The Life of the Beneficial Leach

The Life of the Beneficial Leach 

          By Stonewall Reimer

                          From: The Hamilton Spectator

                                    Reporter: Steve Milton

Brian Leetch of the New York Rangers put it well the other day when he said that the person who watches much hockey on television might well be called a hockey puck, but someone who pays to go to games in his hometown would be offended by such an appellation. A payer should be called a hero instead of a puck because he supports the business of hockey instead of just his rear end on the couch. He buys tickets. Which we know goes straight into the system, like I mean the loop of owner, player, infrastructure, and family in the end. He buys beer at arena vendors which pay the hockey associations a cut of the take, as well as supports the people owning the pubs and outlets even though the most goes to the arena. He orders food from a bunch of sellers and callers who make a small amount of money from each dog and Pepsi they get purchased and so earn a respectable wage instead of living off the street. He’s out of the home for these four or five hours of the travel to the game, time watching, travel to the pub afterwards, and travel home by taxi after that or most likely even taxi to the game. And so he’s saving the municipality a pile of money couple of times a month on nuisance charges and like that, from the police or other agencies who have to come in when there’s a domestic. No one calls in screaming, no one has to go out to the house, right? Bucks saved. Like, his marriage goes better, too. My marriage was helped by my playing hockey. The more I was away, the more Maybelle got done around the house, and the longer it kept clean, if you know what I mean. If a man is around the house it gets messy. If he isn’t then it doesn’t. It makes the wife and kids happier if the husband is gone a lot, on the road, or at the pub, or even especially at hockey games, because then he comes home drunk and too tired to watch any more television and haul out the chips and dips and beers and so on and make a mess of the basement she’s vacuumed. Everyone wins, no one loses. I would even come to watch my own hockey games if that would help, if you know what I mean. We should all do our best to help. The home needs all us men to do our part and to do the best we can since our wives bear the brunt. They have to do the grunt work. We sweat and strain, sure, when we have some heavy lifting to do, or work under the car or such, like the time the jack slipped on me when I was changing the oil and the car rested on top of me for over an hour until some of my buddies came to the rescue. They had come over for more beer and cleaned out my fridge and were on the way out of there when Ray said let’s go out back and see what old Derek’s up to and they lifted the car off me. Geez, was I glad they came! Anyway, we had a few beers outside then and that was good for our marriage, too. You see, I believe that any time a guy can stay out of the house as much as possible he has a chance to make the whole thing work a lot smoother. So, we had some beers in the garage while I finished changing the oil and somebody went for the two fours and then we went in in the end and watched a game for a few hours. The guys never did get that beer home! We got it all drank before they headed off and they said later they’d stopped at the Montcalm and picked up two more two fours there and gone to Jerry’s instead and drank till about three. So, anyway, so what I’m saying is stay away from the house so’s it doesn’t get messy, pay for hockey games, drink beer away from home and then you’ll make sure your wife is happy. The life of the hockey puck is no good.