A Valentine's Favorite, back again....
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 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 ...."
-Carol
GO Gophers!!!
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