Sinking Your Teeth into a Groundbreaking New History of Hockey, Part II

Part II. The Birth of Hockey: A Groundbreaking World History

[continued from Part I: My Personal Hockey History]

It’s time to set the record straight about hockey players and teeth. I seriously can’t believe what they fail to teach kids in school these days.

If you know anything about Greek mythology, you know that around 2000 BCE, Cadmus—credited for the original alphabet—erected (not a casual choice of the word) the city of Thebes. You know, where Oepidus later had a little hanky panky with his mama (the earliest known Cougar), and Dionysus got some ladies so pickled and riled up that they mistook Pentheus (Pen as the Greek root for Peeping, and Tom being the modern derivative of Theus) for a cow and tore him to shreds. (Why the drunk women would tear a leering bovine to shreds is off topic, but I’m sure most women have felt a similar urge.) The earliest cult images of Dionysus show him in procession with his followers, bearded satyrs with erect penises, and he and the satyrs each carry a Thrysus.

Early Hockey

What you might not know is that the Thyrsus was long thought to be a giant fennel staff of symbolic significance (symbolizing, what else?, an erect penis), but when Heinrich Schliemann excavated Troy in 1873, the Thrysus was definitively proven (after centuries of unsubstantiated speculation) to be the Original Hockey Stick. As if bearded satyrs with erect penises would be carrying anything else. Thrysus and Thrust have of course now become interchangeable in romance novels.