Thursday, August 30, 2018

Table Hockey Hubris


Others might nominate the Canadarm, or the Avro Arrow or the stubby beer bottle but I say, no, the greatest Canadian industrial product of all time is the good old made-in-Canada table hockey game. No contest. I acquired my first about age twelve. It was a terrific tonic. I may have been a bum at baseball and helpless at real, on-ice hockey but I proved to be something like an ace at table hockey.

I had friends willing enough to take me on but none of them could match the intensity I brought to table hockey: one by one they grew tired of losing and would suggest we do something else: stick six-inch firecrackers in country mailboxes, start a grass-fire, throw snowballs at passing cars. Over a period of four or five years I might have worn out three of these wondrous games. At 17 I went off to university, got distracted by other endeavours and forgot about table hockey for a good long time.

Then a few years ago, during a visit to my antique-dealer friend Diane Bradbury, there it was – a table hockey game just like the one I used to play sixty years ago. Six metal Montreal Canadiens, six Toronto Maple Leafs just like the ones of my early teens. It was for sale . . .  amazingly still in its original cardboard box. I snapped it up. Trouble is, after years of neglect in someone’s attic or damp basement, the playing surface was warped and uneven, which made it impossible for the stamped-metal Leafs and Canadiens to show their best stuff. I devised a solution for leveling the ice but it wasn’t until this summer that I got around to actualizing the fix – a combination of a dozen inch-and-a-quarter posts and hardwood levelers all glued together on the underside of the playing surface.

The fix worked perfectly: the playing surface is now as even as the day it came out of its Ontario factory in 1959 or ’64. Suddenly I was back in business – The Table Hockey Terror. Yes, Jan beats me like a drum at cribbage; yes, I am Cousin Lynn’s roadkill at Bananagrams 11 – the toughest of all the Bananagrams varieties – but it turns out that like riding a bicycle, playing table hockey is a skill that can be revived even after years of inactivity.

With the game restored to something very like its original glory I first humbled Jan, then nephews Michael and Rex. Next up was the longest-suffering of my friends, Stephen, a pal since we were both seventeen. Let’s play a five-goal game I proposed – first to five goals wins – and I’ll spot you a 4-0 lead. He agreed. I won. But take my word; table hockey is infectious, irresistible. Stephen couldn’t help himself – he wanted more. The game even delivered revelation, bringing out a side of my old friend I had never seen. Ordinarily a man possessed of the finest decorum and refinement, table hockey soon exposed that Stephen is something else previously unseen – a trash-talker. I ate it up. He got better, much better. I reduced the handicap. The trash talk intensified. I still won.

On Monday we took the game to our friend Carl’s birthday bash. He too was a boy who played table hockey in ages past. It was his birthday: would I go a little easy on him? No. I was merciless.

But there is trouble on the near horizon; I see it plain as day. Also attending Carl’s event were Lynn and Louise, my identical-twin cousins. I introduced them to Bananagrams 11 years ago and for a while – just a short while – I managed to win. Soon enough Lynn reduced me to a stomped-on doormat. I introduced the twins to astronomy and wildflower identification. It didn’t take long before I was eating their dust in both endeavours.

On Monday I spotted the twins no lead whatsoever and managed to beat them both. But we all know what comes before a fall. I watched in fascination as they played each other with absolute intensity, sweat flying off each determined face, each utterly determined to beat the other. I know with complete certainty that it is only a matter of time – and not much of it – before my undefeated streak will come to an end and one of the darlings – Louise or Lynn? – will exult in victory over the Table Hockey Terror. They will come up with something new – a trick I have never thought of – and make me a loser yet again. I dread what I know is certain. What then? To what do I turn? Canasta? Snakes-and-Ladders? Bingo?

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