It was but eight years ago when the events I’m about the recount took place, and yet it feels like my life did not begin until that point. The sixteen years of breathing I had until then are a blur of swimming pools, baseball diamonds, Guns N Roses, and Saturday night Leafs games. It’s like my memories instinctively sharpened the moment I first met her. A woman, entity, and idea that would both intrigue and astound me into my adult life. This “puck bunny” would appear to change my life forever.
I think the first time I heard the word, my friend and I were jumping out of the car one frozen night to go to yet another junior hockey game. My dad, who isn’t into any sport other than NASCAR, decided my friend and I probably didn’t like the game and were “just puck bunnies.” It was kind of funny how you turn sixteen, and suddenly years of dedication to a sport fly out the window. At the time, my friends knew very little about the game. I didn’t mind so much, I was just happy to have someone along for the ride. We never sat closer than the eighth row, but, really, is there a bad seat in the house at ANY junior hockey rink? Player interaction just did not happen minus the odd, “Hey baby!” out of their car windows while we were waiting to be picked up…by our parents, I mean.
The last game of that season everything changed, and we were sitting smack dab in the front row. In my hometown (eww, remember that show on YTV?), all the hockey players went to the same high school, and, by extension, the school was also the haven for the fiercest puck bunnies around. One of my hockey buddies was friends with one of these girls, and by this final playoff game of the season, our click, and the click from Puck Bunny High collided for the very first time.
They looked so different from us. They had clearly taken their time getting ready for the game, and they all seemed to work at tanning salons (and that wasn’t even the style at the time). They sat at the other end of the rink from us during that game. They looked like these unemotional statues that had been forced against their will to even make an appearance rink side at all. They stared off into space with this stern and indifferent look in their eyes. They appeared to be above whatever was happening on the ice. I couldn’t help but wonder, “Why are they here?”
After the game, my friend dragged us over to meet the PB crew. It was now time for me to learn the lesson of waiting around the locker room. There were dozens of puck bunnies already down there waiting for the guys to get off the bikes or emerge from the steam infested unknowns of the locker room. Periodically, the gates would open, and the girls would flock together to see if anything skin coloured was visible through the fog.
I stood there thinking the experience was incredibly awkward. So, I pressed myself up against the wall and started observing the trends. Every cluster of girls, dressed in jeans and black tops, seemed to be fawning over one girl in the group. Whoever this designated It girl was in any one of the clicks, had this look of solemn superiority. Somehow she had risen above the others, but the question was how?
I looked to the group that I was standing askew of. My friends continued with the lively small talk while casting curious glances over at any young man in a suit that swaggered through the locker room door. But there was one girl from Puck Bunny High that didn’t say much. She was the prettiest one of the group, and her eyes revealed a certain level of cool expertise. She was the It girl, or as I would later call them, the Queen of this warren. As it would turn out, her claim to the royal throne was a hand job in the arena parking lot after hours. The girl was never the same again, and now she had the unbelievably challenging burden of getting her friends into the club.
I suppose I should have clued into the warning sign as I began to notice that my friends were carrying on the way the other non-Queens were. I should have realized that in the sea of laughter and large pearly white smiles, they were revealing a secret desire that would burn hot inside them now that they had the experience of this pivotal season finale. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised with how the following season would play out. Hand Job Harriet would continue to be a stranger to me, but this “puck bunny” and all that she represented was about to move in a little closer to home.
