On Packing

The days before a trip are full of anticipation; antsy, nervous energy. No matter how fun the destination, the preparation is painful. Between giving parents every single contact number and fighting that voice of reason in your head that still hasn't quite accepted your abandonment of responsibility, you have to deal with packing. Ugh...packing.

Luckily, I'm a speedy packer. I make a list a few days before I have to pack, and add to it until I think I've got everything. Then it all gets crammed haphazardly into a duffle bag, which takes about 20 minutes. However, this trip presents a new challenge.

I've mentioned that I am going to work for a professional hockey player. And that I found out this job via his personal twitter. Basically, I stalk people online, and occasionally finagle a way to meet them. This is not the first time I've done it. I've previously successfully stalked a Chinese martial artist and somehow got myself invited to hotpot with him and about a dozen small time actors and entertainment personalities in Beijing. If someone were to tell me that I'm a creep, I wouldn't disagree. I'm way worse than the puck hounds who stake out hotels, because all they ask for is the residue of some pen strokes. I ask for the residue of interpersonal experience. The fact that said martial artist is not actually all that famous (or all that dreamy as I found out), and said professional hockey player has a public twitter account that he uses specifically to connect with fans, does not make my actions more excusable; it just means there are people as sad and pathetic as me.

So the challenge of self-representation arises. When you meet with these people, who you have scoured the internet for information --- real, rumored or completely made up --- how do you hide your complete disregard for their privacy? How do you play it cool? Theoretically, you've always known that these individuals are real human beings and not just brands and assets, but realistically, in your little cocoon of anonymity, you've complacently objectified these men as false idols and vessels of your vicarious fantasies. Suddenly, you're going to meet them, and not just for a handshake and an autograph, but to work with them, for them. Their celebrity will shatter, and along with it the security and entitlement of your presumptions.

What does this have to do with packing? Well, packing requires me to re-evaluate my T-shirt collection. I don't have very sophisticated tastes. My wardrobe consists of a couple of basic tees, loads of career-fairs shirts from college, some band-camp shirts from high school, and a few hockey-related tees. By a few I mean 10 or so and that doesn't include a half dozen of X-Large playoff T-shirts passed out by various teams. In terms of purchased official merchandise, I only have Bruins gear. As a fan of the team, I would feel dirty to buy another team's merchandise. However, I feel no guilt being a fan of a player if not of his team, and have on numerous occasions spent on player-centric items, those created by a player himself, or created for him as tribute by appreciative fans.

So lets say I find myself working for a certain redheaded athlete known best for his tumbles on the ice, and I own nearly every merchandise he's pimped for himself and his teammate (hey, it's for charity!) Not only that, but I also own many shirts associated with other players on other teams. I can go for more than a week wearing a different hockey-related shirt every day. Suddenly I'm self-conscious of my inner-creep. As a fan, those things seemed funny and dedicated, inside jokes only other hardcore need-a-life people can understand. As an employee I am now wondering how unprofessional, juvenile and desperate I must seem.

As I go through my collection, I store away the those I think are inappropriate for being too affiliated with players and teams irrelevant to our foundation:

• Tuukka Rask official Bruins T-Shirt
• 2011 Bruins Stanley Cup Championship T-Shirt
• Sully's Darth Quaider shirt celebrating Bruins defenseman Adam McQuaid and his occasional but frighteningly maniacal rage
• George Parros Defend Anaheim T-shirt in bright Anaheim Ducks colors complete with sparkly gold bits
• Original Sauce Hockey BizNasty Feeds the Homeless T-shirt

I did pack a few hockey shirts, some because they were actually bought from the foundation and thus, I hope shows my bright-eyed enthusiasm, and others because they were too amusing to give up on. In particular, my new Ryan Getzlaf Old English T-shirt, which celebrates his alleged inebriation in Finland and wonky google translations. As others have written on the event, I won't rehash it, and simply link to the story here, and the t-shirt here.

I've been reading some books by Jack Falla and by Bill Gaston. They both ruminate on hockey-celebrity and the silliness and pointlessness of memorabilia-collecting and the general phenomenon of being star-struck. I will reflect on these literary inspirations later. What I want to say now is that I admit I am a bit of a hero-worshiper and fame-chaser, and I am old enough and mature enough to be a bit ashamed. But I'm not old enough or mature enough to stop.