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  Back by popular demand, it's "The HOCKEY-L Ode to Joy" !!  Several list-
members objected when I originally posted this on Valentine's Day two years
ago, but nary a peep was heard last year.  Sooooo, I've decided to post it
once again for your amusement in the light-hearted spirit I'd always intended.
For all you HOCKEY-L veterans: Try it Again, For the First Time :-)  For all
the new-comers .... Enjoy !!  Flame *ME* (not the list) if you're offended -
hopefully we can come to some understanding without dragging all of HOCKEY-L
into it.  Some hateful speech should be self-censored, but IMHO the following
anecdote is far from that.
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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 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 together still plan their social calendar around the
UNH icemen.  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 (*grin*)
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Go 'Cats