Back when I was a stiff-upper-lipped little urchin in the crime-infested tunnels and rat-runs of Manchester, England, I was the victim of a strange and unusual punishment. I was made to sit in my front room, smiling in plain view for passers-by to observe, to make it appear that our family was a normal, happy gaggle. In Jamaica, this positioning of hapless saps in the frontal sections of cafes and bars is known as "stooging", and it is a common insult there to call someone a stooge. It means literally to be a worthless inanimate nothing, made to fulfill the wiles of another, usually the owner of a bar who wishes to make people believe that their joint is good enough for people to actually want to go in there. I was the youngest in the family, and by far the most mild-mannered. I didn't even knife my first clergyman till I was well past my ninth birthday. Consequently, I was forced to sit in the window to make believe our living room was a place that didn't contain a violent, drunken father, a brood of brothers and sisters, most of whom spent their time thieving and begging in the filthy streets, and several dogs and cats, none of whose names I knew, but who weren't $#@&*^% shy about asking for food off my plate, let me tell you.
"And the punisher?", you ask, dear reader...
"My own mother", I croak in reply, barely able to look you in the eye, for the embarrassment is such that even now I break out in poison oak-like weeping welts on parts of my body I cannot directly refer to in a family-oriented blog such as this revered thing I present to you. It was during these years that I developed a serious appetite for Ice Hockey, apparently called NHL in the USA. It was hard to believe back then that NHL tickets were real things, which people bought and used to enter hockey stadiums and sit in real hockey seats. I used to sit in the window and imagine holding a fistful of hockey tickets, and going to see an NHL game. I would wait all week for Saturday to come along, for at least then I could sit and be happy in my stooginess, watching the week's hockey highlights on the 60" big-screen TV my father said he had "found" outside a shop. In a van.
My anger and frustration at being used as a stooge by my mother, a reptilian woman with a sharp tongue and karate-like right hand which often found its way across my ear with alarming velocity, was alleviated by the sight of the men from the NHL knocking seven shades of crap out of each other on the ice, due to various professional disagreements. I was captivated by their grace and power, as they arced and sliced their way around the rink, and the way the goals would be completely knocked out of position by wicked pucks traveling at high speed while the brave 'keeper struggled to cope with the onslaught, his knees buckling as he tried to stop the whizzing puck with a part of his anatomy which in England we call the "town halls". I'd have given my right arm to be given a few tickets to NHL games, mainly 'cos I'm left-handed and it wouldn't have affected my dart-throwing arm. But enough about my life as a soccer hooligan.
In my young mind, those valiant, rink-scything hunters were more fierce and heroic than the Knights of the Round Table, greater than Robin Hood and his Merry Men, handier with their fists than Jason and the Argonauts even. And that's saying something, 'cos them Argonauts, boy, they didn't piss about. The Golden Fleece of NHL life was, of course, the Stanley Cup, and it was always a big day for me when the thing was at its climax. I discovered later in life that the Stanley Cup was actually referred to as "the Holy Grail" by American fans who bought American hockey tickets and went to American hockey games. This fits in quite well with my Knights of the Round Table analogy, but I have to say I still preferred my own "Golden Fleece" thing - and even wrote a letter to the NHL asking them to change the wording. They never replied.
My most eventful Stanley Cup was probably the Montreal Canadiens and the New York Rangers in the 1978-79 season. Having beaten the Boston Bruins the previous season, the Canadiens came back with confidence and did it again, this time to New York, and the world went mad. That was the last Stanley Cup I watched, for during the game, two members of Greater Manchester Police came into our house and informed me that they were removing the television set, for reasons that have never been made completely clear. I remember my father coming home that night, well pissed off at the fact he'd had to go out and "find" another one. Amazingly, he found it right where he found the last one! Outside the same store. In a Police van.
My father disappeared for a long time after that, and the family was destroyed. My mother didn't force me to be a stooge anymore, and I drifted away on a long journey, headed for the roof of the world. I wandered aimlessly, over hill and dale, scrounging and hunting and gathering and generally getting on peoples' %$^*#$ nerves. Eventually, I came to a mountain. It was a big bugger, enveloped in thick purple cloud, and I set off grimly, feeling the air grow colder as I ascended on fleet little legs. I walked for days, higher and higher, into the icy unknown, surrounded by weird little trees, stunted and gnarled by the supersonic winds of the Himalayan environment. One day, I was crawling on my belly, starving and almost dead, watching the albino hawks and vultures wheeling madly in the pale skies, awaiting my expiration. And then I saw the Sherpa.
That, my friends, is the tale of how I descended into the hell that is stoogedom, and was eventually rescued by the guidance of the Hockey Sherpa. He led me over the craggy hills, through the frozen streams and elaborate, mysterious terraces of his magic realm, and delivered me to the enlightened place, where hockey makes sense, and all is well.
And now, my sons, it is your turn to be delivered to that same enchanted place. Say thank you to the Hockey Sherpa.
