mysecuritysign.com

I stand at the door with the little red plastic box that at one time sat on my kids’ toy shelf, filled with Lego pieces and Webkinz. It is now being used to collect banned items which are temporarily taken from their owners’ possession. I’m on very important security detail, but it’s a thankless job.

Do I work for CATSA – the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority – you ask?

Well, no.

I’m a Den Mom for a girls’ hockey team and I’ll collecting cell phones from the players as they enter the dressing room. Cell phones with photographic capability are not allowed in dressing rooms.

In fact, picture taking is prohibited in all sports dressing rooms. Most hockey associations highlight this rule in their codes of conduct. Parents are almost always reminded of this rule at the first parents meeting of the hockey season. My kids and many of their friends are now members of local fitness clubs where it is also a fairly typical rule. For all these reasons, the players cannot pretend they never heard of the rule. So it really makes no sense why I have such a hard time enforcing it.

The truth is there have been serious offences involving inappropriate taking of photos in many hockey associations. There have been at least two that I know of in my own kids’ hockey associations since I’ve been a hockey mom. I’ve been a hockey mom for sixteen years, so maybe ‘two situations’ doesn’t sound like a lot to some kids, but to a parent, that is two too many – and simply unacceptable. I’m reasonably certain that neither of these misconducts resulted in any photos being shared over the internet but sadly it’s not hard to imagine the damage that can be done to a with cell phone cameras in hockey dressing rooms.

Truth is, I still get a lot of abuse.

“What? I’m not giving you my phone!”

“I need it for my pre-game music!”

“I need it to take a selfie!”

“I need to text my mother!”

“I’m not giving you my phone. Flat out, no way!”

I can see the imaginary word clouds over their heads as they look at my daughter too:

“Your mom is such a buzzkill!”

The players feel I may infringe upon their privacy. The truth is I am not at all interested in your monosyllabic text conversations. The truth is I am not in collaboration with your mom’s investigation on your whereabouts at 11:45PM last Friday night.

The players feel they need loud music in their ears before game time. The truth is, the portable speaker connected to one of the iPhones in my possession is plenty loud enough and you are free to rotate each other’s playlists through the twenty-game season.

So give me your cell phone or go home.

Now the real truth is your daughter is not reading this Hockey Mom post. But you are.

The truth is I hope you share this with your daughter so my daughter doesn’t hate me when I am Den Mom.

Three cheers for Den Moms – especially the ones who play by the rules.