On most sports teams, at least men’s teams that I know, there is the team joker. He’s the guy who always seems to have the newest of jokes but also the guy who can’t stop pulling practical jokes on teammates. Most of the pranks are harmless, but some can get out of hand.
At a recent old-time hockey players banquet I was fortunate to speak at, another speaker was Kelly Kisio, the successful general manager of the Western Hockey League Calgary Hitmen. He related an incident I had not heard of before which proved quite costly to the victim of the joke. That, because the jokester was paying back for being pranked.
It’s probably best not to name the players involved, but both were New York Rangers in the late 1980s when Kisio was with the same club.
Apparently, there is an unwritten rule that when one tries to sleep on an aircraft when travelling with the team, he does not take his shoes off unless he is willing to lose them. In this case, one player did and the other made them disappear. When the player awoke, he demanded to know who had taken his shoes but the rest of the team clammed up and he walked to his car in his stocking feet. He declared someone would pay for what had happened.
Over the next few days, the player questioned others until he found out who had stolen his shoes on the airplane.
Then his repayment plan went into motion. Before a Ranger practice, the player said he’d be late because he had an equipment problem that had to be fixed. While the rest went to the ice he went to the other player’s pants, took out his car keys, fled to the parking lot where he opened the car door pulled up the back seat and placed a dead fish under it and slammed it shut. Then it was into the dressing room, replace the keys, and go to practice as if nothing had happened.
The wait was on. It took several days, but soon the player was complaining about a smell in his car. As the days went by, the smell got to be almost unbearable in spite of countless wash jobs and stops at service stations to have the car hoisted up to see if he had hit a wild animal on the road and it was stuck underneath.
The prank perpetrator listened and smiled and said nothing until the victim – the original shoe thief – finally said he’d had it and was about to give the car away because no one would buy it even at a ridiculously-reduced price. It was then the guy confessed and took him out to the car. When he lifted the back seat the two almost got sick from the odor it was so bad.
Apparently the jokester looked at the victim and then said: “Don’t mess with me again.”
An $80,000 car later and the joke was over. Costly it was, but he made his point.
We move now to another topic that also involves, in part, a hockey player. It occurred a couple of years ago.
It seems two young men, about the same age, were back in Canada for the summer. Each had recently encountered a life-altering experience.
One of them had done an extended tour of duty in Afghanistan as a reservist for the Canadian Army. The other had just completed a rookie season as a defenceman with the Boston Bruins, and it was capped off with a Stanley Cup victory.
The hockey player (Adam McQuaid), said to the young soldier, “You’re a hero.”
The solder looked at the Stanley Cup champion and said: “I’m a hero? You won the Stanley Cup.” To which the player replied, “I wouldn’t have died for it.”
That, I think, is food for thought.
Today’s joke is about the dairy farmer visiting his mother in a nursing home occasionally and always bringing a fresh bottle of milk which he spiked with a shot of brandy. She never said a word about it until one day she asked her son if he would do her a favor. He said, “Certainly, mother. What is it?” She replied, “Don’t ever sell that cow.”
