yorkton, Sask., would be high-fiving my folks today if his kind heart didn’t stop beating three days shy of his 16th birthday.
Later this evening, Kamloops Immigrant Services will award 19 people – including this shocked scribe – with a Community Diversity Award. If truth be told, my mother’s name, not mine, should be inscribed on that cherished certificate.
Adele Mildred Kurenoff, my awesome mom, taught me early, and often, about tolerance, goodwill, compassion and decency. (She joked that these things didn’t apply in today’s workplace.)
She also taught me to not let the ignoramuses of the world hijack my outlook or lofty dreams. And, more importantly, she forced me to play street hockey with Kevin when nobody else in our small Saskatchewan neighbourhood would.
Kevin was mentally challenged. We looked at him, as naive kids would, as being very different. And odd. And weird. We never asked him to join our hockey games, even though it was he who often got up earlier than Prairie roosters and shovelled the one patch of road to make the entire exercise possible.
Mom asked one morning why Kevin wasn’t allowed to play. I confessed nobody wanted him to join us. Visibly upset with me for going along with the “lame-brain majority,” she ordered me to change that the next time we played – “or else!”
Well, when I picked Kevin for our team, the other kids on the street mocked me big time.
“Kurenoff, are you completely nuts?” yelled the neighbourhood mouthpiece, encouraged by the others’ non-stop laughter and catty shots.
“No. We’re both nuts,” Kevin blurted back unexpectedly. “And we’re going to beat you boys bad!”
What we didn’t know until he played was that Kevin could stop lightning from getting past him. It didn’t take long to figure out that the team with Kevin playing goal usually won. Darn neighbour even got cocky about his near-perfect record. When he passed away, the church was filled with his ragtag “hockey buddies.” His foster mom thanked each of us for making a much-too-short life full of so much joy.
We all got seriously choked up when she told the funeral gathering that Kevin thought “we were all pretty odd, lousy goal-scorers, but the nicest friends in the whole wide world.”
When my first editor – Dick DeRyk of Yorkton This Week – molded me into a weekly columnist, he explained that people sitting behind a keyboard have a lot of power and responsibility. Used incorrectly or dishonestly, our words could become weapons of mass destruction. Just like closed or narrow minds.
My mother encouraged me to use this special privilege to make people smile, to make them think and eventually make them tolerate everyone around them who may be different. Like Kevin.
My mom continues to encourage these columns. Allow me to offer loving thanks to her for removing my blinders and, of
course, a big high-five in the sky to the best street hockey goalie I ever knew.
Rest in peace, Kevin. This award’s for you buddy.
Gord Kurenoff is editor of the Abbotsford-Mission Times. He was a nominee last fall for an Abbotsford Diversity Award. To comment, e-mail letters@abbotsfordtimes.com.
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