Let me take you back to the 1980s. Driving to practice, three or four times each week, an hour round trip. My son, his teammates, my two daughters, my husband, and me. Pink Floyd blaring. Billy Squier blaring. Sugar Hill Gang blaring.
Ah….those were the days.
And the rink? We lived in the rink, but it wasn’t only about ice time. There was lots else to do: shooting “balls” made of hockey tape against the rink walls when practice was over. Hitting the game room to play Space Invaders, Pacman, Donkey Kong, or Asteroids. Hitting up the rink branch of the local bank—also known as mom—for quarters for the game room. Good times they were.
And don’t forget the snack bar: eating soft pretzels, Charleston Chews, and drinking hockey sodas.
What is a hockey soda, you ask? Let me tell you, its got to be 80s-style. No new-fangled diet sodas (or even worse, fountain ice tea) allowed. A hockey soda is Coke, Sprite, root beer, and orange soda mixed together. Its a drink of champions, a drink of young hockey players everywhere, and a drink representative of this country.
The hockey soda is the melting pot. It recognizes the strengths of its individual components and values their combination. What’s good alone is even better together.
My hockey soda philosophy is right at home with Barack Obama. His campaign is built on a recognition that ours is a multi-ethnic society, a nation and state built by people from around the world cooperating with each other. My family, my friends, my country—we’re one tasty hockey soda.
Bottoms up, everyone, and make sure you vote on November 4!
–Eileen, hockey wife, hockey mother to 3, hockey grandmother to 5, Wilbraham, Massachusetts
Hockey Moms for Obama 