Oh dear lord, I've cracked...
I had a vivid dream this morning that I was the back-up goaltender for the Vancouver Canucks. By which I mean, I did not dream that I was Johann Hedberg or Alex Auld (the actual back-up goalies), or even some other random guy, but rather that I, personally, was filling in as the back-up.
Now, I grant you -- a certain snarky type of fan would at this point say, "a 35-year-old woman from Boston with no skating experience could hardly be worse than the Canucks' two regular goalies have been this month". But I'm actually not the kind of fan who rags on the goalies alone when the team is in a slump. Yes, the goalies have been atrocious, and apparently they could not stop a beach-ball, let alone the puck; but the abysmal D bears some of the blame for letting the good scoring chances get through, and if the offense was actually able to score, then the games might still be saved. But the upshot is that the Canucks are a sad little demoralized hockey club as we hit the final stretch before the play-offs.
However (and how's this for ironic?), I also was not very good as a goalie. Which is to be expected, I think. In that way of dreams, we were playing on an open, grassy field. I think it was actually a soccer field, because the net behind me certainly felt as big as a soccer net. And yet I was moving around on skates, as if on ice (and thinking to myself, hey, I'm not doing too badly at this, considering the last time I was on ice-skate was when I was about 11; and the last and only time I was on rollerblades, I broke my damned arm). Dream, right, check.
Despite the fact that there was a game going on, there were a lot of other people who felt free to wander around the field and do their own thing. I had taken over for Hedberg (he's #1 at the moment because the actual #1 is out with a day-to-day injury), who was still lurking around for some reason. And I almost immediately let a puck dribble past me. I swear to god, I turned around and just sort of watched as it arced past, knowing even at the time that it was a save that even I should have easily made. And the first thing to pop into my head was, "Well, there goes my shut-out."
At the end of the first period, I called everyone on the field over and announced that I was very sorry, but for the rest of the game I was going to have to enforce the rule that nobody should be in my goal-crease, because clearly I needed less distraction. The goal-crease was as big as a typical soccer crease, and there were people wandering around and picnicking in it. I stressed, though, that it wasn't that I was blaming the first goal on their distracting me -- I admitted it was simply an awful collapse on my part. But I was thinking ahead to trying to prevent any goals from being scored in the second and third periods, and I'd realized I was going to need all the help I could get.
I never did find out how it all turned out. I woke up while we were still between periods, and it had started to rain, and I was wondering how that was going to affect the game. I'm not even sure who we were playing. And isn't it sad that a fan of a team that is in a slump, who is obviously concerned about the way the team is playing, can't do any better than to dream up something that even in the dream doesn't do the team any good? Wouldn't it make more sense for me to dream about being some awesome star goalie? (Actually, even in the dream, I remember thinking to myself, "Why do I want to be a goalie? I don't want to be a goalie! Who in their right mind would want to be a goalie?")
Final note: for all those of you who have suffered through two essay-length posts from me in the past two days, I apologize. What you need to do is email me and tell me how I can do that thing where you write a single line on the main entries page and it links to a longer essay on the comments page. And while you're at it, help me figure out how to create links out of words within the text of a post.
Now, I grant you -- a certain snarky type of fan would at this point say, "a 35-year-old woman from Boston with no skating experience could hardly be worse than the Canucks' two regular goalies have been this month". But I'm actually not the kind of fan who rags on the goalies alone when the team is in a slump. Yes, the goalies have been atrocious, and apparently they could not stop a beach-ball, let alone the puck; but the abysmal D bears some of the blame for letting the good scoring chances get through, and if the offense was actually able to score, then the games might still be saved. But the upshot is that the Canucks are a sad little demoralized hockey club as we hit the final stretch before the play-offs.
However (and how's this for ironic?), I also was not very good as a goalie. Which is to be expected, I think. In that way of dreams, we were playing on an open, grassy field. I think it was actually a soccer field, because the net behind me certainly felt as big as a soccer net. And yet I was moving around on skates, as if on ice (and thinking to myself, hey, I'm not doing too badly at this, considering the last time I was on ice-skate was when I was about 11; and the last and only time I was on rollerblades, I broke my damned arm). Dream, right, check.
Despite the fact that there was a game going on, there were a lot of other people who felt free to wander around the field and do their own thing. I had taken over for Hedberg (he's #1 at the moment because the actual #1 is out with a day-to-day injury), who was still lurking around for some reason. And I almost immediately let a puck dribble past me. I swear to god, I turned around and just sort of watched as it arced past, knowing even at the time that it was a save that even I should have easily made. And the first thing to pop into my head was, "Well, there goes my shut-out."
At the end of the first period, I called everyone on the field over and announced that I was very sorry, but for the rest of the game I was going to have to enforce the rule that nobody should be in my goal-crease, because clearly I needed less distraction. The goal-crease was as big as a typical soccer crease, and there were people wandering around and picnicking in it. I stressed, though, that it wasn't that I was blaming the first goal on their distracting me -- I admitted it was simply an awful collapse on my part. But I was thinking ahead to trying to prevent any goals from being scored in the second and third periods, and I'd realized I was going to need all the help I could get.
I never did find out how it all turned out. I woke up while we were still between periods, and it had started to rain, and I was wondering how that was going to affect the game. I'm not even sure who we were playing. And isn't it sad that a fan of a team that is in a slump, who is obviously concerned about the way the team is playing, can't do any better than to dream up something that even in the dream doesn't do the team any good? Wouldn't it make more sense for me to dream about being some awesome star goalie? (Actually, even in the dream, I remember thinking to myself, "Why do I want to be a goalie? I don't want to be a goalie! Who in their right mind would want to be a goalie?")
Final note: for all those of you who have suffered through two essay-length posts from me in the past two days, I apologize. What you need to do is email me and tell me how I can do that thing where you write a single line on the main entries page and it links to a longer essay on the comments page. And while you're at it, help me figure out how to create links out of words within the text of a post.