I wound up at a steel industrial building squeezed between the ass end of what looked like a Perkins and a snowmobile repair shop. Inexplicably, I’d arrived earlier than the rendezvous time. The front of the lot was full so I tucked my truck into a far corner. Nobody noticed me. I was in the mood to drink so I sat in my idling truck sipping beer that had been chilled in a snow filled bucket. (See what I mean about the value of a good bucket?) Soon I had my seat reclined, my feet on the dash, and I was reading an old copy of Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. (Every properly equipped truck has a copy of a good book shoved in the tool box.)
Cold beer, a quiet place to sit, and Mark Twain; it’s as pleasant as vacation as any.
It might have been a stressful week (month? Year?) because the beer went down great. When 4:00 rolled around I strode toward the building and discovered I was a bit more tuned up than I’d planned. No matter. I was a man out to relax, surely no faux pas would ensue.
Wrong! Just inside the door I stumbled smack dab into a gaggle of clucking hockey moms. Jesus, what an uptight bunch! They were barking orders at their progeny like feminine Napoleons. The kids were a confused muddle, had not the slightest clue what the hell was going on, and were getting marched back and forth like toy soldiers. Poor bastards! The helpless tykes were each staggering beneath 40 pounds of fancy overpriced hockey gear. What fresh hell is this? I make fun of degenerate Detroit teenagers buying $200 sneakers but here was the flip side of the coin. Kids barely mature enough to pee on a tree stump were outfitted with top dollar, name brand, shit. How much did that cost?
The Nike / NHL intersection indicates that generic stupidity crosses all social lines. Well not me of course, I played pond hockey with jeans and work gloves. I somehow made it to adulthood without a jersey stenciled with some other dude’s name on the back. I prefer to generate my own unique forms of stupid; which doesn’t require buying expensive clothes. Here’s a hint, if your kid is nine don’t drop several hundred bucks outfitting him like a mini-me version of Gretzky; use your money to pay the fuckin’ light bill and tell the kid to play in the dirt with a stick.
The ladies glared at me like I was an abomination. Apparently, men are welcome at the suburban micro-grasshopper’s hockey league like they’re welcome at the elementary school PTA, which is to say “get the hell out of here you damn hairy ape”.
I was just as terrified as the poor kids; a deer in disapproving headlights. Finally, I had the presence of mind to croak “Curling?”
This did wonders. The ladies seemed relieved I had nothing to do with hockey or their precious swarm of half sentient minnows. Moving in unison (almost bovine like), they pointed toward a shabby metal door as if to say “your kind belongs over there… among the drunks and reprobates”. I was happy to leave. Uptight women herding three dozen overequipped, chest high, elf droppings named Hunter and Chad was too much. I fled though the door before they could start using me as a teaching moment. “If you don’t eat your vegetables you’ll wind up like the bad man.”
Part 3 is on deck…
“you’ll wind up like the bad man.”
An acquaintance of mine was slinging trash cans into a city garbage truck when he overheard a mom chiding her child “Of course you have to go to school! Do you want to end up like him?”
He responded “Yeah, get a Master’s Degree in English like me.” He was making good money without using his degree.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t resist the siren Weed and got fired six months before his scheduled retirement. Moral: Drink beer. And make sure your spouse can support you, even grudgingly.