uh-oh... Da Ven has taken umbrage...

That the hooligans in Canada got off with a slap on the wrist... or rump as he puts it. My bad.

He's getting authoritarian in his advancing years. Get on the subject of hockey and the US vs Canada..... well you get volatile feelings hey. Because Boston won... (yay???) ??????

My Dad grew up where sports were fair, and you have your issues with opposing teams, and all that, but fairness counts. Another era, another time. I think he gets very angry about people misbehaving at a sports event, and then nearly rioting or something.... haven't followed the story exactly, just browsed the headlines and shrugged because it isn't anything new to me.

But it seems to have offended his code of 'what you DO'. Sports, fairness, and yeah, you can rag on someone, tease them if your team is up and the other's is down, but you don't go breaking beer bottles over their heads, or go out setting fires and causing mayhem because your team lost.

And that is the correct attitude to take. I'm not sugar-coating the pill here.

But times changed... and some Canadians, who are portrayed in the 'media' as 'nice but sort of clueless', are anything but. I think they're sort of Wild West, and if a fist can solve an argument, they will use them.

I will tell y'all a story. (Gawwwd, I feel old this afternoon...) I was on shift at work at the Olympic Village cafeteria, mindnumbingly boring stuff. Would unpack stuff and put them on trays to be taken to one of the five kitchens on rolling trolleys. When I didn't have a ton of grapes washing in a machine, and the noise was hellish.

Well right at the beginning, I'd gotten caught 'stealing' a grapefruit. The list said four, there were five, so I put the fifth into a container to smuggle home for my breakfast after my night shift. We were only getting packaged crap to eat at that point and doing trial runs. And I had this hyper German tiny guy named Hobus for a boss, and he was a big-wig in one of the most prestigious hotels in Germany. It was right at the beginning of my work there, and he wanted to show us how to package something for the trolleys, and wouldn't you know, grabbed the container I'd hidden the grapefruit in.

He took one look, and said, 'This can ONLY have been the American! Explain yourself!' Embarassing? Died inside. I explained there had been one more than on the list and had wanted it for breakfast. BTW.... you say grapefruit in southern Germany and Austria.... but in the North? The word is Pampelmuse.

My colleagues gave me hell during the break. 'How the hell could you be so stupid? Only Amis eat Pampelmusen!' (Yeah, you learn something every day, hey. ) When the shift ended, 'der' Hobus threw me the grapefruit, and said, 'Next time, ASK', and I could see he was about to bust himself for laughing. Embarassed to the nth degree, hey.

Thus began a weird relationship with 'der Hobus'. I was always joking and laughing with everyone, and his stock phrase was 'B! Mach kein Blödsinn!' (Stop goofing around.) Well I was working, but my mouf wouldn't stop. And he would go off chuckling. 'Mach kein Blödsinn!'. I guess you could say he liked me.

So, you ask, what the hell does that have to do with Canadians, and violence, and so on? It's just background so you can appreciate it better.

I was washing grapes one night, which was so mindless, you could go nuts, when 'der Hobus', came running in out of breath. As I said, he was tiny, only came up to my shoulder, and I was only five foot nine back then... shrunk since.

He was out of breath and yelled 'B!!!!'

'Yes Sir?''

'Do you have nerves of steel?' (I thought 'Whaaaa?' and was cautious...)

'Errm, sometimes...'

'Come with me, hurry.'

Everyone watched fascinated. and we went outside to the entrance.

'Can you get rid of this?'

There was a mess of blood on the pavement. And I looked at him surprised and said, 'Is THAT all? You've never worked a childrens matinee in a movie theater and gotten rid of the puke on the carpets. Get me a mop and cleaning stuff, pronto.' He looked relieved. He did and I cleaned it up.

I later learned it had been a confrontation between two hot-blooded Canadians fighting over a girl. I had to keep mum about it, which I did. As far as I know, that was the only bloody confrontation among the 140o employees, and they got sent home. It was supposed to be the games of peace... till the terrorists ruined it all.

Lesson? You don't mess with young hot-blooded Canadians.

Well... 'der Hobus' saw me in a different light for the rest of the summer. If there was an extra grapefruit/pampelmuse, he'd throw it to me at the end of a shift, with a smile and say, 'Mach kein Blödsinn'.

Over the decades... much changed. The rich-poor gap became wider and wider. The 'hooligans' are in a place where their only heroes are soccer players, and teams. They usually have no way out of their circumstances, and their teams are their own triumphs, that is how they feel. It's a piss-poor lack of edumacation they have, but is all they have. And they get frustrated, and fuel themselves with booze, and get like the Canadian guys that night, and violent. And the worse the economy gets, and the more trapped they become, the more dangerous they are.

I'm not going all bleeding heart liberal here, but I 'think' I know what fuels it... disregard, poverty, anger at not having their own lives, not seeing a way out...

No, they don't deserve just a slap on the wrist, they need to know that actions have consequences. But it is the underlying reasons that cause this that make me want to punish the people who are responsible for making them that way.