Happy Valentine's Day everyone !!

  Yeah, yeah, I know y'all have read this piece umpteen times, but it's
TRADITION, just like fireworks on the 4th of July, and turkey 'n football
on Thanksgiving.  So now, with the college hockey stretch run in full
swing, and the Olympic medal round set to get underway (perhaps those
'hyperthyroidal' Canadians can finally break their 50 year Gold Medal
drought - stranger things have happened; just ask BC fans :-) I think we
all can use a good chuckle.  So here we go - smile everyone !!! <grin>

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  For many years the Boston "Phoenix" would publish a special section on/
  around St. Valentine's Day that chronicled reader testimonials of
  Cupid's hits and misses.  The following excerpt appeared in the late
  '80s, and was sent to me by a friend in Boston whose first date with his
  future bride included a UNH hockey game (an 11-5 Wildcat thrashing of
  Army; the perfect way to get a hockey-centered relationship off on the
  right skate :-) and who together still plan their winter social calendar
  around the Wildcat icers.  I think we ALL know people (of both sexes)
  who could have written the following ....
  -----------------------------------------------------------------------

  "I blame it all on a goddamn college hockey game.  Oh, sure, you're
thinking, maybe I should blame myself.  Well, the hell with all of you.

  The light of my life, she was - or so I'd convinced myself over the
space of the three weeks we'd been taking the same political history
course.  Our eyes met during a lecture on Grover Cleveland, and I was
hooked.  I asked her out for a beer after class; she mentioned that she
had an extra ticket to that night's game against St. Lawrence.  At the
time, I understood less about hockey than I did about Grover Cleveland,
but so what ??  I would be with HER ....

   That night, I learned that the St. Lawrence icemen are known to one
and all as the 'Larries'; for all I knew, there could have been a bunch
of Moes and Curleys down there too.  The problem was .... *she* knew.
Worse yet, she CARED.  And she was appalled that I didn't.  Which is why
she then launched into a lengthy and aggressively condescending discourse
on the subtle differences between cross-checking, spearing, and aggravated
assault, intermittently punctuated by her emphatic observation that the
referee was, as she put it, a 'blind motherf***er.'  All hope vanished at
the moment she realized that I didn't count Snooks Kelley as one of the
five greatest inspirations of my life; her lips were silent, but her eyes
said 'wimp city' ....

  Dreams die hard - but none so hard as those shattered by a bunch of
hyperthyroidal Canadians with knives on their feet and sticks in their
hands.  Goddamn college hockey game.  Maybe I'll become a priest ...."

  Well, I'd *still* like to meet her .... !!!

Jim Love (*grin*)
Go 'Cats !!!