Fight or flight or shop and eat

In a panic, as so many of us are during these crazy times, we rely on our instinct for survival.

Sometimes there is just no time to think. You react. Life comes at you like a straight palm strike to the larynx or like a lunging snake, a really fast snake, and there’s no time to weigh options or make measured choices.

You do what you gotta do. Think fast!

I have lived a life under pressure. I grew up as a goalie. I started as the backbone of the Purple Dust Maintenance novices and spent my life being depended upon to save the day, over and over.

I’ve done it, man. Pressure. Shmessure.

When you play goalie at a high level, like Bantam Rep B, you know what it means to carry the outcome of a game on your shoulders. One misplay, one mental error, one fleeting moment of thinking about that person standing right over there in the corner behind the glass … is he eating? What are those … nachos? And it’s game over.

Collapse under that pressure and your entire team will spend the rest of their lives thinking about the missed opportunity and how things would have turned out differently if they had only won that … was that a league championship or a tournament? I can’t remember. Maybe it’s not that important. Man, I should not have put so much pressure on myself back then.

As an adult goalie, the pressure shifts but only slightly. As an adult goalie, the team relies on you less for making big saves at the right time to simply showing up on time.

It’s still pressure but different pressure. It’s pressure to peel yourself out of the recliner and get to the rink or your 11 pickup friends will be forced to shoot on an empty net and aim at goalposts and curse your name.

And to be forthright, I think that change in pressure has made me soft. I’ve gone from a calm, cool and collected goalie, comfortable in the eye of many a storm, to a jumpy, flighty, anxious goofball.

I was in a full-on panic last week over COVID. We’ve been living with COVID for how many months now? I’ve been lucky. COVID and I have not crossed paths too closely as of yet — at least not that I know of. Or that COVID knows of.

But as numbers have been rising and restrictions tightening, I’ve been panicking. I was really worked up one day and in full survival mode, it was fight or flight for me.

I chose food. It’s how I deal. I get scared. I buy food. I eat food.

What can I say? I’m a nervous eater. I’m also a relaxed eater, a happy eater, a sad eater, a bored eater and sometimes I’m even a hungry eater.

Full of COVID fear, I felt I had to stock up for a potential long lockdown. But even in my panic-buying panic, I panicked. I went in to load up on essentials. I came home with two loaves of sprouted bread and a 10-pack case of peppermint gum. That’s it. Isometimes wonder if you see some of the stuff I write and think, he’s just trying to be funny.

I promise I’m not. If you don’t believe it, you should smell my breath.

My fear didn’t just manifest itself in my shopping. I’ve been having COVID nightmares. I’ll dream, wake up in a panic, fall asleep, dream, wake up, over and over all night.

Haunting my dreams are people coughing, sniffling, just breathing. I’ll try to tell them to get away from me and I’ll want to say, “Why are you here? Get out! Leave!” But the words won’t come out and then I’ll wake up.

I guess when you’re 50, this is the stuff you dream about. When I was younger I had nightmares about monsters and sharks and Freddy, the guy with razors for fingers. Now I have nightmares about getting sick.

But it is scary. We’re all scared, I think. Or we should be.

And that’s OK. You can be a little scared, especially if it makes you take a lot of care. Be safe. Be smart. Stock up on real food, not gum.