Hugs and Kisses

  When I started coming up to Collingwood 23 years ago there were 2 things that took me quite a while to get used to. The first was what to do with those six foot planks attached to my feet. They would cross themselves half the time and the other half they would go wherever the hell they wanted. I remember speeding down the hill one day yelling at them "Would you make up your fucking minds". I had better control over situation in the Middle East. The other thing that took me a long time to figure out was when and who to hug. There was no hugging going on in my family when we were growing up. Cape Bretoners, in particular the men don't hug and if they did there was usually a whole lot of clutchin and grabbin happening immediately afterwards. When I got to Collingwood it seemed I had to hug a lot more (women, not men) and so I had to learn things like which side does my head go (I bonked a few women with my thick noggin), and what to do with my arms. I now figure my head goes to the left and I use the 3 pat method to time the event. The other problem is when do I know someone well enough to give them a hug? I still have a bit to learn. As for men hugging I just don't get it and I don't want to do it. A firm handshake should be good enough unless it's with Randy Meyers. With Randy it's a handshake, then a feint to the right to elude the shoulder punch followed by an exit stage left to avoid that hockey story.

  As for kissing women, who could be against that but if I am watching TV and 2 men are puckering up I have to turn my head because I don't care what 2 consenting adults do but I don't want to see it. This brings me to a disturbing event that happened yesterday at the Toronto Ski Club. Check out the video.

  I did not invite that advance from Jim but he was determined. It's obvious that the camera operator (Susan Lee) found the whole thing repulsive and had to turn the camera away from the ""incident". I didn't know Jim was like this but he did just buy an orange car so maybe that was a sign. I even wonder how car companies can sell orange cars. How do you market orange? "Orange.....nothing rhymes with it". At least with my Pontiac, instead of simply calling the car black they called it..............wait for it............Mysterious. People who know me think it should have been called..........wait for it..........Confused. But that's another story. I hope everyone out there now realizes the danger of buying orange cars, even if they're great little sports cars. Cheers!

Jim's S2000