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Change of plans

Michael Leave a comment

Remember those best laid plans from a couple weeks ago? Earlier this week I saw a news blurb on one of the local stations about plans. It seems all the rage among the over 30 crowd is to not make plans. In fact, according a majority of 30-somethings interviewed, they are most happy when plans that have been made are cancelled. I know you may find this hard to believe, but I’m going to disagree with that. I remember life in my 30s. I was thrilled when something got cancelled because there was so much else going on, when something fell through, maybe I’d actually be able to do the things I had planned!

Perhaps we should better define “plan.” You likely “planned” to read my blog Thursday morning yet here you are, seeing it for the first time on Friday. Was that really a plan or more an anticipation or expectation (depending on how disappointed you were upon not finding it Thursday morning). I thought you would be reading this Thursday morning. Was that the plan? Or was that an intention? Likely you speak to someone early in the day and may be asked “So, do you have any plans for today?” And perhaps you do but more likely you have aspirations of doing things if other things don’t prevent that from happening. And lastly, if you have a desire to remove yourself from your day to day activities, take a break, perhaps two weeks in a tropical paradise you have never seen and may never see again and you don’t want to miss the plane or would like somewhere to stay besides in the open on the beach, you may request time off, purchase plane tickets, book a hotel room, maybe even make reservations for a local attraction or two for those weeks in the sometime future. This is a plan and one nobody will be “most happy” with if it is cancelled.

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I think when the 30-somethings say they don’t make plans, they are speaking of the first three examples noted in the above paragraph. I am sure that somewhere, there is a 35 year old sitting with a couple tickets to Barbados, maybe pre-paid afternoon at the spa and reservations at the Salt Café in his (hers?, its?) phone’s wallet. It may think it a commitment (especially after the first few payments hit the Discover billing cycles) but it started out as a plan. Those other things like anticipating a blog post to hit your email or announcing a day’s probable agenda are possibly considered commitments by that unspecified 35 year old and it might not want to commit to lunch with the brother-in-law and then wash the car this Saturday afternoon and thus would prefer to “not make plans.”

I suppose it’s all in the words you use and even though the English  language gives us a bazillion from which to chose (over 600,000 per the Oxford English Dictionary, 39 for “plan”) we opt to use those that are most familiar to us and cause us to do the least amount of thinking to choose, while saying to everyone else “I know what I mean, figure it out yourself!”

I don’t know who decided that but I plan to look into it.

Wake me in an hour please

Michael 2 Comments

You’re in for a treat this week. I am going to share the secret of happy, healthy living. And it has nothing to do with eliminating politicians but that’s always a good fall back. The secret that does not require physical violence is…are you ready…you should be laying down for … is naps!

The greatest cultures on earth embrace naps. I know, because I said so. Not the United States of America but we could hardly be called a one of the world’s greatest culture. But I digress.

This is not a new revelation for me, and likely not for you. Each time I’ve come out of the hospital I’ve succumbed to napping as part of my convalescence. Succumbed is the right word because the first few discharges had me fighting it all the way.  Americans don’t nap, we work in the afternoon – in the morning and late at night also. On rare, very rare occasions an executive may close his/her/its eyes for a short time after skipping lunch for a Power Nap. See, no great culture here. We can’t even nap restfully.

After the last hospitalization I felt so much more alive and in tune with my surroundings after a decent nap and I carried them over into my post recovery self life. Sort of. It didn’t last long. After a few months I was back to cramming as much activity as I could into those waking hours, even if the activity was just walking around looking for something to do. This time I altered things a little, I feel even better, and I think I can keep this routine going and invite you to join me. See, it’s not really a nap, not like the stereotypical afternoon siesta. It’s more of an intentional downtime, a short version or a riposo.  The riposo is the Italian version of a midday break. Many countries along the Mediterranean rim enjoy a multi-hour midday break. But it’s not a 3 hour nap. It is a time that work is set aside and family, friends, and self are the focus for a while. On my mini-riposo I used the time to call friends, to luxuriate in an extra long shower, to sort through my paints and make a list of what needs replaced, to make a fresh brewed iced tea, and to stretch out in the bed and close my eyes so I could really listen to the wind outside, and maybe even nod off for a short while. I shifted my priorities from “things I need to do today” to “I’ll get to them in a little while.”

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Napping goes back to the source of just about everything, the ancient Romans. Boy those guys were busy. When they weren’t persecuting Christian’s, invading the Middle East, building aqueducts, or developing goofy numbers, they ate, and after they ate, they napped. I’ll skip the few thousand years in between them and me and note that today’s Romans don’t sleep as much during the day as the ancient counterparts and may devote only 10 or 20 minutes to actual sleep. The key to a happy afternoon is that riposo time spent not sleeping but simply resting.

There are actual studies (people will study anything if you throw enough grant money at them) that track sleep patterns and most nappers are more emotionally balanced, better learners and communicators, have better memory, and are generally more relaxed while also being more energetic. (The Sleep Foundation, January, 2023)

So I’m going to (try to) do what comes natural to about half the world, turn things down for a short while every afternoon.   Maybe I’ll fall asleep or maybe I’ll just rest and recover from the morning. Somebody check up in me in an hour so. I don’t want to get too relaxed and happy. Somebody might use me as an example of a great culture!

Shields up – phasers on stun

Michael 9 Comments

‘Tis the season! Time again to remind everyone the difference between vaccines and force fields.

Not Vaccinated Section (5)

Not Vaccinated Section (4)

If you don’t want to get the COVID vaccine, don’t, but please, don’t make up reasons. Just that you’re stupid, selfish, irresponsible, and probably one of those people who wears shorts in the dead of winter are plenty enough reasons. Saying you won’t because the vaccine doesn’t work or else why would we be getting all these new cases isn’t a good enough reason.

Why do the people with Twitter and Facebook accounts read the stories that COVID cases are rising and even those who are vaccinated are testing positive, but they don’t read the ones that the vaccinated people getting positive test results are typically asymptomatic or exhibit mild symptoms while the unvaccinated are the ones filling up the hospitals and funeral homes/crematoria?

As a reminder, vaccines work inside the body. They assist the immune system to defend against an intruder virus. When a virus enters the body, the immune system goes to work. It can’t do its job “out there.” It works from home you might say. I would say you can use that as interesting talk at a cocktail party, but… well…

You all know the drill. Get vaccinated and boosted, wear your masks, wash you hands, keep your distance, and eventually you will get to go back out. To those who think that’s a good idea, thank you for your help to save the human race.

Cute stories will return next week.

(PS: Now those are light sabers!)

(PPS: Yes I know I’m mixing my Trek with my Wars. Tough! 😝)

RRSB Persons of the Year

Michael 7 Comments

Nearing the end of the year most everybody will be writing about the year in review (ugh) or resolutions (still ugh but perhaps not disgustingly so). I, because I am me, will embark on my own end of year tangent and instead, celebrate the RRSB First (and Likely Only) Persons of the Year Award.  Yes, you read that correctly – plural “Persons,” singular “Award.” My choice for outstanding individual of 2021 is two individuals.

After careless considerat…  err, careful consideration, I’ve concluded there are two people worthy enough to be the Person of the Year, umm Persons of the Year and they is, I mean are: (drum roll, fanfare, etc, etc), Washington’s newest power couple, Liz Chaney and Joe Manchin.

Yes, that is a match made in Purgatory but they, and as far as I can tell, they alone are the epitome of Representative of the People. There are 535 elected voting representatives in Washington, 100 Senators, 435 members of the House of Representatives. Of those 535 people, 533 are more comfortable voting however their party tells them rather than those who hired them for the job. Only Chaney and Manchin have to the point of loss of standing and threats of censure, voted as they felt best benefited their constituents rather than their party leaders.

Seriously, as we enter 2022 maybe our Congress needs to resolve to improve themselves and the first step is for all 535 of them to write 100 times “I represent the people who voted for me” on any handy blackboard. Then they can rip out the aisles running down the middle of each chamber in that big white building on the hill and rather than assigning seats by party, get all the representatives of each state to sit together like they did when Congress was a new idea back in 1700s. Committee assignments will be made by members’ ability and background and leadership positions will limited to those identified in the Constitution. Yeah, that’s a bunch of pipedreams but they make just as realistic set of resolutions as wanting to lose weight and exercise more, but a guy can dream.

Now, getting back to Joe and Liz, my Persons of the Year. I agree it’s a sad state of affairs when politicians are singled out for bucking the system but face it, if your reps are always voting however their party leader tells them, why are they there. Let’s eliminate 531 positions and leave just one Democrat and one Republican in each house and they can vote on everything by rock, paper, scissors. Makes as much sense as what they’ve gotten done this year their way.

Manchin-Chaney

Uncommon Sense

Michael 3 Comments

The past few weeks have sorely tested my patience I wish everybody would go out and invest in some self-help books that include how to recapture some common freaking sense. Let’s start.

It’s summertime in the good old U. S. of A. which means, even in the absence of global warming, it gets hot. Glass amplifies heat. An enclosed space holds heat. Things inside hot enclosed spaces cook. And that’s how Jordan Mott came up with the oven in 1490 (minus the glass – that’s a bonus). Because we know it doesn’t count unless it happened in America, we can fast forward to 1882 when Thomas Ahern worked out the details for an electric oven. Granted, he was Canadian but that’s as close as we’re going to get unless you want to count the first person who fried an egg on the hood of a car. That had to be a “real” American, and that gets us to cars, hot cars, hot car interiors on hot summer days. There have been such a spate of kids being cooked in the back seats of cars – again. The government is mandating that by 2025 all auto manufacturers to put in systems that display and sound warning messages to check the back seat for Junior and Fido when you shut off your car. If you aren’t lucky enough to have one of the cars that already have such a warning and/or until you do, they suggest you put “something of value” in the back seat so you don’t forget your kid. Duh! Is it just me or is there nothing anybody owns more valuable than their own child? That was an honest to gosh, news piece just within the last week on most major news outlets. Don’t forget your kid, put something of value in the back with them.”

While we’re on the subject of kids, in June in a small Pennsylvania airport, the TSA confiscated a loaded handgun – in a baby stroller! According to a report on TSA.gov, “The man said that when he and his girlfriend take their dogs and child for a walk that he keeps his loaded gun in the rear stroller pocket and forgot to remove it when they came to catch their flight.” I call bull-doodoo! If you’re taking a baby on a plane with a stroller you are using every cubic inch of that to add carryon volume. And where in H-E-Double Toothpicks is this guy walking that he needs to carry a loaded gun with him when he’s out with his pseudo-family? Let’s stay with guns in airports for a while, even though I ranted about this before. Also, from TSA.gov, “Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers detected twice as many firearms per million passengers screened at airport security checkpoints nationwide in 2020 compared to 2019, and at a significantly higher rate than any other year since the agency’s inception.” A total of 3,257 guns were confiscated from passengers carry them on their persons or in their carry-on bags, and about 83 percent of them were loaded. Those figures didn’t include the number of guns confiscated because they were improperly packed in checked baggage, or toy and BB guns. All while people on planes are beating each other up for taking too much of the shared armrest or [shudder] being compelled to wear a mask.

And now that the delta variant has bloomed in the US to where masking might become more routine again, I figure something in August I get to write this post all over again with a new set of “can you believe this” tales.

Patience. Please give me patience.

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The shot heard around the world -or- Yes, Virginia, there are other vaccines out there

Michael 8 Comments

One hundred, thirty-seven years ago this month, Louis Pasteur administered the first rabies vaccine and things haven’t been the same since. That wasn’t the first vaccine developed for an animal. That would have been the chicken cholera vaccine in 1879, also developed by Pasteur. But when he gave that first rabies vaccine five years later he was setting a course for protections from a then universally deadly disease in humans by inoculating the animal. Prevent the disease in the animal and the animal can’t transmit the disease to the human. And thus, today dogs are roaming the streets with rabies tags hanging from their collars indicating they bear no risk to their human companions other than perhaps smothering them with dog kisses. And all is right with the world.

Except it isn’t. Cats and dogs aren’t the only animals who can get rabies. Nor were there in the days of Pasteur’s experiments. Bat, rats, raccoons, even cattle can too. In fact, any mammal can carry and transmit rabies to any other mammal. Could then, can now. In 1885, a year after he developed it for animal use, Pasteur injected the rabies vaccine into nine year old Joseph Meister who had been mauled by a rabid dog. The boy survived the rabies infection, the first ever to do so.

Animal vaccines were new in the 1880s but they weren’t the first time animals had been used in the development of vaccines. That happened 90 years earlier when Edward Jenner injected cowpox into humans to prevent the closely related smallpox virus. Through subsequent studies and experiments, the lives saved from smallpox through vaccination was so significant that by the 1922, primary schools in the United States began requiring smallpox vaccination for admittance. Through the 1930s diphtheria, tetanus, anthrax, cholera, plague, typhoid, and tuberculosis vaccines were developed, and then by mid-century work was completed on vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella. The latter half of the century brought vaccinations against chicken pox, pneumonia, and hepatitis B. This century saw the successful development of rotovirus, herpes zoster in adults (shingles), and human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccines. And don’t forget SARS-CoV2 aka CoViD-19.

We have been so fixated on COVID for the last 18 months we may have forgotten, or at least not actively considered, all the other vaccines and routine vaccination recommendations for children and adults. This was illustrated last month when this year’s influenza vaccine strains were selected with no notice by the mainstream media and little fanfare even in specialty media circles.

Although we may take a break from thinking of all the horrible things that can happen to us (besides being asked to wear masks, wash hands, and give others some space), viruses don’t take a break from causing potentially horrible things to happen. So, you should probably start worrying about a bad flu season for 2021-2022. It’s not that far away.

Part of the reason we might expect a bad flu season is because we’ve been pretty good with our CoViD mitigation. Masks, handwashing, and social distancing (which I still think should be called personal distancing because there’s nothing social about it), did a fabulous job of keeping influenza airborne rather than allowing it landing zones in our persons. Now those little fellows are mad as anything and will be twice a virulent this year. Well, okay, that would be a great story line for a book or a movie but, viruses aren’t all that vengeful in reality though sometimes it may seem they are.

I’ll give you two reasons why this year’s flu season may be back with a vengeance, and these reasons are valid for any viral infection. One is science based and the other is more social. Science tells us the body’s immune system actually thrives on small, short term exposures (which is why vaccines work) and that the lack of repeated exposure to the flu virus deprived the body of an additional weapon to augment the flu vaccine. The social reason that this year will see a more substantial flu season is that people, having had over a year’s worth of “isolation” will do what people often do and overdo. Without mandated masking and social distancing, people will try to make up for lost time in close social settings and forsake those mitigation practices that added up to making flu season 2020-2021 a non-event.

To reiterate, this covers all viruses. Last year also saw record low incidents of respiratory syncytial virus (RVS) and rotovirus in children, adenovirus and rhinovirus in everybody, and subsequently less non-COVID induced pneumonia.

I know, you are thinking, and possibly saying out loud to your screen, “But it’s too early to think about a flu shot!” You’re right. And I’ll remind you again in September and October to get out there and get your shot. But now is a good time to think about all those other vaccines we’ve spent a year not thinking about. Are you due for a tetanus booster? Did you put off your second shingles or pneumonia shot? Young adults, have you been evaluated for meningococcal vaccination; caregivers, do you need a new hepatitis titre and possible booster? Parents, what is the status of your children’s vaccine regimens? Travelers, are your shots all up to date?

There are so many more vaccines than COVID and now is the time to refresh yourself about them. For years we’ve relied on them to keep us safer and healthier than we were just a single generation ago. But vaccines only work if people are willing to be vaccinated. Go ahead, be willing. Joseph Meister did and lived to talk about it.

Links to US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention immunization schedules for 2021:

For adults age 19 and older
Table 1: By age
Table 2: By indication

For children and adolescents, birth to age 18
Table 1: By age
Table 2: Catch up schedule
Table 3: By indication
Parent Friendly easy-read chart

Resources
Information for adults
Information for parents

VaccinatedFamily

The Things you See

Michael 2 Comments
Every now and then I’ll pass a car on the road or in a parking lot with a dash cam. A car that is not a police vehicle. I’ve often thought why does ordinary Joe Driver need a dash cam.  I don’t know how Joe thinks but I think I figured out why I should get one. Your car is still the one place you can be and say “the things you see when you don’t have a camera.” Even with an ever present cell phone with 5 lenses and auto-zoom you miss that shot you need to prove “No, I’m not making this up!” In just one week I saw a custom license plate celebrating greed, a bumper sticker proclaiming selfishness and stupidity all in one, and evidence that apes can drive. Fortunately before I got home I also saw proof that there still is hope for humanity.
 
I did a whole post devoted to the state issued vanity plate experience. That was 8 years ago and the thought process people have behind their licences plate requests hasn’t changed much. Almost universally with custom plates one is convincing letters and numbers to approximate the word he or she wants. “IM L8” might explain why that car sped past you in the no passing zone. In that earlier post I mentioned one plate I saw that was an honest to gosh English word, ALIMONY. At the time I wrote, “Although it was on a fairly pricey vehicle it wasn’t on a true luxury car so maybe the owner could have worked out a still better deal.”  Perhaps somebody read that and got the idea from me. If so I would like to extend apologies to the payor whose support clearly is responsible for the Audi S6 with the plate ALEMONY. Apparently the previous plate is still in use and not available but as long as you’re soaking the ex, don’t let a little thing like spelling spoil the opportunity to rub it in at the same time.
 
Also affixed to the back of a vehicle, this one stuck to a slightly older crossover (is it a van, SUV, or station wagon?) idling ahead of me at a traffic light, was the bumper sticker demonstrating a while new level of selfishness, even for America. “I wouldn’t wear a mask if you were the last person on Earth” A most interesting sentiment. It went along with the other bumper stickers “I’d Rather Be At The Range” and “My kid can beat up your honor roll student” although the ones providing evidence that vehicle made it to “Sunny Florida 🌴” and “Walt Disney World” made for an interesting contrast. I had to think the “mask” sticker was a custom job because if it was mass produced, who ever was responsible wouldn’t have been that stupid. If “you” are the “last person on Earth” what does that say about the person who is not wearing the mask?
 
20200914_082114A dash cam might not have even picked up the evidence that not all drivers have evolved equally. This was the pick-up truck with the spiked wheels that pulled up beside me. Not spokes but spikes. Six inch long, tapered, metallic looking pointed spikes where each lug nut would be. My first thought was of the hot rods of the 1950s and the chopped roof and flame paintjob driven by the stereotypical bad boy but this was no throwback. This was a basic newer American made full size pick up truck but with weaponized wheels. I had to go in the Internet in search of a picture of something similar and actually found the very wheel although not the very truck. And that can only mean they are organizing. 
 
But the week ended on a more positive note, still one many people probably won’t believe without proof. I can tell you I saw it and I believe. There is still love in the world. While I turned into the drive of my complex I had to slow to allow the couple walking the road in front of me move off to the side. They weren’t youngsters these two, just entering a life together, nor were they an older couple who had been through decades of life side by side. They were approaching middle age, not quite there, often an age of some insecurity when questions of what’s next don’t always have clear answers. This couple was making it clear that whatever was next for them they were facing it together. In that day, at 11 something on a Saturday morning, these two 40-somethings representing the best of mankind were out taking a walk in public for all the world to see – and doing it hand in hand. 
 
Oh yes, the things you see…
 
 
 

Just the Facts Ma’am

Michael 3 Comments
Welcome to Columbus Day 2019! The holiday everyone loves to hate!!! Personally I’m not thrilled with any holiday outside of Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July. All the others are just excuses for anybody who works for the government to get an extra day off.
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Columbus Day is also the holiday everyone loves to demonstrate their knowledge of “the facts.”
  • Christopher Columbus didn’t discover America, Amerigo Vespucci discovered it, that’s why we call it America.
  • Christopher Columbus didn’t discover America, Leif Erikson discovered it 500 years before either of those Europeans.
  • Nobody discovered America, there were already people living here!
  • Columbus was a criminal, slave trader, tyrant, and probably didn’t like dogs.
All sort of true (except maybe about the dogs) and all sort of not true, or at least inaccurate. If you’re looking for who actually first landed on the American mainland, whether North, South, or Central, that probably was John Cabot (surprise!) who landed in modern Canada in 1497. Columbus didn’t reach the South American mainland until his third voyage in 1499, and Vespucci landed in South America in 1500. Although the Vikings were known to have reached what is now Greenland as early as before 1100 their presence on mainland America has not been clearly documented before the 16th century. Columbus’s crimes are well-documented, but in 15th century Europe everybody who ran afoul of royalty would be accused and convicted of something, many of those some things quite routine for the rest of the populace.
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20191014_152221The “fact” most people seem to get the most mileage from is that Columbus could not have discovered America because there were already people living here. Again true, there were people living here, but then not true because that’s not what a discovery is. That would be like saying Neil Armstrong discovered the Moon because when he landed on it there were no people there. Of course the discovery of the Moon happened hundreds of thousands of years ago when the first eyes looked to the sky one night and saw a a big round, bright object. It isn’t whether people were here or not, it was a discovery for the Europeans because they did not know that this “it” was here. That discovery led to greatest period of trade and colonization that the world had seen yet or since.
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But of all the facts, suppositions, non facts, and inaccuracies, the one of most importance today is this – you can stop wondering when the mail is going to come.
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Learning Life, Again

Michael Leave a comment

It will be hockey nights in just a couple more. NHL hockey returns October 3. In recognition of this momentous occasion I’m repeating one of my favorite posts, “Everything I Know About Being a Gentleman I Learned From Hockey.” Why? Because everything I learned about being a gentleman I learned from hockey, that’s why. If only politicians watched more hockey.

So, from November 2016, I give you…

When I was at the hockey game this weekend I got to thinking how much as a society we can learn from hockey. Yes, the sport that is the butt of the joke “I went to a fight last night and a hockey game broke out,” is the same sport that can be our pattern for good behavior.

Stay with me for a minute or two and think about this. It started at the singing of the national anthem. I’ve been to many hockey, baseball, football, and soccer games. Only at the hockey games have I ever been in an arena filled with people actually singing along. Only at the hockey games are all of the players reverent to the tradition of honoring the country where they just happen to be playing even though they come from around the world – Canada, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Finland, even a few Americans.

A decent dose of nationalism notwithstanding, hockey has much to offer the gentility. Even those fights. Or rather any infraction. If a player breaks the rules he is personally penalized for it. Ground isn’t given or relinquished like on a battlefield, free throws or kicks aren’t awarded to the aggrieved party like victors in a tort battle. Nope, if you do something wrong you pay the consequences and are removed from play for a specified period in segregation from the rest of your teammates. No challenges, no arguments, no time off for good behavior. Do the crime. Pay the time. In the penalty box. Try doing that to a school child who bullies and you’ll have some civil liberty group claiming you’re hurting the bully by singling him out.

Hockey is good at singling out people but in a good way. At last Saturday’s game the opposing team has two members who had previously played for the home team. During a short break in the action a short montage of those two players was shown on the scoreboard screens and they were welcomed back by the PA announcer. And were cheered and applauded by the fans in attendance. There weren’t seen as “the enemy.” Rather they were friends who had moved away to take another job and were greeted as friends back for a day.

While play is going on in a hockey game play goes on in a hockey game. Only if the puck is shot outside the playing ice, at a rules infraction, or after a goal is scored does play stop. Otherwise, the clock keeps moving and play continues. Much like life. If you’re lucky you might get to ask for one time out but mostly you’re at the mercy of the march of time. Play begins. After a while play ends. If you play well between them, you’ll be ok.

The point of hockey is to score goals. Sometimes goals are scored ridiculously easily, sometimes goals seem to be scored only because of divine intervention. Most times, goals are a result of working together, paying attention to details, and wanting to score more than the opposing team wants to stop you from scoring. There is no rule that says after one team scores the other team gets to try. It all goes back to center ice and starts out with a random drop of the puck. If the team that just scored controls the puck and immediately scores again, oh well.

Since we’re talking about scoring, the rules of hockey recognize that it takes more than an individual to score goals. Hockey is the only sport where players are equally recognized not just for scoring goals but for assisting others who score goals. Maybe you should remember that the next time someone at work says you’ve done a good job.

handshakeThe ultimate good job is winning the championship. The NHL hockey championship tournament is a grueling event. After an 82 game regular season, the top 16 teams (8 from each conference) play a four round best of seven elimination tournament. It takes twenty winning games to win the championship. That’s nearly 25% as long as the regular season. It could take as long as 28 games to play to the finish. That’s like playing another third of a season. After each round only one team moves on. And for each round, every year, for as many years as the tournament has ever been played, and for as many years as the tournament will ever be played, when that one team wins that fourth game and is ready to move on, they and the team whose season has ended meet at center ice and every player on each team shakes the hand of his opponent player and coach, wishing them well as they move on and thanking them for a game well played. No gloating. No whining. No whimpering. Only accepting.

So you go to a fight and a hockey game breaks out. It could be a lot worse.

 

 

More Lessons on Ice

Michael 5 Comments

When they were picking teams for dodge ball in the playground behind the school, were you one of the last to go? OK, clearly I’m old. You can tell by the references to dodge ball, playground, and the picking of teams for any activity not associated with trivia night at the bar. Even if you are too young to remember these, or too savvy to acknowledge them, you probably have heard of such things as being “picked last in grade school for..” in many episodes of The Big Bang Theory. And you know it didn’t get them down. They all now make lots of money and are really big stars. I’m sorry, I’m mixing real life with fantasy.

But somewhere being unwanted and reaching a modicum of pinnacle-ness of success is happening right here in North American reality. Those are the NHL Vegas Golden Knights. The first expansion team to reach the Stanley Cup Final and proof once again that all you need to know to survive and succeed you can learn from hockey.

Ok, first things first. I said the first expansion team to the reach the final round and you keep hearing in the sports reports that they are the second. Technically, the St. Louis Blues reached the final in their inaugural year but only because in 1967 the NHL decided to make one conference out of all six expansion teams and the other one out of the existing six teams, thereby guaranteeing an expansion team a spot in the finals. Five of the six “Eastern Division” existing teams finished the season with more points than any of the six expansion “Western Division” teams and the Montreal Canadiens swept the final round in four games.

VGN

Vegas Golden Knights

Enough of history though. Back to the future when the Golden Knights will be the first expansion team to get to the Stanley Cup Final by winning their way there. With a team made up of a bunch of guys nobody wanted. When the expansion draft that stocked the Vegas team with players took place last year, each existing team was allowed to protect 10 or 12 players depending on how many offense versus defense skaters were included on the protected list and that included a goaltender. Each NHL team can dress 24 players (usually 22 skaters and 2 goaltenders) per game. So the existing teams could protect up to half of who they would put on the ice for a typical game. And Vegas could select one of the remaining “bottom half” talent.

And out of this group of players not wanted by anybody else, players who call themselves the “Golden Misfits,” skated a team who finished with the fifth most points, won the fourth most games, and scored the third most goals of any of the 31 teams in the league. And they are about to begin the fourth and final round of the Stanley Cup Tournament which this year will determine if misfits is synonymous with champion.

Moral of the story? Being picked last for dodge ball isn’t the end of the world. Don’t treat it like it is.