The Day I Learned How to Love a Woman and to Scold a Child

To state the obvious, the Nintendo Wii is great. I can play old games from my childhood. Including one that has unleashed a floodgate of memories and nostalgia that makes me sigh. The game itself is not that good. It's quite not good in fact. But, I will play it because of what it reminds me of. What game could possibly stir up such feelings in a 23 year old man who is renewing the landscape of intellectual thought through inspirational blogging and Guitar Hero rock solos? It is none other than Ice Hockey. Now, it doesn't bring back memories of me playing hockey (although if I was a player in the game, I would definitely be one of the skinny guys that are quick like a mongoose but are easily knocked over like a toddler learning to walk). I never even played hockey. Except once. It was a game versus the girls' hockey team (I even got a shot on net and when I say "shot", I mean I fell and the puck moved towards the goalie).

Anyway, the memories summoned by the game are two fold. For one, it is from when I played with my dad and he would always comment on the sloppy job of the zamboni operators that cleaned the ice during the second intermission (he was a zamboni operator himself for the Brandon Wheat Kings).

The other memory is none other than that dark day that would revolutionize the very core of my being. It was the day I became a man. It was the day I learned how to love a woman and to scold a child. The epic nature of the event would be recalled by numerous bards and passed along to following generations as a story of hope and cooking recipes. I was seven at the time. I was young and naive. The world was wonderful. Smells delighted me and I enjoyed the sunshine on my face. Little did I realize, I would grow up fast that day. It was May 19th, 1990. I was in the dining room, next to the TV, set up with my bowl of Golden Grahams, my obligatory glass of milk and a Nintendo controller in my hand as I was playing none other than Ice Hockey.

I was the Canadians, of course, and I was playing against the USSR. I was winning as was usually the case. And that's when I heard the crash of metal on metal and the shattering of glass. With my curiousity piqued, I went to investigate. But I wasn't irrational. I made sure to pause my game, because I was not going to let the commies catch me with my pants down. I then proceeded to the porch, but before I got there, a miniature apocalypse slammed into my reality and the house in which I stood lurched under the command of a thunderous collision. I was thrown from my feet and was launched into the door frame. I then reacted in the most rational response for a 7 year old and that was to run around in circles, screaming. This would usually solve most other problems in my life, but it didn't seem to work this time. The house was still shaking. I then tried to run for the back door of the house. When I got there unscathed, I composed myself and went outside. It is then that I saw two city buses crashed into the side of my house.

We would move into a hotel later that day. Normally, this would shake a child's world, but for me it would be the greatest blessing of my life. For the next five weeks, I had access to cable TV and was able to rent Super Mario Bros. 3 from a store a couple a blocks away. Wisemen believe in God when they see a mighty work by His Right Hand. And that's what happened to me when I got to play the most cutting edge in Mario technology.

Of course, I could've died that day. The two buses hit the porch I was headed for and it has been my experience that a child versus two city buses is a little lobsided for the buses (because there's two of them and only one of the child). But because I learned my lesson well of pausing my video games, I did not make it to the porch so that I would have become just another statistic of deaths due to buses hitting your house.

Oh, Ice Hockey, you bring that good lesson back to me every time I play you.