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 plans 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 ...."