KISSING FROGS

 

Wanna hear a fairy tale?

Well, too fucking bad, you're gonna hear it anyway. And no wisecracks about it being a "fairy" tale, that's such a weak pun.

So this is kind of an ass backwards story. It starts with an amazing ending. Just incredible. I had my prince charming and he was perfect. Well, not perfect, because if he really was perfect then that would have made him uncomfortable to be around because I'd feel lame in comparison, and that would have sucked. So he had some flaws, but not ones that bugged me too much, and besides he was so great to me, always fussing about me and shopping for clothes for me and babbling about stuff even though I'd keep interrupting him to make fun of him.

And he really understood me. Very few people can see past my exterior. I say stuff to get a rise out of people and pretty much everyone falls for it. Not him, he knows when I'm trying to start shit and when I'm being serious. He also knows how to shut me up. Now that, my friend, is a really rare thing. I enjoyed every day we had together.

So life was pretty damn awesome. It was so awesome, I turned into a fucking sap. And the moment I turned into a fucking sap, I got booted out of the kingdom. Not so much booted out, as not let back in, I guess. You know what? Fuck this analogy. The Stars didn't re-sign me and I was teamless, okay?

I was freaking out. Of course, nobody could tell except the prince, and he was freaked out too. I mean, we were supposed to be living our goddamn fairy tale ending. We'd even had the fucking fairy tale wedding. Okay, it was more like a Stanley Cup celebration, but it might as well have been a wedding, with all the booze and festivities and people drunkenly getting it on with people they'd never met before.

And then he made me realize something. Our fairy tale ending wasn't ruined. I mean, I'm not exactly a spring chicken. It's not like I was going to play a lot longer anyway. We could move on to Phase 2 of the fairy tale ending. Or more like Phase 1.5 because he'd still be playing. And it's not like I was unhappy at the prospect of plopping my fat ass down on a couch and watching TV all day. Not all the time, maybe just five days out of the week. I could treat it as my regular work week.

We'd still be together, and that was the important thing, or so I thought.

Then at the end of the summer, another kingdom far, far away came calling. "Come join us and we'll rule the world! (and probably win the Stanley Cup along the way) Reunite with old friends and meet exciting new ones! They'll give you the shirt off their backs! (and part of their salary)"

Was I excited about this? Hell, yeah! And of course the first person I told was the prince. I was so wrapped up in my excitement that I didn't notice the expression on his face until it was too late.

"That's really great for you," he said, his eyes wide and his face all serious. "But I thought that, well, I thought that we were going to stay together."

And then I was a fucking idiot. I blew up at him. I was so happy to be wanted, so happy for myself, that I got angry at him for not being happier for me and just thinking about himself. Because God knows I was the only important person in the relationship and him wanting me to stay with him was all about him being jealous that other people thought I was great, and not about him wanting us to enjoy our fairy tale ending together.

So I told him to fuck off and I left for the new kingdom.

Princes are a dime a dozen aren't they? And even if you can't find them, there are lots of frogs around. Everyone knows all you have to do is kiss a frog and they'll turn into a prince.

That was my theory and I was sticking to it. Checked out the kingdom when I got there. No princes. But lots of frogs. I figured I'd start with someone I knew pretty well from my Blues days. Not as well as I'd have liked to, though, but I didn't really have the opportunity given that he was spending most of his time trying to get Janney's wife to swap Janney's stick for his.

Yep, Shanny was definitely a frog.

Hey, it was just a start. He was still as bitchy as I remembered him. That was great. I made it my mission to outbitch him the whole season, and I think I pretty much succeeded. That certainly got his attention. Having married Janney's wife, I don't think he was really interested in her anymore, so it's not like I had a lot of competition.

I figured, we're kind of similar, we both whine a lot, we both love messing around with people, why not give it a shot? So we did. I even tried to be nice to him, because what you don't know about him is that he's kind of insecure and when you pick on him about certain things, he becomes even bitchier but it's just a defense mechanism because he's really hurt.

I kissed the frog.

And ... he didn't turn into a prince.

Curses.

Maybe he was too old. I mean, like I said, I'm not exactly a spring chicken myself, but maybe frogs have an expiry date. Like, past a certain age, they have zero chance of turning into princes, no matter how many times you kiss them.

So it didn't work out between us, but that was okay. He found someone else (hint: super heart, bum knee) and so did I. Someone quite a bit younger than me. And pretty damn clueless.

It was fun at first. He laughed at pretty much everything I said, even when I was making fun of him. He's such a good-natured kid. Constantly confused, but sweet. I liked that he always had a smile for me, and that everything felt fresh again.

And then I got bored.

Call me a masochist, but I think a prince has to have a little edge to him. My prince did. You wouldn't know it from looking at him, but he's different in private. He's also a lot smarter than you might think. As if I could put up with someone who wasn't.

So I tried to get a little bit more personal with my insults. Push him a little more. See if he'd show a little more spark, dish it back to me.

Yeah, I kissed the frog again. And nothing happened again.

I actually ended up hurting him badly enough that Stevie talked to me about it. He said, "Shanny's a big boy and I don't exactly like that you fucked around with him, but lay off Boyd. I don't like seeing him like this."

At that point, I was wondering if I'd made a mistake. Maybe it wasn't that easy to find frogs who would turn into princes. I started thinking about my prince, or rather my ex-prince. He wasn't having a great season. I wondered if I should call him, but I figured he'd probably tell me to fuck off, and I wouldn't have blamed him if he did.

On to frog number three.

I'd gone with somebody who was kind of like me and I'd gone with someone who was much younger than me. I figured, what the hell, why not try someone who was nothing like me, someone who wasn't even from the same continent?

And shut up, I wasn't getting desperate, it just sounded like a good idea to me at the time.

It was kind of your classic case of "opposites attract". You know, motor-mouth paired up with reserved, even-tempered Swede. It actually kind of worked for a while. He wouldn't respond often to my little digs at him, but when he did, he always came up with gems.

Surprisingly, Nick was a better match for me than Shanny or Boyd. I'm thinking it was the intelligence factor. Actually, I'm pretty damn sure that's what it was. And you know, I never expected him be like that in bed.

Sorry, going off-topic here.

Anyway, Nick's pretty much the same off the ice as he is on it, in the sense that he makes very few mistakes. He also doesn't really take many risks. Which is fabulous as far as hockey goes, but it kind of makes him a frog.

When did I realize this? At my second wedding. I mean, my second Cup celebration. The first Cup I was so delirious (and drunk) that all I remember is feeling incredibly happy and fortunate and grateful. Grateful because I had a prince with me to share it all, and that made it more than twice as good. I can quantify it because the second time I thought I was going to feel the same way, just with a different person, but I didn't.

I wanted to do something crazy with him, like fuck on the roof of my house or something dumb like that. Not surprisingly, he didn't. And I should have been disappointed, but I wasn't. After all, he was a frog.

Then I realized there wasn't any point to kissing that frog. Or kissing any other frog, ever, because none of them would ever turn into princes. Because there was just the one prince, and there would always be just the one prince in his kingdom far, far away.

I called him up that night. He seemed surprised, but he quickly congratulated me. I was really drunk, almost as drunk as I am right now. I told him my little fairy tale and about all the frogs in the world and how I was a fucking idiot to think that kissing them could turn them into princes because really there was only one prince and I was talking to him.

He listened to my drunken rambling, then invited me to play golf with him in the summer if I was ever in the neighborhood of his kingdom.

I took him up on it, and, well ... he proved yet again that he was a prince.

He proved it by forgiving me.

Told you I'm a fucking sap now.

But I don't really give a fuck. Because I know when I get to the end of our tale - just need to flip a few more pages here - I know I'm going to have my fairy tale ending, prince charming and all. The inter-kingdom thing is annoying sometimes, well a lot of the time, but hey, I know what's waiting for me at the end of it all.

So that's my story. Yes, if I hadn't made a mistake at the very beginning of it, I would never have parted from the prince. But life is all about mistakes isn't it? I'm glad I went through all of that, because I've learned something very important. I've learned that I never want to kiss another frog for the rest of my fucking life.

 

THE END