Ice hockey is my sport of choice.

They say that baseball is America's pastime.  As a Fake American, I've never liked baseball.  I was never into sports as a kid, attending my first professional sport event in high school when I went to a Washington Senators' game vs. the Kansas City Royals.  I thought it was the most boring thing I had ever seen.  In fact I think I fell asleep.  But Real Americans love baseball and I was the child of Real Americans though I began to suspect that they both possessed the recessive Fake American gene.

Other than the occasional Superbowl party,  it wasn't until the birth Fake American Child #2 (who shall be referred to as FAC#2), that I began to pay a little more attention to the world of professional sports.  You see FAC#2 was a colicky baby and one night the hubster was desperately trying to find something to quiet the incessant crying. While flipping through the cable channels, he discovered that the crying stopped when he came across a hockey game on ESPN.  This remedy was proven successful on a number of occasions.  It sort of became a family joke.  I mean hockey?  That isn't even an American sport! 

Fast forward a few years when FAC#2 had his first pair of Fisher-Price roller skates.  We'd hear him in the basement skating back and forth for literally hours!  We knew that this behavior required an intervention so we signed him up for baseball with the local boys and girls club which was a learning experience to be sure.  Yet FAC#2 clearly wasn't satisfied with being in the outfield and wanted to try ice skating so we had his next birthday party at a local ice rink which also happened to be the practice facility for the Washington Capitals.  That was it.  He'd found his niche.  Clearly the Fake American gene was being passed to another generation.  As luck would have it,  Fake American Child #1 also caught the hockey bug and she was added to the list of skaters in the family.

Like any devoted parent, I decided to see what this hockey fever was all about.  I, too, got hooked and our family became die hard Caps fans.  There was good and bad in this.  First of all, it was good as it provided something that we could share as a family.  It was bad because we were in DC which is a city full of Real Americans and our local team was the Wasington Capitals.  Perhaps being in a city that has been dominated by Real Americans for most of the teams' existence is why the Caps had struggled every year, except the one year they were able to make it to the league finals.  I mean, why would Real Americans want to watch a bunch of guys that weren't even from America play a game that originated in Canada?

At any rate, both of our Fake American children continued to play hockey on high school teams and travel teams where we enjoyed the company of other Fake American families.  As the new millennium took hold this hockey insanity continued which became a real challenge in DC because we now had a Real American occupying the White House.  As a result, the Caps didn't make the playoffs for a couple of years.

Then as luck would have it, the midterm election of 2006 put a lot of Fake Americans in the House and the Senate.  The next year the Caps were in first place in their division where they have remained ever since.  Lo and behold in October 2008, we learned from a Real American that Fake Americans were trying to take over the country.

It turns out that the Caps started selling out their games and hockey fever took over the city.  Surely it must be all the Fake Americans!  With the election of 2008, things got better.  In fact the Caps topped the league in points in the 2009-10 season, however the Stanley Cup remained elusive to them.

Now I'm worried.  The recent midterm election will be bringing more Real Americans back to DC.  How will this affect my beloved Capitals? Will this blow their chances of winning the Stanley Cup? How will the presence of these new power brokers affect my team?  I mean we're talking about a team whose first line is comprised of two Russians, a Swede, a Canadian and a guy from Massachusetts.  Most of those places have some form of socialized medicine for Pete's sake. How American can that be?   Surely the Real Americans will have them banished or at least require some sort of test to determine the degree of "American-ness" before allowing them to compete in the Nation's Capital.   It appears that the team owner is on top of the situation and is trying to present a more positive front to the Real Americans with the new slogan:

Do you think the Real Americans will fall for it?  Who knows!  It appears that they are infiltrating the sport as expansion teams have been added to Real American cities like Nashville, Atlanta and Columbus.  But the most telling sign is the some of the new goalie helmet artwork featuring two of the most Real Americans currently in the public eye. 

My Fake American Children are now grown and no longer play hockey.  FAC#1, however, is engaging in a new sport which is revealing that she has inherited a bit of the Real American gene.  Roller Derby!  I mean what can be more Real American than women with tattoos acting like this: