Let’s be honest here. For all the bashing back and forth between Canadians and Americans over who is better in hockey, or in anything, there is something seriously wrong with a lot of people on this side of the border. Take my night in the Czech hockey bar tonight for example:
I had a nice two periods at the bar, watching hockey and blogging about it. 2nd intermission and the 3rd period took a turn for the ugly, and I don’t mean the hockey. At that point, the hockey wasn’t the main attraction. It was the drunk woman sitting next to me. During the 2nd period, she starts talking to me. And really, more like at me rather than to me. As ever, as I usually try to do, I tried to be nice, not just blow her off. She wasn’t hitting on me, she was just being drunk and chatty, and a little weird. But things turned ugly quick. The 3rd period started, and while she was watching the game in the first two periods, I was now the focus (again, she wasn’t hitting on me). Then she asked my country of origin, and my ethnic background. Look at that picture to the right. Or even look at the last picture here, or the last one here, or the one in this sequence. If you didn’t just look, you will in a moment. Not that either of those questions were ANY of her business, the answers are I was born in Minnesota, and my grandmother came over to America from Armenia as a young woman. Why does this matter?
The next words out of her mouth are that I look like those people we are fighting over there (very close to a quote, but not accurate enough to put in quotes). Then she says “even if you aren’t a terrorist…” (that was a quote). At that point, I had heard enough. Ignoring her wasn’t working, so I asked her to just stop right there. She asked if she had insulted me, and I told her just to leave me alone. (you would be forgiven for thinking that things are going to get violent, but they aren’t, at least not really) She left me alone, for about 2 minutes. I tried to get back to the game, but that didn’t work out so well, as she started in again. She was grabbing my are, and kept using the word terrorist. I had enough. I got my tab, and told the bartender what was going on. He agreed that it was ridiculous. Then she grabbed my jersey. Now I was mad. If you get me mad, this is what will happen. I told her to leave me alone, and that she should be ashamed of herself. That’s it. I paid up, grabbed my stuff, and left. As I was leaving, I looked back inside, and I really do think she was ashamed. I just came home, and am now writing this.
That is my side of the story, and I think it’s pretty accurate. If I were to do anything different, I wouldn’t have been ass polite to her when she started using strange hand gestures like a (frankly) crazy person. I had seen her there before, and the bartender knew her name, so she is most likely a regular. And even so, you try to be nice, you try to just go along with the drunk, and it will stop, but it got way out of hand. I tried.
If you are basing the accusation purely on looks, there is no basis. I haven’t shaved in several days, have a hairline that is obviously mad at me (it keeps wanting somewhere else), and my skin tone is slightly above pale. But basically, it’s just ugly fear and racist crap. I’m not even part of the race she was talking about, so she is a true idiot. And who looks like a terrorist? If it were that easy, we would all be living a happier life. But come on, nothing is that simple. There isn’t a race out there who is exactly like any of the bad things we think about them. Not one.
I want to go back to the hockey bar. The big part of me makes me want to go back for the hockey crowd, and the good people that are there. The small part of me wants to go back to shame that woman. I won’t do that, but I want to be around hockey fans. I want my hockey bar. I wish I was in Lake Placid, NY tonight, at Wiseguys.
We all worry about bringing people to hockey, but what about just being decent in the first place. Comments are going to be closed for this post. I have no sense of humor about it. I’m just really sad for the state of things. Hockey is a great sport, not just for the game, but for the way it brings the world together. It can take you away from all the problems for the moment, and we can be something else, something simple. We can be just hockey fans.