fragments of memory

So this picture of vintage Sidney Crosby—and his, um, pants—is what I will think of on the plane to DC tomorrow.



A little context would be amazing.

So there's been all sorts of hockey-related flailing on my Twitter feed for a while now, and I resisted for a long time because what, exactly, is hockey bringing to the party? Toothless faces and slashed throats and catastrophic injuries and...what are you supposed to do with all that. Like, really.

But then.



Sidney Crosby is what hockey brings to the party, I discovered. And now it's turned into A Whole Thing, very quickly, and I have tickets to Pens/Coyotes on February 1st and I'll be wearing black and yellow and rooting the opposite of everyone else in our party, but these are the sacrifices I choose to make.

( Anyway, this entire post is basically just an excuse to share these photographic distractions, truly. )

Which brings me to a question: Does anyone else ever...like, "imprint" on an athlete (or anyone/anything else, really), for lack of a less Twilight-inspired and cringe-worthy word? I ask because this Crosby thing played out very similarly to how things went down with Tim, actually—just randomly coming across some random piece of media and filing it away where it will lie dormant until it randomly becomes VERY VERY relevant years down the road.

(Back in 2009, when Tim won his second Cy Young award, I was tooling around online and it happened to be the lead story on ESPN.com, and they had a really amazing photo of Tim on the homepage—in his pitching motion, hair flying across his cheek, eyes very wild and very dark. And I thought to myself, "That is an interesting picture and an interesting boy." And I looked at it for a few moments, and then I moved on, because it was baseball and baseball had no real meaning in my life at that point. But that picture stuck with me. Fast-forward to July 2010, and the Giants are in town and I hear on the radio that Tim's pitching, and I remembered that photo and it was enough to get me to tune in and watch the game. And, um, that was it.)

And so it was with Sidney Crosby, too. Watching an NHL commercial years ago, which featured a clip of a very young and very exuberant Crosby scoring a goal and throwing his hands in the air in celebration. And I thought to myself, "That's cute." And then went on with my life, because it was hockey and hockey didn't factor into my life whatsoever. But I remembered the expression on that face, and when I finally succumbed to reluctant dabbling in the fandom, Crosby was the first person I google imaged, like you do. And despite thorne_scratch's valiant efforts to get me to like someone—anyone!—else, it was already done. (Sorry, my dear. I know he's your sworn enemy.)

And then, of course, I started reading the fic. And then I fell down the YouTube rabbit hole and...yeah. You know how it goes.

I'm still trying to understand the prevailing fandom characterization of Crosby, though, which is a neurotic and awkward person who has awkward and neurotic sex, often with surprising infrequency. It's all still kind of a mystery to me.