“You smell bad,” she said.
“’Bad’? What do you mean ‘bad’?”
“You’ve got a stench. And you usually don’t smell. Did you shower after your hockey game?”
“Of course I did.”
“Really?!? Did you win last night?”
“No. We lost. Three-nothing.”
“Ahhhh. That must be it.”
“What? ‘That must be’ what?” I could see her immediately back away from the conversation, hesitant to say anything more. “What’s the game got to do with it?” I asked.
She at least had the decency to frown as she told me. She shrugged as she said it, as if it were no big deal. “You smell a little bit like defeat. You kind of stink of loss.”
“Oh.” I had no idea what else to say. “Oh. I see.”
“It’s okay,” she assured me. "I’m sure it will get better.”
But gone was my morning smile, my top of the morning joie de vie.
Because at that moment I realized that I had become the Lady Macbeth of hockey and no matter how much I washed and cleaned and scrubbed, it was going to be near impossible to get out this damned spot. Something more drastic would have to be done.
Never one to admit defeat (or at least not until the buzzer goes and the game is over) I have taken certain steps to help rid myself of the stench.
First thing I did, I went and bought myself a new sports shirt. Granted, the shirt was on special for $6.99, but I’m sure that even King Arthur must have thought he got a deal when he found the free sword that was stuck in the stone.
The shirt is ‘moisture wicking’, has ‘fabric breathability’ and ‘good looks on the go’. It goes by the monicker of Rec Tech Performance Gear. How could I argue with all of that? And it is brand spanking new. In other words, there is no stink on this shirt. It may not have been dipped in an oasis of victory, but it most certainly has not been dunked in a stagnant cesspool of defeat.
After buying the shirt I contemplated incinerating my old shirt. But then I realized that I might accidentally inhale some of its ashes. And ingesting some of that foul, ignoble stench seems entirely counter-productive.
So I’m keeping the old shirt in the hope that the new shirt will act an inspiration, a beacon of hope, for the old shirt and help remind it of how good it once smelled. Maybe through its clean-smelling example the new shirt will help its older counterpart find its way back down the righteous path towards victory. By doing good deeds, the new shirt will help the old one correct its ways.
As for my hockey sticks – they of the 'can’t receive a pass, can only hit the goalie in the crest and can’t put the puck in the back of the net' – I was going to throw them out or donate them to the Vancouver Canucks where they would feel right at home with all of the other sticks.
But when I mentioned this idea to my wife and asked her what she thought the shipping costs would be out to Vancouver, she commented “You mean those super-nice, very expensive hockey sticks that I got you as Christmas and birthday presents? Do you mean those sticks?”
I love my wife. And I also love receiving presents. Not being a complete doofus, I quickly realized that throwing out the sticks would be like throwing out the baby (that’s holding a gift in its chubby little hands) with the bathwater as it bites the very hand that gave it the gift. I therefore decided to re-think my strategy and instead re-taped the sticks and then cut the old tape (which had become worn and tired due to the despairing dissatisfaction of defeat) into dozens of pieces and scattered them in garbage cans all across town.
New shirt and new tape. They were definitely steps in the right direction, but they didn’t seem like quite enough.
And so, after much thought, I have decided to go the anti-REM path. I am un-losing my religion. I am going to revert to Catholicism.
Unfortunately I personally have never actually been Catholic, but I figure for this one I can tap into my ancestral roots. Somewhere back there one of my great-great-great Italian-dwelling relatives must have been Catholic. So I figure with my last name and the fact that the church is always looking for new flockers (flockees?) to join their ranks, that they will welcome me and embrace me in their pious arms.
My hope is that, after an hour or two in the church, I will then be able to approach the priest and have him exorcise the curse off of my freshly re-taped hockey sticks.
If by some unfortunate chain of events he’s one of those non-specialty priests who has to call the Vatican in order to approve an exorcism or needs to arrange with a specialist to rid my rods of their demonic demeanour, I'm hoping that the least he can do is bless the sticks, have me say a few “Hale Maries” and then send me on my merry way. If I get some wine and some cookies out of the deal, all the better for me.
But I look at it this way: the Catholic church gets me as a member for a couple of hours; and in return I get to have some holy water tossed on my sticks which will make them great for both generating goals *and* killing vampires. I figure it’s a win-win.
All right, I'm not completely ignorant. I realize that this temporary pilgrimage towards Catholicism may earn me a non-refundable coach class ticket to aitch-ee-double toothpicks, but at least it should help my team's game. And if that’s what it takes, I’ll take the risk and joyously enjoy my time on this beautiful, beautiful earth and walk in blissful, ignorant denial of my eventual fate.
It'll be worth it. Because I’ll be doing it for the team.
