The Seventh Circle of Fandom

So, my sister and I have earned our newest merit badge on the way to becoming the biggest Thrashers fans we know. Five years ago we earned our "Goes to Several Games" badge, followed quickly by the "Knows the Names of The Rest of the Team" badge. The next year I earned the "Knows all the Numbers" badge, while she got the "Buys a Jersey" one. Last year's big achievement was the "Reads all the Blogs Religiously". And so our quest continues, with this year's achievement bringing us further up a notch in the hierarchy of fandom.

This week, we went to training camp.

After the huge spectacle that is Philips, with seats a mile away and flames shooting out and fancy light displays, training camp was basically a Twin Peaks experience. Look! It's Marian Hossa! He's a big famous star and he's only 6 inches away from me on the other side of this glass! Its as though you are in some of kind of alternate universe in which the Thrashers are just a really good rec league team. It seemed wrong to treat them as celebrities or stars or what have you because what they were doing felt far too close to my high school volleyball practices. They even do suicides! The only part of it that felt "real" was when Chad Denny crashed into the glass in front of my face and scared the living daylights out of me. I don't care how many pads you give me to put on, if I were on his side of the glass I might have pissed myself.

It was fun to see the players goofing around a little bit, looking like hockey is fun and not a Serbian war crimes tribunal. I've always felt that Hossa was a little cold, the Iceman to Kovy's Maverick, but he surprised me with my favorite moment of the day: one of the coaches had left a bucket full of pucks on one end, near the blue line. Hossa was waiting for his turn at the back of the line near the other blue line when a puck glides up to his skate. He starts to bat it around with his stick a little, skates it toward the center line, and then shoots it through the air toward the bucket! Wheeee! And then it misses. Sounds like a metaphor for the playoffs. I think I'm going to lie from now on and say that it went in, as that's totally a better story.

Now, sometimes I look at other fans like Rabid Fan, or Braveheart guy, or Grandma and think, Man I'm glad you people do what you do but I'm glad that's not me. I LOVE Rabid Fan. I think I am his biggest fan. But am I going to reach that upper echelon of fandom? No, I do not believe I will. Nor will I enter the realm occupied by this wonderful and completely insane person:

Um, Wow? We especially liked the sticker on the side that reads: "Give Blood, Play Against Exelby". Where on earth do you get these stickers? Clearly this person had them made, but to be perfectly honest the thought has never occurred to me to have my own Thrashers bumper stickers made. The bigger debate that my sister and I had regarding this car was whether it belonged to a man or a woman. She says hands down it must be a woman, but I'm inclined to believe that it's a gentleman. If you know this person, dear god please tell us because I want that million dollars. Either way, here's to you XLB FAN, may you go on loving our average (but extremely loveable) defenseman.