So...retirement.
My last official day of being a member of the workforce is on Friday. After that, well, I have the utmost confidence that my penchant for needing to be constantly engaged in one project or another isn't going to fly with my wife, who has an amazingly low annoyance threshold.
Make no mistake, I didn't want to retire. Life circumstances dictated that I should.
My wife with the low threshold for my annoying habits is also dealing with a life-altering health issue, the effects of which lower that bar to virtually zero on the tolerance scale. I won't go into detail. Suffice to say that a crossroads is looming and I need to navigate a path that keeps me busy and not hovering over my wife like the grim reaper.
But I need to be home with her. The job took too much time away from caring for her, causing me both intense guilt for being away from home and with a case of terminal exhaustion from the stress that accompanies heinous stuff like this.
Not bitching, mind you, just revealing the talisman of fortune - both good and ill - that has inspired me to do something that I haven't done in nearly a decade, something that allows me to be present where I need to be and also to relax by doing the one thing that is the yin to my yang: Getting really stoned and writing about hockey.
And football, of course. I don't bother with basketball or baseball, as I have been out of the loop for both of those sports since the late-nineties, and I don't understand the allure of soccer, nor its seeming world-wide fanaticism. Perhaps I'm missing the boat, as it were, with all three - but I don't have the requisite knowledge to properly hold a conversation about any of them.
But about hockey and football, I care very much and have so much useless knowledge racing through my head about each that it leaks into just about anything else I do - so to satiate my need to keep busy, I'm starting up the blog again.
That epiphany came to me while I was standing in line at the weed dispensary. There are so many of these dispensaries in and around Lewiston that they outnumber convenience stores and are on par with the number of fast food joints, which many of the forward-thinking legal pot dealers in town gravitate towards when seeking a brick-and-mortar outlet.
Why not? There's one of these dispensaries on Main Street, with a package store on one side and a Burger King on the other - and right next to the packie, there's a soft-serve ice cream shack. Pretty much kills three birds with one stone, and there's even a large convenience store across the street, in case you need to gas up or have a hankering for one of those roller-heated hot dogs.
Those will do in a pinch, but clearly I've strayed. The proprietors of the dispensary have their walls covered with artwork and photographs - some paintings from local heads, classic comic book covers portraying the adventures of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers along with many photographs that detail the rich history of the Boston Bruins.
The woman who runs the place is a hockey freak, a true hockey mom that happens to own a pot store and whose license plate on her truck reads "Hat Trick". We connected instantly, having many insightful conversations in the years since we first met - and she gears her product suggestions towards strains that have inherent relaxing qualities, many of them of great comfort to my wife.
The people in front of me were window shopping for bongs, tasking the friendly middle-aged clerk with opening several glass cases - so I focused on the walls, taking in pictures I had seen dozens of times - reminiscing in the knowledge of each, my eyes settling on an image of Patrice Bergeron celebrating his iconic, series-winning goal against the Maple Leafs nearly a decade-and-a-half ago...
...the Bruins down by three goals with eleven minutes left in the game and facing elimination, storming back to tie the game with under a minute remaining in regulation, then Bergeron potting a rebound from the right wing to win it - the resulting celebration on the ice an explosion of pure, passion-filled joy.
To this day that goal and Bruins' legendary play-by-play voice Jack Edwards going ape-shit on the call sends goosebumps down my back and arms. I was a casual fan before that late spring evening in 2013. It was a defining moment for me in that hockey had always just been a three-minute blurb on SportsCenter to that point. I knew the game from attempting to play it in middle school - a disaster since it requires skating, which I sucked at - but never saw it for what it was.
That night I did or at least started on that fantastical thirteen-year journey that not only increased my knowledge of the game, but also impacted the manner in which I lived my life.
Hockey culture dictates that a person live his or her life in a certain manner, somewhat akin to the dogma of one of the more than four-thousand religions on the planet, but with results that can actually be measured - the most disciplined of which is to always do things the right way.
And that's enough for most folks, but the culture also instructs that we treat each other with respect, care for the people in the community and to be charitable - which sure sounds like a religious decree, except for...well, nevermind. Suffice to say that knowing hockey and its culture has greatly benefitted and enriched not only my life, but also gave me a renewed sense of purpose...
...and my purpose is to be home to take care of my family and to roll with the punches that life dishes out and to occasionally punch back when the actions of others impact our lives - and always with the knowledge that taking a five-minute major is sometimes necessary, but an additional two minutes for being the instigator is not.
But enough of that. Everyone lives by a set of standards laid out for them depending on what convention a person follows - but for me and my wife, who is also a rabid Bruins fan, hockey is not only a respite, but also way of life, and I am thrilled to be writing about it again.
