Panthers and Leafs

One time Larry was playing hockey. He was on defense and his fellow defenseman passed the puck to him around the net. It came back high up along the boards and hit him in the shoulder. It hurt so much. He got a bruise that hurt for a week.

Toronto is playing Florida tonight. Florida isn’t a contender. So it’s too bad for Todd Bertuzzi that he got traded there. Gary Roberts is there too. He’s really old for a hockey player but everyone respects his work ethic and his toughness. Gary Roberts used to be on our team. He used to be a Leaf.

The camera pans on Gary Roberts because of how interested we Leaf fans are in him because of how hard he played for us and what he used to mean. He looks quiet. He looks like he wishes he was still a Leaf, still a contender. The camera pans again for us on Roberts. It pans like an old lover who can’t stop stealing another illicit glance and trying to decipher if what it thinks it sees is true; if the look of regret on Roberts’ face is ours, if its true, if it still belongs to us.

For Thanksgiving dinner Larry made a stir fry. We paused the hockey game because we have a new technology on the TV that lets us do that then skip over the commercials. Sometimes the kids miss the commercials though. We were all thankful for different things, some personal and some worldly.

What Larry gave thanks for reminded Eli of a story of how one of his buddies who used to be in the Reserves with him but is now in the Regular Forces was put on casket carrying duty for the dead soldiers coming back from Afghanistan. It was because of all of his previous experience in the Reserves the army felt he could be counted on to take on the extra responsibility. Eli’s friend made a joke about it, giving the regiment he’s in, The Royal Canadian Regiment, a new nick name, The Royal Cemetery Regiment. He’s just new to the Regular Forces. He’s getting used to it.

Todd Bertuzzi is the ex-Canucks player that checked another player from behind in such a hard, vicious and dirty way the player’s neck was broken but fortunately not the kind of neck break that causes paralysis but he did suffer permanent damage and sued Bertuzzi in the court of law and still can’t play. Our family all still felt sorry for Todd even though he shouldn’t have done that.

Jacob’s going to bed. He has school tomorrow. What we can do for that is pause the hockey game between the second and third periods and watch the end of the game after one of us finishes reading him his bedtime story, after he falls asleep.