It appears to me that hockey is not a sport about which you can be lukewarm. You’re either a hockey fanatic or you loathe it with icicles and a cherry on top. My husband and son love motor sports, like football and tolerate baseball but hockey leaves them cold. My daughter currently hates everything. Which leaves me as the orphan hockey fan in my household.

I can understand their position because they won’t sit down and actually watch a game. Hockey isn’t like baseball where you can get up and wander around without missing anything. Or cricket, where you can take long naps, finish War and Peace and nothing much will have changed. Hockey requires attention. It requires energy just to watch – I can’t imagine what it takes to play. The sheer athleticism of these guys is amazing. My own skating ability has never extended much past the shuffling old man stage where I cover approximately five feet an hour, until one of my legs decides to make a break for freedom and then they head off in different directions as though they had urgent appointments on opposite sides of town.

Because shared experiences are more fulfilling, I am attempting to get the rest of my family hooked on hockey. Totally altruistic, I assure you. I make provocative remarks like, “How about that Sidney Crosby kid? Twenty years old and worth millions!” Then I look at my sixteen year old male offspring who is, at the moment, reminiscent of a toothpick draped in denim. His usual response is something like, “when can I get a YZ-600?” I’m tempted to say when I’m dead and buried but being a responsible parent, I tell him he can buy whatever he wants once he’s off my insurance. None of which has anything to do with hockey and therein lies my problem. I’m afraid this is going to be an uphill battle. Currently, our hockey conversations go something like this:

Child: “But where’s the disk thingy?”

Me: “It’s called a puck.”

Child: “Whatever. Where is it?”

Me: “It’s over there, by the net.”

Child: “Over where?”

Me: “Over there.”

Child: “I don’t see it.”

Me: “Well, it’s not there any more. Now it’s over there.”

Child: “Huh?”

Me: “Never mind.”

Child: “How come that guy sounds so funny?”

Me: “He’s from Canada.”

Child: “But he sounds foreign.”

Me: “That’s because he’s from Canada.”

Child: “But I thought Canada was the same as us.”

Me: “Don’t I send you to school every day?”

Child: “Yeah, but they don’t teach us about hockey.”

Me: “Or geography, apparently.”

Child: “Huh?”

Me: “Never mind.”


And on we go . . .