Sometimes, This Game Can Be A Bear…

Well, if you look at the “box” of side by side stats of the Jackets and Bruins, it looks kinda of equal…a smidge here, a tweak there, maybe.  This time of the season everyone plays with urgency…like they’re running from a guy with a big axe…so OK, that’s not exactly a metaphor.  Jackets may be playing simply as spoiler at this point…of course I piss my other Blue Jacket fan friends off by thinking “anything” can happen and the playoffs are still possible for us.

I don’t know too much about the Bruins.  Sound stupid?  Sorry.  I like who I like and know what I know.  I can tell you this: When I was in fifth grade, this kid wore a Bruins jersey all the time.  ALL the time.  I couldn’t connect the Bear thing with the Bruin thing…I had no idea that “Bruin” meant “Bear” and it was really frustrating to me (why, I have no idea…it was fifth grade, I was a kid…he was a damn boy as well…boys always made me nuts for one reason or another.  Still do.)

So, one day, right before the Christmas holiday break, there he was, wearing this stupid Bruins jersey, and I had had enough.  I asked in a very snarky and loud voice “What in the HELL is a stupid BRUIN, anyway?!”  And the teacher, very upset with my tone and language, made me look up what a “Bruin” was and write a report on it, due first thing smokin’ after the holiday break.  So, instead of really enjoying the puppet-animation heat miser, snow miser brother fight, The Grinch and shopping, I had to worry about a report on a Bruin.  Yes, I could’ve knocked it out in one afternoon, but I was a kid and a stupid one at that, who loved wallowing in my own kid-angst and girl-boy fight (lost) pity.  I worried about that and let that trouble me until the last few days of break, and then worked on it.  I nearly cracked my back teeth with the anger (stupid Richard, stupid Bruins and Bears and Boston and Boys and hockey and fairy tale way of saying Bear…)

Well, it wasn’t MY fault…c’mon…

Without even knowing it…without any clue of things to come…I was a Jacket fan even then…before there were Jackets and before any of the current players existed (except maybe Ethan and Chris…) I was a fan.  I resisted the Bruin fandom even then…none of this had anything to do with me being a smart-ass little girl who kinda hated boys and couldn’t mind her own business.  Oh no!  It’s all in the stars with being a true Union Blue fan…

I know that “Bruin” is an old fashioned way of saying “Bear” in fairy-tales.  I had to look it up and put it in a report over Christmas one year.  I had to apologize to a Bruin’s fan who wore a jersey EVERY day and had no idea about the concept of deodorant.  It was one of those kid things…barely remember it…you know.

Jackets go on a Bear hunt at Nationwide tonight at 7pm