"Hockey players wear numbers because you can’t always identify the body with dental records."

Duh da duddada - Duh da dadada

Duh Dah DaDaDaDa - DAH DAH DAH DAAAHHH

DUH DA DA DAH DADA!

(your transcription may vary)

Now that summer is here (we hope) my biological clock is confused about my desire to spend a Saturday evening indoors watching hockey. My team’s been golfing for weeks, but the team of my adopted home is in the Stanley Cup final. (Game 3 is live from Boston as I type.) Watching the lifers and long suffering Canuckistanians get into it and celebrate has been inspiring.

I haven’t watched a Stanley Cup final with such interest in years. (18 to be exact - but who’s counting, other than every Montreal Canadiens fan in the world.)

Some of my earliest family memories - vague as they are - involve church-hockey-euchure on a Saturday night. I have quoted The Theme Formerly Known as the Hockey Night in Canada Song above. I am pretty sure that I could name that tune in two beats.

I know all of the words of the Star Spangled Banner - not because I’m the wife of a patriotic American, but because I was once a 5 or 6 or 7 year old Canadian who happened to watch or overhear a LOT of hockey. When I was a kid I thought that O Canada and the US anthem were just one long song. They just reversed the verses for what city they were playing in.

What’s weird is that there were certainly no classes or tutorials on this stuff - I just know it. I know at some point someone taught me the icing and offside rules but I don’t recall when or by
whom I was told. I suppose it was my dad, but it could have been an uncle or a family friend.

Just as I do not have a memory of not being able to read, I don’t remember not knowing about hockey. I don’t remember, even in my surly-anti-establishment-queer-community days, ever turning down the opportunity to watch a game.

Even as I write this the TFKatHNICS is ringing in my ears. That song is as much a part of my identity as my eye colour or where I was born. I have so few specific memories of my past anymore that I cling to whatever vague assurance I can get from my past.



The Canucks killed me tonight. My hatred of the Bruins is greater than my love of Vancouver. I am taking this humiliating loss a little more personally than I should.