I Have The Weirdest Desire to go to a Hockey Game All of a Sudden

Last night was a big game in Boston's Hockey season, apparently.

My walk back to the train was peppered with fans coming into the city, walking North from South Station to The Garden.

No doubt I'll have dozens of customers today ready to chat about the game.

From the look of my Facebook feed, my sports-minded friends were not pleased with the results.

I've always found it odd how sports fans assume everyone around them is interested in their particular game, and then act flabbergasted when I've got no idea what they're talking about.

I wouldn't just start up a conversation about blockchain, or classical music, or developments in literature and publishing, with some random barista, and expect them to have anything worthwhile to reply.

But sports teams are tied to their geographical cities, and it's seen as un-patriotic not to know about them. This is especially ironic, since players are purchased like cattle from all over, and swapped among teams until they have no connection to the group they play for.

It's all a bit of harmless fun, to be sure.

I'll be the last to speak out against that. It's better than celebrating gladiatorial games. Or wars.

But it's a distraction as well. I'd rather have a discussion about the shifty stuff our troops are ordered to do overseas, or the deplorable plight of Julian Assange. But since I can't, I'll take my pleasures where I can find them, in short-shorts and low cut jerseys.

I actually haven't been to a hockey game since childhood, when I'd go with my half-sister's father to watch her half-brother play in the little league (or whatever you call it for hockey) games. I remember getting a little impassioned about it, since we had this tenuous connection to one of the players.

But I was just as excited about the salty pretzels from the concession stand.

We're so hungry for any real sense of community, or even family, these days, that it's frighteningly easy to market a sports franchise to a public eager to hand over their money, when all of that money just goes to league owners who profit no matter who wins.

Again, kind of like war, but with less casualties.

Do you follow sports? Are you excited by them? Irritated? Indifferent?

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