Jay Baruchel - Born into It: A Fans Life

THIS IS HOW it starts. Equal parts anticipation and familiarity. Weve been here before; well be here again. This is the start of a new season, and the continuation of a story weve been following all of our lives. Its October, and the Habs are back, and Canada can be itself again. Yes, summer is fun, and yes, we make the absolute most out of every second of that season, eating as many meals and doing as much of our socializing outdoors as possible. But this time of year, with its overcast horizons and cars idling to warm up, this is what we know. This is what we grew up in. This is what the world thinks of when it hears the word Canada. Soon it will be winter, eternal winter, and well all be able to see our breath, and there will be no end in sight, and our fortunes will be placed on the shoulders of men in sweaters iconic. This season is every season. This is how it starts.

Were at my house, or my parents place, or a friends; we are home. There is an understanding of loyalties; everyone is well aware which team were meant to be rooting for. There might be a guestsomebodys friend or family member from out of towna soul not of our tribe. There may even be a handful of them, but they are the minority, and any cheering or jeering from their side will be the exception. We are home, and our narrative is binary, and the good guys are our team. And our team is the Habs. This date has been on our calendar for some time. We all know that hockey dies every summer, only to be resurrected anew every autumn. As we get closer and closer to the season in question, the target becomes more specific and autumn becomes October becomes October 5, and soon we all feela little north or south of knowingthat theres a very good chance we will all be together, watching that game.

The day leading up to it is like any other, except it is informed by the expectation and obligation of something coming. Whatever work Im doing, or non-work Im distracting myself with, needs to be done by 7 p.m. Realistically, closer to 6:15. Ill probably want to shower, or rather, Ill sort of think about showering and weigh the pros and cons against the pointlessness of smelling nice for men Ive known since we were children. Ill definitely want to order chicken. A flurry of texts is sent out: is there a hunger inside you?; did you eat?; pubes? For whoever gives a shit, pubes is a sort of very stupid nickname my friends and I came up with for our favourite rotisserie chicken chain restaurant, St-Hubert. Im not sure of the exact etymological evolution, but I know that we added an apostrophe s to make it possessive because were Anglos, and somewhere along the way we dropped the St- and just started saying Huberts, which then became Puberts because were stupid, and then it was a hop, skip, and a jump down to me literally just texting the word pubes to people. Ill get answers very quickly, as everybody Im texting knows what night it is, and then its time to attend to whatever other little preparatory tasks I might assign myself. Usually its just down to rolling a joint or two and making sure the game is set to tape on my DVR, just in case. With chicken ordered and joints rolled, I crank up the volume on the TV and wait for the forty-five minutes of doorbells to come.

First through the door is Amir, who, though chronically late for pretty much anything else, is never late for these things. He says something about BIXI bikes, and then he and I launch into one of countless accents weve been doing together since high school. Tonight, we are cockneys and then, just as quickly, we are Greek immigrants. Twenty-plus years of friendship and we know of no other way to relate to each other. Really, its either Awright, guv? Yeah, fair play, Yeah, get in there, or embarrassingly heated exchanges about the lamest possible subjects. Whether or not the UK can rightly call itself a superpower, for example. (Of course it cannot label itself such, regardless of its nuclear arsenal. This is what Amir and I screamed at each other about, one night in England when we were nineteen.) Anyway, he shows up and quickly takes his place on the couch. Were not assholes about that stuff, but still, it behooves one to get in early and make your ass grooves count.

The front door opens, followed by the muted sound of light footsteps, like a timid ghost reluctant to make its presence known. Theres only one man I know on Earth who enters a house as spectrally as this, and a few seconds later, he appears on the threshold of the living room. Its Verduns own Jesse, iconoclast, wallflower, and general inconvenient man. We performed sketches together at open-mike nights when we were seventeen, and for the past decade weve written together, professionally, as a team. Hands are shaken, greetings are exchanged. As he takes out his earbudseach of us getting a tinny micro-dose of whatever film score he was listening to on his way overand sits down, Jesse mentions something about somebody yelling in the depanneur parking lot.

On TV, the talking heads and highlights have been replaced by footage of the pregame ceremony. Players from each team take to the ice and do their laps. We all shut up for a second. Its not a profound hush so much as the first taste of focus to come. We havent seen these players, in this context, since the beginning of the summer. And now, after the draft, free-agency frenzy, trade nonsense and gossip, training camp drama, and a typically underwhelming preseason, were back and every game counts. Sort of. There will be stretches of apathy towards the end of the winter, but for now theres something of a connectivity, and we are all feeling it in one way or another. They cut to a close-up of one of our new guys. Who is that? Jesse asks. Amir fills us in, and from his description, we know not to be overly excited. Still, even if only by the slightest margin, we are all more excited than we were yesterday.

Finely tuned chicken instincts turn all our heads to the front window, and we are now all legitimately excited, because we are all legitimately hungry. A little bright-yellow hatchback has just pulled up in front of my house, and within it lies chicken that will soon be in our stomachs. Ive been all over the world, and no one people seems to have as much of a profound appreciation for the combo of chicken, fries, and gravy as we do here in Canada. St-Hubert runs Quebec, while turf in the rest of Canada is almost exclusively controlled by Swiss Chalet. As of a few years ago, both bird outfits answer to the same corporate overlords of Cara Operations Limited, but their products could not be farther apart from each other, quality-wise. St-Hubert serves beautiful chicken, cooked to perfection and paired with fries and the single-best sauce the world has come up with. Les Qubcois call it sauce brune or sauce BBQ; we Anglos call it gravy. The point is, its brown and warm, and fries were made to be dunked in it. All of this deliciousness arrives at your door in an adorable yellow cardboard box, like some sort of old-timey chicken parcel, the French eye for presentation never far from anything in Quebec. Swiss Chalet, on the other hand, serves wet meat with pretty good fries and a sauce/gravy that tastes like soap and throw-up. Also, for some reason, it comes to your door in a weird, sweaty little biosphere plastic container. Anyway, we like chicken and are always psyched when it arrives.

My exchange with the delivery guy is brief, cordial, and familiar, as St-Hubert has been bringing chicken to members of my family since the O.J. trial. He can hear the TV, and our conversation quickly turns to the Habs, which is always welcome, especially during that horrid purgatory that is waiting for the little machine to process your credit card or bank card payment. Our little Habs talk, like many a Habs talk with strangers or acquaintances, reminds me that there will always be someone who knows more about this team than I do. There will always be someone who has committed that many more names of prospects to memory, someone with a more immediate understanding of players from an era that happened before I was born. This time, its about something a retired Hab from the seventies said on a local French radio show, something about us being small down the middle and having no number one centre. We commiserate on this deficiency and lament the good old days. Neither of us is old enough to really remember the good old days, but that doesnt matter. We both know the interaction were meant to have, and we play those roles. Like little one-acts, there are dozens of shared Habs-complaint routines strangers can go through when they want to relate to each other in a polite manner. The delivery guy mentions some prospect whose name I dont recognize, says he was very impressive in juniors. The path of least resistance dictates one of two responses on my part: Never heard of him, but Ill keep an eye out for him or I agree and in doing so have become a liar. I opt for the former, which gets me a bunch of scoring stats that I didnt ask for, and then my card is accepted and its Thank you,