The WAL

The hockey play offs. Ah, let me count the ways. No, better not. I’d be typing for a long, long time.

Leaving aside that it’s a winter sport played deep into June and then starting over again before summer actually finishes, and that hockey fans don’t seem to udnerstand that they’re a minority and the rest of us just don’t care, I have to wonder why hockey games, and play off games even more, have to be so damned loud.

I work in a casino which, you might guess, provides a high level of background noise that will someday assist my hearing loss into deafness faster. But the hockey game in the break room is louder than the gaming floor.

If you go to a store that sells televisions and a hockey game is on, the volume has been turned up louder than the average movie theatre sound track. You can clearly hear the action three stores away.

If I happen to be working “days” and come home at eight o’clock, I know there’s a hockey game on when I step out of my car because I can hear the guy across the street watching it.

I don’t understand. Are hockey fans trying to feel like they’re actually at the game? Does Don Cherry really sound better at 130 decibels? Is the action faster? Can you hear the whistle of the puck as it slices through the air at the arena?

Come on guys. I don’t really have anything against hockey, I just don’t want to be assaulted by it. Turn the volume down and shut up about it once in a while (at least in the off season, what there is of it) so the rest of us can have a little quiet.

People who whine.

I don’t respond to whining from my children (unless it’s excessive and then I tend to respond in a grumpy fashion), yet every day I come across full grown and supposedly mature adults who use whining as the primary tool for trying to get what they want.  Many of them are careful with the tone of their voice, so it comes across as complaining, but I don’t really see the difference.  The squeaky wheel gets the grease, as the old saying goes. 

But doesn’t it usually get a few swift kicks first?  If the fan in your computer starts to vibrate loudly, don’t you give the side of the case a whack a couple of times to see if it will stop?  There’s another old saying: when all else fails, get a bigger hammer.  When I was a kid, the Fonz fixed things by thumping them (he still does in syndication).  Personally, my solution of choice would be a cattle prod.  (Zzzt!  Okay, let’s try asking the question again.  Zzzt!  No, no, you can do better than that.  Zzzt!  I can keep this up all day.)  Of course, that would likely get me arrested.

I’d be far better off just to carry a huge block of cheese with me wherever I went and offer bits of it to people who whine at me.  But that would get expensive, not to mention heavy, and many people wouldn’t get it, anyway.

Maybe what’s really needed is to respond to whiny adults the same way you do to small whiny children: either not at all or in a very reasonable voice.  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand whine.  Could you turn that into a question and ask in a normal voice?  Ah, much better.  No sweetie, you can’t have a cookie right now because, as you can see, we’re setting the table for dinner.”  That, however, might get other people arrested for attacking me.