Saturday Nights Alright...

This is how I remember spending my winter Saturday nights as a child. It was Hockey Night In Canada, and that meant that we would prop ourselves up against the back of the couch and watch either the Montreal Canadians or the Toronto Maple Leafs play. If we were lucky we were allowed to stay up later than we normally were. If we were really lucky there was popcorn and Kool-Aid. If we stayed awake past two periods we were the luckiest kids alive.

I had Montreal Canadian pajamas. My brother had Toronto Maple Leafs pajamas. That was our hockey universe. Those were the games we watched. Sure there was the Flyers and the Blackhawks, and the Red Wings were just down the road, but Hockey Night in Canada meant Canadian teams and that meant Montreal or Toronto. Our sleepwear was strictly defined by whatever options the Sears catalogue provided our parents, which also meant Montreal or Toronto. It was a much smaller, much more simplistic universe. The businessmen were still quite primitive in their means of fleecing us of our hard earned money. My parents gave us what they could, and that usually meant that it came from the Sears catalogue.

It's funny how special Saturday nights seemed, and we did nothing. We did nothing out of the ordinary, spent no money, went nowhere, accomplished very little. We hunkered in at home and settled down in front of Guy LaFleur and his Habitants, or Mike Palmateer and his Maple Leafs, and filled our bulging little boy bellies with popcorn and giggles. Why do we need so much more now? What has happened to us all that we can't do that same thing all these years later? We're spoiled, and we're bombarded with entertainment options. We're convinced we need what we don't have, and we're unsatisfied with what once suited us right down to the ground. It's time to get back to basics, I say. There's nothing wrong with Hockey Night in Canada, and there's nothing wrong with pajamas and popcorn while the rest of the planet flips and spins and tumbles on it's axis. What once was good can be again...if we let it.

I might opt for different pajamas these days though.