True colors

I musta been a good guy last year, after all.

My birthday went practically unnoticed by those around me (though several of my efx2 and Vox friends remembered! Thank you!). And my wife and I had agreed among ourselves not to exchange Christmas presents this year. But a mysterious box arrived at my house on the second day of 2009. I had not ordered it. Neither had my wife. Or anyone else in the family.

It's not that I didn't know something was coming and that it had to do with the Detroit Red Wings hockey team. I had gotten a hint ... but just a hint ... from the sender. Now it had arrived. I got the scissors, opened the box, got past some airbags and a card and finally arrived at something black. And red.

Within moments, it was out of the box--and on my body. A black jacket with red sleeves and the Red Wings logo proudly in front and back. If you couldn't recognize it, "Red Wings" was spelled out under the logo on the back.

So cool. Such a nice gift. But would it fit? Only one way to find out. I picked it up, stuck an arm in the right sleeve, stuck an arm in the other sleeve, realized to my satisfaction that I was not trying to put it on upside down or inside out. I pulled it over my chest and snapped up the snaps. It fit just right.

I read the card. It was very moving. The kind of words you don't hear from everyone. I don't, anyway.

Of course, I had to get some pictures of my new prize. My wife took these shots behind the house.
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/RWjacket-front-1-09.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/RWjacket-back-1-09.jpg[/IMG]

How cool is that?

It came from a close friend of mine; we became friends about three years ago via our blogs. Like me, she is a devoted Detroit Red Wings fan. Unlike me, she lives in California. Unlike me, she doesn't have cable and can't watch any hockey games at home. No satellite dish, either. That's the way it is for her.

So about two years ago the lightbulb flashed on over my head: Why don't I record some of the Red Wings games I watch at home? I have a DVD recorder and it works well. I record the games, burn them onto DVDs and mail them to her from time to time. So ever since then, I have. Along the way, we became close friends. Though I think we were close friends already.

I have been a Red Wings fan since about 1978. That's the year we moved to the U.P. from Milwaukee and I got to see hockey regularly on TV for the very first time. So I tried to watch them every time they were on--even through the infamously bad "40-point season." They reached the conference finals the next year, and they have been playing high quality hockey ever since (with an occasional breakdown early in the playoffs).

When the Wings won the Stanley Cup last spring, I sent along a couple other goodies: a souvenir magazine from Sports Illustrated, a Stanley Cup T-shirt I spotted at K-Mart and a baseball cap with the Red Wings' red and white logo on it. Earlier, I sent her a DVD set of great/memorable Red Wings games from the lats 10 years or so--they have won three Stanley Cups in that time and been near the top nearly every year.

I wrote her. telling her how cool the jacket is and how overwhelmed I am. She wrote back, saying no thanks are needed: It's for all the stuff I have done for her over the last couple years.

Maybe so, but I'm amazed at my good luck anyway. The cool new jacket has to stay on the coat rack inside for a while--midwinter in the U.P. is a little too cool for it. (We had -20F this morning). But in a month or two, when the regular season nears its end and the playoffs start, it will be warmer, and I can wear my true colors.