Reason I Love Hockey #12

Canada

One of my most hated conversation-starters, and one that comes up way too often at college is "Where are you from?" This question sends me into a long song and dance number about Buffalo, and Western New York, and not being near NYC at all, and lots of snow, and so on and so forth. No matter how much I try to explain it, no one can quite grasp where my hometown is. So finally I just opted for the simple explanation of "It's near Canada," said with a twinge of pride. Of course, this, more often than not, elicits responses akin to "How sad for you," which only sends me into another song and dance. I love Canada. I'm a total Canada-phile. And people who try to bring Canada down based on falsified facts and assumptions are my sworn enemies. So, to these people, I list off my well-practiced reasons why my Northern Neighbor is so great. I start with the somewhat impertinent fact that they have a better view of Niagara Falls than we do, then work my way up through great Chinese food, Toronto, Tim Horton's, getting drunk at 19, the anthem, the accents, Algonquin Provincial Park, and the fact that they continued airing Clone High when no one else would, etc. etc. to the culmination, the crowning moment. Canada invented hockey, and therefore can do no wrong. Ever. Of course, most of the people who are down on Canada are similarly ignorantly down on hockey, so this usually does nothing to increase their love of either. But on rare occasions, I get a reply of "What's so great about hockey?" said with genuine inquisitiveness instead of disdain. At a cast party last semester, my routine defense of Canada lead to an hour and a half conversation about hockey, and why the Sabres rule and the Canes drool, with a non-fan from Raleigh. Even though he had no real idea of what I was talking about, it made me infinitely happy that he was not only interested in listening to me blabber (it was March, and I really needed an outlet), but he also actually agreed with me. A couple of months later I saw him again, and he told me he had tried to buy me a Hurricanes hat, "so you could burn it, or something," but unfortunately they apparently "suck so much that no one even bothers selling that stuff anymore." And thus a hockey friendship was born. Brought to me by Canada.

It's such a perfectly symbiotic relationship: I love Canada because it gave me hockey, and I love me hockey for giving me one more reason to love Canada.