Ironclad Season XI of the Mythical Creatures Hockey League came to a dramatic conclusion with the Lunara and Solara Cup championship games and a couple of consolation games all in a four-game back-to-back marathon.
A couple of weeks prior to puck drop, a rather nefarious plan was hatched such that you really did not want to be playing in the final game of the night.
The plot goes something like this…
Imagine the Christmas song that annoys you far more than any other.
It probably won’t take terribly long for you to pick that song…in fact, if it takes more than a few seconds, I’d be really shocked.
I’d also be really shocked if you picked anything other than Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You”.
Now imagine that every stoppage in play during the game features that particular track.
Welcome to Hell, Yuletide edition!
I won’t say that the idea was mine because I can’t and it really wasn’t.
But that didn’t mean that I wasn’t going to be a willing participant figuring that by that point in the session, I’d be more than ready to pack it in for a fair bit of rest until the puck dropped on Season XII.
And that my friends is why Mariah’s infamous track featured as the music played during the stoppages and intermission for that game.
The looks on the faces of the few spectators (and if I’m honest, some of the players) was priceless as they were desperately trying to figure out what in the hell was going on!
Nicholas (who knew this plot had been proposed and tried to pre-emptively order my to not go along with it) rolled his eyes in disgust multiple times (though nowhere near the quality of Katie’s eye rolls which are *LEGENDARY*) and actually signalled for me to be ejected with a game misconduct but sadly for him, that only applies to coaches on the bench. Sucks to suck, doesn’t it? 😉
Part way through the second period, Miss Kristina and I had noticed that the person who had proposed this evil little plot actually didn’t stick around to suffer the consequences of actually living through the experience of it.
She had already reached the point of “I can’t stand that song any more” and I was already there myself even without the help of the sampler pack of Jack Daniels on the back of the scorer’s booth behind us that was helping Miss Kristina make it to the end of the season.
So figuring that someone had chickened out of the consequences, we took the decision that I was going to switch to the Christmas playlist I’d already loaded onto the iPad earlier that day to give us a bit of a respite from Mariah at the next stoppage in play.
Icing is called and it’s time for me to flip the fader to the other deck and start the song that was loaded there.
That’s when I saw what was loaded, looked at Miss Kristina with an apologetic look who had an appropriately horrified look herself once she read the track title, and I end up ducking down below the scorer’s table as I push the play button on…
Lindsey Stirling’s cover of Mariah’s song that I’d unintentionally left loaded in the second deck thinking I might switch between them but didn’t because it was patently obvious that the pain of Mariah was working a treat on the audience.
Later in the third period when we were beyond caring about the outcome of the game which had gotten completely out of hand, I ended up switching back to Mariah for the last few minutes of the game.
I’ll confess that it was more than a little fun.
I’ll also have no problem running the festive playlist next year during the final session of the year for Ironclad.
But I’ll be damned if that song ever sees my virtual turntable ever again.
(Well, unless I really want to send the players and spectators up the twist, that is… 😉 )
