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Mishearing is a step away from misspeaking and confusing everyone

August 11, 2020

Nikita Khrushchev - Tampa Bay Lightning winger Nikita Khrushchev was on a breakaway but was stoned by Flyers goalie Carter Hart. The former secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1953-64)  looked pretty spry since he took off his shoe at the UN General Assembly meeting in New York 1960 and banged it on a table, later saying, “That was fun!” My hearing volume is not decreasing, it’s the acuity. Sometimes I mishear stuff, so being a creative person, my brain fills in the blanks. The Tampa player was 27-year-old Nikita Kucherov and he is from Maykop, Russia. He is one of the best offensive players in the league. I remember where I was during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev took the world to the brink of nuclear war. I was in confession telling lies, or at least not telling the whole truth. 

Flyers fever - Philly fans are all over this Flyers team. They are young and fast and deep with talent. NHL ice hockey is being played full tilt, knuckleheads crashing into one another, sweat and spit flying. The “Rockin’ Robin” round is over and the real playoffs begin this week with the Flyers playing the Montreal Canadiens. By the way, you know you’ve been corrupted by the intrusion of politics into sports if you start hating on Canadians. 

Milestones - High-performance pandemic athletes are being deprived of achieving milestones, the result from an entire season that suddenly gets gone. There are the 100-goal club in lacrosse, 100 wins in wrestling and 1,000 points in basketball. Baseball and softball are all about season and career stats. There may be school records ready to go down in track and field, except the athlete is standing in line at Wawa wearing a mask while paying for a 5-Hour Energy drink. This is stat stuff the athlete can’t get back, even though they never had it in the first place. The parents are really jonesing to reclaim lost moments while grandparents like me are cruelly redshirted with no extra year to spare. 

Systemic capitalism - America is not an equally accessible country; just go out and drive around the countryside and marvel at all the neighborhoods where you could never afford to buy a house. An inside secret is many of the subprime people who live there can’t afford them either. I admit I watched the PGA golf tournament on television, going back and forth between the Phillies and Flyers games. An aerial graphic of the Harding Park public course showed all the golf clubs that proliferate that pristine region off San Francisco. Golf courses actually preserve beauty and local flora and fauna unless the fauna starts eating shrubbery; then they “got to go.” Hey, look, America is a free country, but if you're waiting for your $400 per week government stipend, the closest you’re getting to the country club is watching golf on your 52-inch flatscreen sitting overtop of an aquarium of exotic fish. 

Chopper and claw - I’m prepared to fight chopper and claw or tooth and nail for the sport of scholastic wrestling to begin on time this December. If the crash-and-collide sports are allowed to move forward, then certainly so can wrestling with just two athletes and an official. Wrestling may be the most tightly controlled of all the sports; the ref is right there to stop anything that is potentially dangerous. A temperature check and actual test would solve the uncertainty. Otherwise, it's like failing an entrance exam without actually taking the test because you might fail if you did take it. 

West Chester kids - Cape’s Sydney Ostroski was a defender on the 2019 West Chester University Division II National Championship field hockey team. Cami Smith, Cape’s 2019 Delaware Player of the Year, was on her way to West Chester University in 2020 as a field hockey-playing student. But for now, Cam-Bam is in virtual mode. Both Sydney and Cami are Golden Rams-type players, and I should know – as I sat on a railing in the campus quad in the fall of 1968, I asked my new and still friend Gordon, “What’s with all the broad-shouldered women carrying hockey sticks to class?” There was never a need for “me too” at West Chester; the mostly Philly and South Central girls did not trifle, they were just tough, and cute too.  

Snippets - Sussex Tech will soon announce the appointment of a field hockey coach to replace departed Mia Paltrineri. I have no insight or insider info on this vacancy, so what have I been doing the last 38 years? Sure, no one has talked to me, but my guesses are pretty good, like Kreskin. I’m writing down a name and sticking it in my desk drawer. I’ll let you know if I was right. Carlos Villa, longtime coach of boys’ soccer at Sussex Tech, has stepped off that position but will still coach girls’ soccer in the spring. “It was just time for a change,” Carlos said. The 21st annual Broadkill River Canoe and Kayak race set for  Saturday, Aug. 22, will start and finish at Irish Eyes in Milton, pushing off at 10 a.m. The Route 1 bridge is the turnaround point. If you see the Sharps’ personal boat ramp on your port side, you have gone too far. Register online at www.irisheyespub.com. Call 302-684-8889 or email charlene@irisheyespub.com for additional information. There is a special low-rider division for those who have packed on pandemic pounds. Bargains on the Broadkill will be happening downtown all day. “Don’t mask, don’t tell”; there’s a joke in there somewhere. Go on now, git!  

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