A night on the town looking for a fight.
Tonight we went to see Emmy’s first Wisconsin Badgers Men’s Hockey game at the Kohl Center. Her brief hockey career is over now, but she has lingering interest as a spectator. She watched a semi-pro game last year and a fight broke out. Contrary to Emmy’s normal passive, go-along nature, it didn’t repel her, it drew her in. Every yin has its yang.
I can’t recall whether it was as a Christmas gift or a birthday gift, but she was offered dinner out and her choice of either a men’s or women’s hockey game. She chose the men because the men are more apt to fight.
Today was a work day for me, and I finished the last couple hours of my week from the concessions area at Sauk Prairie Ice Arena as I covered Zamboni duties for the first couple games of the Cheddar Cheese Classic hockey tournament. The first game I handled was between Orono and Wayzata, adjacent western suburbs of the Twin Cities. They drove a long way to compete against their neighbors.
It was fun for me to see those place names on the schedule. Both teams would have been opponents of mine when I was a kid, and I’d have been in the Wayzata school district (and presumably hockey program?) had I grown up in the same house four or five years later.
When my rink duty was over I headed to Emmy’s house. I arrived about an hour early for dinner. A young blonde girl invited me to a before dinner dance party. I declined; I’m a little old and rickety for a dance party. Two or three minutes later I was invited to a dance party by a different young blonde girl. Again I declined. Almost immediately I was again invited to a dance party, this time by two young blonde girls.
It became clear that my choice was between going to a dance party and rebuffing increasingly emotionally charged summonses to do so. I chose to go to the dance party.
The flow of the party wasn’t the smoothest, we had issues with multiple people requesting different songs simultaneously and with some of those songs being imaginary (“Alexa, play unicorn rainbow song with farting.”) Also we were rebuffed by the family content filter several times. Caelynn tried to fix that problem (“Alexa, turn off the family content filter”) but we were told that a grownup would have to do that for us.
It was the best dance party I’ve attended so far this year and in hindsight I am very glad that I went.
After the dance party we headed to town for dinner. We chose the Nitty Gritty for its proximity to the Kohl Center. It was game night, there were lots of bright red people around, so we had to wait the better part of an hour for a table. Luckily Emmy had thought ahead and brought putty and slime to keep us entertained in the slack. Danny made a shark that was better than any slime-shark I’d ever have been able to make.
Our food got to us quickly and we ate it even more quickly because that’s who we are. Those of us with Jensen genes don’t waste time at the dinner table–especially not when it’s 6:30 and the game starts at 7:00. I had Jason’s Pork Pretzel Sandwich with french fries. Hold the pickles because they’re sweet pickles and sweet pickles are terrible. The sandwich was good. I wasn’t involved with it long enough to remember anything beyond that.
After dinner we made the bitter cold two block walk to the Kohl Center. All of our tickets transferred from my Apple Wallet to the invisible cash box in the sky on the first try! Electronic tickets always scare me a little, I’m afraid something will fail and I’ll be left out in the cold. Not this time.
By the time we reached our seats the game was already underway. Nobody had scored yet and both teams (the other was Penn State–did I mention that?) appeared to be playing well, I couldn’t tell for sure, it took a few minutes for my brain to adapt to the pace of college hockey. My volunteer work at the local arena means my eyes have acclimated to mites and squirts and peewees struggling to stay upright. What you see at this level almost seems impossible to process by comparison.
Wisconsin scored two power play goals on a major penalty early on. For a while they had nearly doubled Penn State in shots on goal. But the Badgers fizzled as time wore on while the Nittany Lions were consistent from start to finish. The result was a blowout: Penn State wins, 7-2.
Oh well.
The important part is that Emmy got to see her first college hockey game and she appeared to enjoy herself throughout. She didn’t care about the score. She wanted to see a fight. She didn’t see one, but she saw enough roughness to keep her entertained. If she keeps the faith, keeps coming to games, she’ll eventually find what she’s looking for…
It’s hockey. Chaos will come.
Appendices
- Videos
- Pre-Game Dance Party dance, dance, dance the night away.
- Hoping for a Fight Emmy thinks a fight might be starting.