The Slice: Curb your parking enthusiasm

Let’s start with a discussion of off-roading.

Slice reader Danielle James didn’t grow up here. So she’s curious about the popular practice of parking cars with two wheels up on the sidewalk. What gives?

Well, Danielle, that habit is based on four key considerations:

1. The certain knowledge that some Spokane drivers – especially the drunks – are liable to sideswipe vehicles parked on narrow or busy streets.

2. Failure to recognize the intended function of sidewalks. As in, “Pedestrians? What’s that?”

3. Self- expression, redneck style.

4. “That’s the way we’ve always done it.”

•Then and now: My mother was a hockey mom, though nobody called them that back then.

Now don’t get excited. This isn’t a political commentary.

I don’t care how you are going to vote. Believe me.

But the whole notion that being a hockey mom (or dad, for that matter) implies toughness or tenacity baffles me.

I mean, I haven’t seen a lot of parents going down to block shots or charge into the corner after the puck, knowing they were going to get crunched into the boards.

So I suppose it means that modern hockey moms, like certain parents of kids in other sports, are willing to yell at the refs and offer unsolicited advice to the coaches. Never mind that the parent in question might not have the vaguest idea how the game is supposed to be played.

I know this will make me sound like a geezer. But in my day, youth-league hockey players earned their ice time in games with their skills and effort.

Ah, but times have changed. Performance-assertiveness is hailed as a primary parental virtue. Today, if little Trigger or Jaysuhn isn’t skating on the first line it is deemed an injustice that might cause irreparable damage to the lad’s self-esteem.

Bull.

Old-school hockey moms were the best. They provided a model that did not need revision.

They drove us to practice at ungodly hours. They didn’t freak out about minor injuries. And they assumed that we’d stand up for ourselves when necessary.

They knew real toughness had nothing to do with running your mouth.

•Slice answer: “My husband left for a six-week business trip, and left 21 hours and 52 minutes of Olympics on the DVR,” wrote Sue Lani Madsen.

•Today’s Slice question: What generalization about Spokane area residents has always struck you as seriously off the mark?