My wife is commenting on the smell of our son’s hockey bag. “You need to air that out sometimes,” she tells him.
“Hockey players aren’t supposed to smell like perfume,” he explains.
“What are they supposed to smell like?” I ask him.
“Sweat and toil,” he says. “Broken bones. And dried blood.”
No other parent knows this smell like a hockey parent…it is far far from the normal football, baseball, basketball locker room smell. Reminds me of the time we took our then 10 year old up to northern Minnesota for a one week hockey camp. When we picked him up, we kept his bag in the back of the surburban. He still smelled…so my wife asks if had showered that morning…’no, he said, we didn’t shower all week. There was a college girl and we all nervous that she was looking in the showers.’ That was a long ride home.
It is a unique smell. The closest thing in my experience is one of our dog’s chew toys, a stuffed bear. The dried dog saliva plus whatever else it’s been dragged through combine to produce a decent approximation of the hockey bag, the difference being that the bear smell doesn’t carry nearly as well.