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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 several
years ago, but (thankfully) objectionable comments have not been an issue
the last two years.  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; hope-
fully 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 winter 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 in-
spirations 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*)
[log in to unmask]
Go 'Cats / Go Team USA !!