It was just after midnight and Diane and I were talking. (Diane, if you’re new here, is my wife… she lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. Which is in Canada. Which is north of the United States. I live in Ohio — which is 2,500 away, in the Midwest, and suffers from an identity crisis. )
“What are you watching?” I asked.
“Nothing really. I’m just flipping around. Jon and Kate seem to be having some trouble,” she said.
“I saw that. It looks like Jon cleared out the joint bank accounts.”
“Kate said he left her just $1000. He took something like $230,000. Jon says she’s lying.”
“Someone’s lying,” I said, “it should be easy enough to figure out which one it is.”
“Hockey’s on. It’s the Vancouver Cannucks,” started Diane, and still flipping. Before she got too far I told her the Cannucks were Robin’s favorite hockey team from How I Met Your Mother.
“Ted taught Barney that in ‘Robin 101’ in tonight’s episode,” I added.
“They’re playing CBJ. I’ve never heard of them.”
“That’s us… the Columbus Blue Jackets.” And then I laughed as there was something funny to me about a Canadian person not knowing something about hockey as it went against stereotype. But my laughter (and it wasn’t mean laughter… it may have been chagrinned laughter… no, it wasn’t, I just looked up “chagrin” … in any case, it wasn’t malicious laughter) wasn’t just about that – in a split second I was reminded of when hockey went on strike and I didn’t realize it until I saw in the news where a player had said, “I’m playing a sport that’s on strike and nobody’s noticed.” Then I flashed to a line from Zombieland where one of the non-zombies says something like “Columbus has burned to the ground, there’s nothing there,” and I thought, “Pre- or post-zombie apocalypse, Columbus is about the same,” as this thought dovetailed on a memory from twenty-five years ago when I was on the phone from someone from out of town and he said, “Columbus, Ohio? I was there once. It has to be the most boring city in the world. The downtown rolls the sidewalks up at five p.m. on Fridays.*” And then I came back around to when Columbus was dying to get a major league sports team and we got hockey. Which is as good as anything, I suppose, as I’m not a big sports fan… I’d rather a city be known for having really good schools and a low crime rate than by their sports franchise.
“Well,” and Diane was laughing too, though I doubt her mind was jumping all over the place and she was trying to sort out what she was chuckling about, “the Blue Jackets are winning 4 to 2, if you’re curious. And it’s the third quarter.” She paused and then added helpfully, “Hockey has three quarters, if you didn’t know.”
And while I was going to finish this post by typing, “Well, of course I knew hockey had three quarters” as I reread that, it occurred to me she said, “It’s the third period” and “Hockey has three periods.”
(What caught my eye was that “quarter” usually denotes something that comes in fours.)
*There is plenty to do in Central Ohio these days. While I sort of pick on us, there’s few other places I’d rather live.
Wow. Your train of thought(s) are nearly as random as mine tend to get….after a tray full of jello shots! Is it strange that I followed EVERY SINGLE LINE of that post? LOL
I’m a little concerned that I followed that train of thought without jumping the track (and now I’m thinking that I should say something more original about trains than the tracks – but I don’t know anything about trains. Or tracks).
In Zombieland maybe they were referring to a different Columbus?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus
It’s nice of you to try to give Central Ohio an out… but they say “Columbus, Ohio.”
I totally get how you think.
It kinda scares me.
A propos of nothing at all — except that it’s one of those things.
Someone ask you an American “Where are you from?” And you say “Ohio” — Ask me, a Canadian. I’ll say “Ottawa.” (If I’m with Americans I’ll explain that is between Montreal and Toronto.)
(Love Rick Mercer.)