02 19 00

hockey

Tonight Dave and I went over to my parents' for dinner.

On the menu was lasagna. The gooey, cheesy sort that you have to have more than one helping of. We gorged ourselves on the free food and then followed it up with some chocolate peanut-buttery stuff.

Mmmmm. Nothing like Mom's cooking, you know? grin

Then we went to a hockey game. My dad had been bugging me about seeing a hockey game with Dave. I think he just wanted to say that he took an actual Canadian to a hockey game. Unfortunately the team we went to see was a last place UHL minor league team.

They lost.

But it was fun. I hadn't been to a hockey game in a long time. I was raised on Cleveland Barons' hockey. My first sentence was "Drei minuten im Straffbank!" (Or something to that effect. It means "Three minutes in the penalty box.")

I had a box full of pucks that were ejected off the ice. I used to think they were cookies. (That was a long time ago.) Every time the Barons had an exhibition game at the university, my parents would pack me into the car. Yeah, I used to be a big hockey fan.

But like I said, I hadn't been to a hockey game in a long time.

I've forgotten a lot about how the game works. I kept asking Dave about different calls that the officials were making: icing, off sides, slashing, etc. It was lots of fun.

Hockey is a strange game. It involves many grown men on ice skates skating around with large sticks. There is also a lot of yelling, shoving, and ripping of jerseys. There were two fights... Apparently that's also required. Each game must have at least one fight or the fans just aren't happy.

The point of the game is to get a small black disk into a net. The net is guarded by a guy in massive padding who always stands like he has to pee. I suppose that he might actually have to pee, but he can't because he'd have to take off all that padding. When a team gets a goal a fight breaks out - it's like the Canadian version of a victory dance.

I find it interesting that Canada is such a non-aggressive country (they only get involved in wars that other people start), yet their national past time is a terrible aggressive game... So aggressive, in fact, that the fans must be separated from the field of play by a high, (almost) shatterproof wall.

Grr!

Dave is distracting me right now. We're going to watch a very depressing anime movie called Grave of the Fireflies.

Snuggling