Brent Davis (bdavis@sa.ua.edu), Center for Public Television & Radio, P.O. Box 870150, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487.

RINK SIDE SEATS

If our long-gone ancestors were miraculously allowed to board some time machine and re-enter the world in 1998, what aspect of life in the South would cause them to double take with the greatest whiplash? Instant grits? Women cops? Cellular phones? Microwave ovens? Bicycle shorts?

Here's my nomination for the greatest flabbergaster: the fact that any sizeable Southern town has its own hockey team. Who would have imagined 50 years ago-15 years ago-that we would load the family into our sports utility vehicle for a night of amusement watching mostly French speaking men chase a rubber disc on ice? The only thing at this outing our forefathers would recognize would be the toothless grimaces of the players, dental care being what it was in the good old days.

I had promised Zack, our five-year old, that if he was on his best behavior I would take him to his first hockey game at the Civic Center Saturday night. The irony wasn't lost on me: if he was boisterous or argumentative or broke household rules we would not go see grown men who were paid handsomely to be argumentative, boisterous rule breakers. A hockey player is not exactly what a parent has in mind for a role model for his children, but in the bleak midwinter, when darkness smothers us by 4:30 in the afternoon and it's too wet and cold to play outdoors, hockey constitutes family entertainment.

Saturday night we worked our way past vendors selling souvenir pucks, pendants, programs, masks, T-shirts, and hockey sticks. (Is there no escaping merchandising? Don't be surprised if, during your next check up at the podiatrist, you find an office assistant selling commemorative socks, bars of medicated soap emblazoned with the practice's logo, and corn pads featuring the characters from the latest Disney pic.) The only way to distract Zack from the bazaar was to offer him food: the most fanatical opium fiend is a pussycat compared to my son when he smells popcorn.

I had ordered the seats blindly over the phone, but they were beauties, right behind the visiting team's bench. Hockey players are big to begin with and wear more padding that a prom queen wanna-be, and Zack enjoyed checking out the uniforms and equipment. I studied the coach. He was wearing a beautiful double-breasted worsted wool suit. I looked down at my pants and noticed the frayed cuff of my imitation Dockers. I've got a graduate degree and work in a nice office but I don't dress as well as a hockey coach, I thought. It's a strange world.

The players on the bench amused themselves by spitting, which is apparently sanctioned and perhaps even encouraged by the league. (Probably developing some merchandising tie-in with an oral hygiene concern.) I could see Zack rolling some of his saliva around in his mouth. We'd probably have to talk about that on the way home.

The teams lined up on the ice and a fight broke out during the last bar of the Canadian National Anthem. The officials promptly separated the players and escorted a member of the visiting team to the penalty box. "He's got to go to time-out," Zack explained.

I nodded. This isn't much different from Zack's daycare, I thought, and I noticed that he had seemed unperturbed by the two men while they were swinging at each other. (All week I had carefully prepared Zack, a thoughtful and sensitive child, for our trip. I told him the men would fight and it shouldn't upset him. I warned him that the music would be turned up-he's always complaining about loud noises. I even thought to tell him about the blaring horn that would signal the end of a period. It was a very thorough briefing, even if I do say so myself.) The players formed up for the face-off, the ref dropped the puck, and the game began. We watched as the men darted about on the ice, knocked each other silly, and crashed into the boards.

The entertainment was not confined to the game. After the first period we watched as the workers gingerly made their way across the ice in street shoes and dislodged the net so the Zamboni machine could resurface the rink. The driver made a tight turn and glazed the adjacent strip of ice without missing a patch. "This guy's good," Zack said with the kind of admiration a parent hopes his child spends only on doctors, lawyers, or other fantastically well-paid professionals. Then, at the admonition of the public address announcer, we sang the Hokey Pokey with everyone else in the stands. "This is kinda fun," I told my wife as we put our right foot in, our right foot out. But just then Zack grabbed me and began crying. "I want to go!"

Before the game a radio-controlled blimp about the size of a pup tent had emerged from one of the tunnels and circled the stands, hovered, and then released an envelope with a gift certificate that would flutter down to the crowd. Kids would scramble across aisles and over seats with their arms outstretched, hoping to win the prize.

Now, at the first intermission, the blimp was back.

Zack pulled hard at my shirt. "Dad, please, can we leave?"

"Yeah, I guess," I told him, confused by his fear over this harmless sideshow but willing to give him a break since he'd been behaving so well. So we retreatedto the concession area when the blimp began its ascent. "What scares you about that thing?" I asked.

"I'm afraid I'm going to get a paper cut when that envelope falls down!" he whimpered.

I sighed. So much for my all-encompassing pre-game briefing.

Zack had had uncomfortable thoughts earlier in the week when I was talking up the trip. "This time Saturday we'll be on the way to the hockey game," I said Thursday when he came home from school.

He began bawling. "I don't want to go!"

What brought this on all of a sudden, I wondered?

"I don't want a tattoo! They've got needles and they sting!"

We were under the impression--which was to prove false--that we would be attending on Tattoo Night. Susan wondered if maybe everyone who had a tattoo would get in free, but I suspected they would be handing out transfer decals for the kids.

Some smart aleck at Zack's school set him straight about tattoos and told him that the procedure involved needles, blood, and pain.

"There won't be any needles at the game," I reassured him. "It's going to be all right. I promise."

It took some convincing, but he finally believed me. And everything was all right.

When I told the tattoo story to my fellow brown baggers at lunch the next day, all but one of them laughed. Loy, the father of two teenage girls, one just entering college, the other just starting to date and drive, shook his head and looked wistfully at his turkey on bagel. "You ought to savor that," he said. "There won't be many more opportunities where you'll be able to comfort your kid so easily.

"That part of being a parent doesn't last long enough."