ItsAManThing

    It's an odd phenomenon indeed, that grown men who take the time to shave and slap on deodorant, men who like their hair combed just so, men who wax and buff their pick up trucks to within a centimeter of their lives, can open a hockey bag in front of an audience of their peers and have no shame whatsoever at the foul stench that permeates the air. In fact, they take an almost perverse pride in the matter. The more their bench partners choke, gasp, clutch their throats, and wipe tears from their eyes, the prouder they are. Or so I gather, not having spent a great deal of time in men's locker rooms.

     This season has been the worst. Last summer, my husband tossed his hockey bag into our storage shed and left it to stew in the heat; it's intestines squirming about in a frantic bid for fresh air....in vain. I do laundry and I even wash windows, but I draw the line at exploring the body sized bag for washables. Which isn't to say I don't nag. I do. That hockey bag haunted my nightmares all summer long.

     "When are you going to wash your hockey stuff?" I'd ask upon waking every morning and falling asleep each night, all to no avail.

     Then summer was over, fall arrived and hockey season swished forward on its sharp, silver blades. Off that man went with that hockey bag and it's horrible contents slung over his shoulder, not even so much as cracking a zipper.

     "How was hockey?" I asked, upon his arrival home.

     "There was a mouse nest in my knee pads," he replied.

     "Dear God. Please tell me no one saw it."

     "Well sure, they all saw it. I emptied it out in the dressing room. What did you think? That I'd just leave it in the bag?" He snorted at this preposterous notion, before adding, "The smell is getting to be a bit overwhelming though. I might have to wash a few things."

     I stared at him as all of this sunk in. What a dark and shameful day it was for the McKinnon family. A bag inhabited by a courageous little mouse (one with a tiny gas mask I assumed), a bag that had reached such horrific heights in the olfactory sense that even it's hockey playing owner voluntarily uttered the heretofore unheard of words, "I might have to wash a few things."

     "Ken had a live mouse in his bag," he added.

     Was he envious? Was a live mouse better than a mouse nest? In a men's change room, just what is where on the hierarchy of hockey bag contents? I started to ask, then thought better of it. Some things are better left unknown.