EDMONTON EXISTENTIAL

 

Raking the Lawn on a Windy Day as the Regular Season Winds Up

 

The world made it through another night. The morning is sunny, warm enough for just a sweatshirt. I’m raking the snow mould and last fall’s mange from the front lawn. The sky’s bluer than a Toronto Maple Leafs fan. The spring wind inflates my yard bags faster than a middle-aged bladder. It’s a blustery day and I’m reminded of A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day. Then I remember The National Lampoon magazine’s long ago Winnie the Pooh sex scene: Ooh, Kanga, yes!  Tigger purred. I supposed the modern equivalent would have to do with the works of J.K. Rowling. Erecto! cried Harry. Hermione gasped with undisguised delight at the immensity of Harry’s wand. Poor Ron could only goggle at his own flaccid miscast spell.

 

Our postman, a stocky, cheery fellow with a shaved head marched up the drive. I touched the brim of my Montreal Canadiens CH logo cap to him and said, ‘Hello.’ He said, ‘I’ve got some bad news for you.’ I thought, This is it, the end of home delivery. And the latest issue of Rolling Stone with Kiss on the cover hasn’t even arrived yet. That’s okay, it’s all right. Kiss sucked in 1975 or whenever and they still suck now and their recent, revisionist and inexplicable election into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame does not negate their bottomless quotient of musical suck so much as celebrate their undeniably savvy and staggeringly successful marketing of suck. If the magazine must stay rolled up in some community mailbox, well, that won’t suck. The postman continued, ‘My Bruins will beat your Habs in the playoffs.’

 

Eh?

 

We are standing on a street in Edmonton, AB maybe two hundred yards from the south bank of the North Saskatchewan River talking about two hockey teams who play their home games on the other side of the continent. There’s no guarantee that our respective favourites will even cross paths during the ensuing two month grind to the Stanley Cup final, but hey, it’ll be playoff time soon enough and the gauntlet’s been thrown down. And fuck me for having spent our long dark winter sanding and salting the front walk for the safety of a Boston Bruins fan.