What Hockey Does to your Stomach

I realized several years ago that I can no longer abuse my body like an 18-year old without suffering serious repercussions. Sometimes, apparently, I have to test the knowledge.

We went to an Atlanta Thrashers hockey game last night. My first ever hockey game, I might add. Katie and Nicole took us and for those of you who don’t already know this, as a duo, Katie and I are a force to be reckoned with when it comes to making bad eating choices. It’s like we dare each other to eat nasty things or something.

Upon arriving at Phillips Arena I made a bee-line for the nachos and the beer. That would have been fine by itself but at about the start of the third quarter it became clear to both of us that a hotdog was in order. Again, I could have survived a hotdog. But we couldn’t just eat a hotdog, hoh no! We had to eat the Jumbo Southwestern Hotdog. A foot-long mound of processed meat, cheese, chilli and oh yes, onions. Onions so pungent, so aromatic, that birds were dropping out of the sky in the parking lot every time one of us exhaled on the way to the car.

I spent the better part of this morning in the restroom. Sorry, there it is. My colon hates me. My stomach hates me. I have no one to blame but my inner 13-year old boy. I made it through a surprisingly decent workout, despite the weight in my gut, but by the time I got home, chemical processes were at work that could not be avoided anymore.

The Game

Maybe it shouldn’t surprise me but I really liked hockey. I had no idea what was going on most of the time but I really enjoyed the whole spectacle. Apart from being able to identify the teams and their goals and to keep a pretty good eye on the puck, I had no idea what any of the rules were.

The whistle would blow and I’d have completely missed whatever it was blowing about. People faced off in little circles and I didn’t know why. Occasionally players left the ice and came back on the ice. Lots of strange mid-game social rituals with the audience took place during lulls, including a clever game where two small girls, seated criss-cross style on the floor, were hurled by a slingshot into an inflated 10-pin setup.

I got to high-five the team mascot, Thrash, a dude in a jersey with a bird head on his shoulders. Oh! And I almost got into a fight with the guy behind me because he didn’t like the way I was sitting. Oddly enough, I was sitting the way I was because I couldn’t see. The fact that I was making it hard for him to see did not make me sympathetic to his request that I quit bending over. We all paid $10 for these cheap seats, he was just going to have to deal.

But aside from all of that, what I enjoyed the most about hockey was how balletic it is. I loved watching the dance of these players from one end of the rink to the next. It is graceful and nerve-wracking and oddly relaxing all at the same time.

I can’t ice skate at all and am in fact terrified of the very idea of it. All those blades, all those potentially amputated fingers, all that hard ice. No thank you. And I’ve always been fascinated by professional skaters, so watching this game was a combination of everything I love and fear about skating, and I really dug it. Now I just have to look up and figure out the rules. Oh, and not eat the Jumbo Dog.