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 ...."