Old Guy Hockey

Tuesday, Thursday and Friday are hockey days: the days I strap on the pads, lace up the skates and spend an hour trying to stop the damn puck before it enters the damn net because if I don't it causes me to swear and take the Lord's name in vain and things of this nature.

It's called "goaltending", but as my daughter correctly points out, there really isn't a whole lot of tending going on out there, per se. Not like, say, tending as one would apply the term to gardening. Now, there you have to seed and weed and water and all like that there.

Goaltending, not so much. The net, it just sort of sits there. It does not, in and of itself, require too much attention once it has been positioned on its pegs. Occasionally--okay, more often than "occasionally" some days--a puck must be removed from it, but really, that's about the extent of it. So those terms, "goaltending" and its Canadian cousin "netminding", are somewhat misleading. One does not "mind" the net either in the circumstances outlined above or it terms of obeying what the net might have to say. (Which, if you are hearing from the net means you have a bigger problem that the already substantial issues you exhibit by being a 50+ man out there playing a boys game which involves having 3.5 ounces of hard rubber shot at 90 mph at your head and places besides your head where you'd like to get hit by 3.5 ounces of hard rubber shot at 90 mph even less.)

But, as usual, I digress...

I noticed something which I took to be interesting after the game yesterday. One guy was talking about his bad hip, another his aching back and so forth and so on. Myself, I've got a bad ankle and somebody hit me in the forearm with a puck a couple of weeks ago and now the thing is bruised from my wrist to my elbow.

Listening to all of this in The Room™ got me thinking. I really have arrived at Old Guy Hockey.

You know how I know? In Young Guy Hockey after the game in The Room™ you hear something like, "Let me tell you about the girl I (almost) banged last night."

In Old Guy Hockey after the game in The Room™ you hear something like, "Have you tried Cortizone for that?"