The Canadian Way

The Canadian Way

The cold on your butt

The warmth from the heater above.

The smell of fries and coffee

And the taste of licorice as

You chew it nervously.

The rise and fall of the crowd

As the m.v.p. skates by.

The feel of the ice on your face

And energy coming off the players as they

Walk to their change rooms.

It’s the sound of the air horns

For period break, power play, puck in the net.

The oohs and the ahhs of the crowd

The slap of the sticks and the

Thud as one body hits another

The glass shivers under impact.

What is this? Just another Saturday night.

This is Hockey, this is being Canadian.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

                  We never really got along. A large part of it was the fact that she stole my man, even though he wasn’t mine in the first place.  But it also went further back than that, it was a personality clash.  No matter how much we glared at each other and directed all our angry feelings towards each other, though, there was always those Friday or Saturday nights.  The two of us would go to his hockey games together, her wearing his jersey and me rolling my eyes because I knew that later on he’d be going on and on about how, after, it’d smell like her vanilla perfume.  The two of us would sit on the far side of the arena where nobody else would sit and we’d watch them all skate onto the ice.  Both of us would always have one eye on Number Nine, all the while pretending like all we saw was his other teammates. Our cover up being the jokes we made about them.

            “Look at that guy, with the long, black hair.”

            “Ooh, he should be a Pantene model!”

            Both of us would genuinely laugh and have a good time.  Then we’d watch as, during the second period, Number Nine would jump off the ice onto his bench.  You could almost imagine the sound of him cussing out his teammates as he threw his stick at the bench in righteous anger.  We turned to each other, night and day, her blue eyes, and my brown eyes, wide, and then we burst out laughing. 

            He never found his anger funny, and I’d never found anybody else who could laugh at it like I did. We watched the rest of the game, laughing hysterically when Number Nine went sprawling on the ice with no one around.  I knew that when we went back to his house to watch a movie, she would sit on the couch in his arms, and I’d go back to resenting her because she had made me the third wheel.  But for right now, in this hockey arena, we had found a common ground. I guess that’s just the Canadian way.