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 a few years ago, and was
sent to me by a Boston acquaintance who met his future bride at a college
hockey game, and who still plan their social calendar around the UNH icemen.
I meant to post this last week, but ....  Oh, well - the passion of the
playoffs is soon upon us, so it's still most timely.  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**ker.'  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* sure like to meet her .... !!   Cheers, Jim
 
Jim Love
UNH '79, '85G