Kids, This Is A Fist

It's "Scout Night" here at the ice hockey arena as the Grrrowl (yes, that's three r's) take on the Gladiators. The place awash with scouts, all too evident in the shrill, high-pitched cacophony that assaults the eardrum whenever the PA announcer implores us to cheer better and louder.

It's also "Newspaper In Education Night" (the means by which I and my 4-year-old son, Asa, have free tickets near the plexiglass). Tonight, rather than a puck, the dog on the Grrrowl's jersies is biting an apple. The jerseys will be auctioned in the name of the ever-popular and ambiguous cause of education (see: Just Do It For The Kids).

The dog must do all the apple biting, because it's doubtful the players have any teeth left after this night where brawls outnumbered goals.

There's a dissonance here.

Scouts are everywhere. Cops -- who were all scouts at one time or another (still are)-- are everywhere. Fans foaming at the mouth for a fight, some rushing down the aisle to the glass shield whenever one breaks out, are the distinct majority.

There are the few who look either stunned, horrified or indifferent that men toiling in minor league hockey would cast off their helmets and flail their fists into each other's ears and cheeks.

The children are awed; the adults seem aroused as the catch a whiff of the first scent of conflict ...




(Anything about the picture look homoerotic?).

The camp of the Chicken Dance gives way to the visceral tango of the prize fighters.

It's a bizarre fusion. Entertaining. Even moreso carthartic. A vicarious release for the more-savage recesses of the collective crowd psyche.

Adults, at least most of them, don't seem to mind such a spectacle is unfolding before so many innocent eyes. After all, it's no secret that hockey players fight. Take them to a basketball game and fists start flying, and the arena is dripping with incredulty.

There is an underlying order here of acceptable, controlled violence, assimilated into the social structure that operates for two or so hours on ice -- save for the two intermissions during which the tolerance for pummeling your opponent is suspended and, yes, even discouraged.

The rules of engagement are, for the most part, clear. Two officials with nothing to protect them but helmets regulate; scores of cops with guns make sure the crowd isn't inspired.

We ask a cop outside the arena about the irony of it all, of cops standing idly by in the arena but ready to pounce with pepper spray outside it:

"I love a good fight," says the cop with the requistite power 'stache. "I like these because I don't have to get involved in it. Now, if there's one tomorrow, we'll have to break it up."

"What's tomorrow?"

"Motley Crue."

(That's an entirely different social order that mostly involves questionable fashion statements).

But beyond the apparent barbarism, a closer look through the plexiglass reveals an intricate heirarchy: As chaos reigns, two players, on opposing teams, stand together to discuss the impending aftermath of it all. They look as if they are agreeing on how the bad blood will be tempered.

They are the necessary coolheads. Without them, social appropriateness would dissolve.

Two hothead "goons" decide to put all the ills between the teams on their shoulders and face off on the center ice to settle it all. Almost a sacrificial gesture ... or, perhaps, misplaced affection ...







We gawk and howl approvingly. The glass is a barrier separating two zoos.

It's a pure, fenced-in brutality that cuts through the abstract like melted butter.

We know that this will be the end of the fighting now, because this is the way it all goes down, this is how it all gets figured out.

Oh, yeah ... the kids.

Here's the lesson, little ones: Life is difficult. People -- even those with education apples on their shirts -- don't always get along. And sometimes the only thing they can agree on is to punch each other in the face.

Just make sure those ice skates are on.