Friday the 13th - Chapter 3: Hockey Night in Kansas

I’ll admit that I was in a fowl mood by the time I returned to Sarah's wedding reception…and might have stayed that way had it not been for my dear brother. Seeing that the lone half-keg of Boulevard Pale Ale was about to be emptied before I even had one cup (leaving me with only a wide selection of [shudder] macro-brewed lagers) he and my cousin Jerry had schemed to secret me away one cup of the good stuff. It wasn’t so much the beer that snapped me out of my funk as much as the joy with which they delivered their quasi-illicit good to me. Thanks again, guys.

We were just standing toward the back, discussing the beautiful park and building flaming napkin they had found for the ceremony.

What’s that? There was a flaming napkin there? Yeah, I’m pretty sure I saw that too, but I had to do a double take to be sure cuz it happend so fast. No cause for alarm…just a groomsman fleeing the building with flame spouting from his fist. Go about your business.

Anyway, we meandered outside, my brother and I. He’d been hitting the macro-brewed lager and his arm gesticulation was showing it. My cousin Caleb (Sarah’s brother) sauntered over and as we chatted, Caleb started joking with a group of groomsmen standing in a group beside us. He knows a little sign and so was having fun teasing the guys, all of whom had come down from Toronto (the groom’s hometown) for the wedding. I tried to think of something to converse about with these out-of-towner s and thought to myself that I do actually have a few Canadian friends, and pride myself on knowing a bit more about our neighbor to the north than your average American. I considered current Canadian events and remembered a conversation I’d had with my friend Simon about Hockey Night in Canada losing its theme song. It’s a big deal up there, apparently. It’s been called Canada’s second national Anthem and is a major source of pride. A good place to start a conversation, I thought.

“Caleb,” I said, “Tell them how sorry we are for their ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ loss.”

Caleb had no idea what I was talking about, but began signing. Jet knew this story from my retelling and laughed as he tried to look as sympathetic as he could to make the joke better. The best man looked confused. I assumed Caleb just hadn’t translated correctly. If this thing was as big a deal as Simon had lead me to believe, surly any Canadian would know about it. As I began explaining to Caleb the nature of the joke with him translating what I was saying to the bewildered group, my brother was “helping” by striking an imaginary puck with a pantomimed stick. One of the groomsman got excited. He played hockey and thought were saying that we did as well. We assured him that we did not and tried again. And it was somewhere during this time, while Jet mimicked air guitar to indicate the theme song aspect of our joke and as Caleb turned to shake his head at us that it hit me…none of these fine gentlemen had ever heard the theme song from ‘Hockey Night in Canada.” They’d never heard anything. They had no interest in theme songs and were thus blissfully unaware of any controversy surrounding what tune plays at the beginning of Canada’s most popular sports program. We were, my brother and I, while trying to prove just how sensitive we were to Canadian issues…proving how utterly clueless we were about deafness.

“Nevermind,” Caleb signed to them.

My brother, unfazed…hoisted his beer high and called, “Nevermind….cheers!!”

The three Canadians lifted the drinks and cheered, their looks of confusion gone as they all took a slam from their plastic cups.

Ah, I thought to myself as I slipped away to the shadows, the important thing here really wasn’t that they’re Canadian…nor that they’re deaf. The important thing was that they’re drinkers.

Leave it to my brother to be the first to learn that diplomatic lesson.