Bruin’s Fan Skates on Thin Ice

The Boston Herald 

Normally, he is like Henry Higgins an 'ordinary man, even-tempered and good-natured whom you'd never hear complain, who has the milk of human kindness by the quart in every vein.' But let the Bruins in his life . . .

And my husband becomes a wild man. Here's a guy who is generally unflappable. We miss a plane to Lincoln, Neb., because someone read the ticket wrong and he actually says, 'Hey. What's the big deal. We'll fly to Omaha and rent a car. It'll be an adventure.' And it is, driving all night to where we could have been hours before.

I borrow his beloved, undented, shiny sometimes new, sometimes not-so-new car and inevitably back it into a tree or slam it into something in front of me. And he sighs and shakes his head and mutters, 'Just once I wish I could wreck my own car, you know?' But he never gets mad 

He goes into a hospital for a test and is told that he has to have immediate open-heart surgery, and he doesn't hyperventilate or panic or weep or moan. He makes jokes. He tells everyone that his tolerance for pain is having his hair cut and that they'd better be extra gentle with him. He smiles and shrugs where others complain.

Except when he's watching the Bruins. Then he turns into a madman. If he hadn't been out of town when they lost Wednesday night, we might not be married now. He might be pushing up flowers. I might be in jail.

It started Monday night with a string of words that can't be repeated in a newspaper on Sunday. He turned them into a litany, he shouted them out so often. He accentuated them by pounding on the coffee table, crossing and uncrossing his legs, stomping his feet and sighing. I left the room minutes into the first period. He didn't even know I was gone.

This is normal Bruins-watching behavior for him. I think it's genetic. His mother, a sweet, mild-mannered church-going lady in her '80s, is characteristically unflappable, too, except when she gets behind the wheel of a car. There she would make a longshoreman blush.

I knew about my husband's character flaw before we were married, but it wasn't so pronounced then. The Bruins won all the time. Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito and Derek Sanderson could do no wrong. Their every move was a cause for shouting and celebration. 'Watch this,' he would say every two seconds as I sat beside him on his mother's couch. 'Look at him skate! Look at that move! That's it. That's it! He shoots! HE SCORES!' The Bruins were playing Montreal the night our first child decided to be born. I don't remember the score. I wasn't watching the game. But my husband was 

'Please can we go to the hospital?' I begged.

'After this play,' he said, his eyes glued to the TV. 'I don't think I can wait,' I told him. 'I think it's time.'

'You have to wait. This is a power play.’

After the power play, it was, 'There's only five minutes left in this period.' And after this it was, 'There's only one period left.'

We waited until the end of the game, which wasn't even a play-off, which was just an ordinary game, early in the season. 'Montreal is never just an ordinary game,' he maintains even now.

After our son was born, he appeared in my hospital room bearing - not a bouquet of flowers for the new mother like all the other fathers - but a hockey stick personally signed by all the Bruins for his new son. It was supposed to hang in our son's room, next to his crib. But it didn't. My husband hung it in our room, near his autographed picture of Bobby Orr, until our son got old enough to take it down and claim it as his own.

Which brings us back to Monday night. The Bruins lost and Henry Higgins turned into Mr. Hyde and remained Mr. Hyde all the next day. Mr. Unflappable flipped. So did my son who not only inherited a signed hockey stick but the predisposition to curse and scream at hockey games just like his father.

I'm glad the season's over. The Red Sox only get him moderately nuts.