Bubble Hockey Miracle

Before we found this place, when we were just looking for a house--a house that would theoretically not need all of the mechanicals replaced within a year of moving in--Eric had a dream. Eric's dream was that when we got a house and had room for it, he would own the Super Chexx 1980 Miracle on Ice Bubble Hockey game. It was a nice dream, especially if you were Eric.

Yada yada yada, we found this place and any money that might have been semi-earmarked for bubble hockey was instead diverted to Really Exciting Purchases like a furnace and a water softener. We realized that there would never be a time in our lives when we would say, "Sure, it is totally acceptable to drop four figures on a bubble hockey game right now." Like, hahahahaha, what? No.

But I wanted Eric to know that the bubble hockey dream didn't have to die... we'd just have to inch toward it slowly. So for our anniversary I started the Bubble Hockey Fund, which was a glass canister with a sticker on the outside that had a bar graph to color in for every $100 increment up to the goal. (Tangent: I had a little speech prepared for giving this jar to Eric; I was going to make it really nice, like, "Honey, I haven't forgotten your dream and we're going to get there eventually." Then we went out to dinner on our anniversary and I enjoyed some delicious cocktails, which might have contributed to me dropping the jar and shattering it on the floor of the garage as soon as we got home that night, before I could even give the speech. So in the end "the speech" was more like me handing Eric a bag of broken glass with a $100 bill in it and slurring, "This is fer yer DREAM.")

Anyway... I got a new jar and that was the start of the fund. Both of our families contributed at Christmas, and Eric also cashed in some credit card rewards points he'd been letting build up. It was slow and steady, and with new contributions from me, my parents and Eric's mom for his birthday last week, the fund was up to about half the final goal. Not too shabby!

(The fact that this jar is empty may give away the rest of the story.)

This is when Eric got antsy and started browsing Craigslist, where he found two non-Miracle-edition Super Chexx games. And even though he had originally told me that he HAD to have the Miracle version--he would Accept No Substitutes--the prospect of having bubble hockey sooner rather than later became very tempting.

So that's how we found ourselves in Mound last weekend, where we purchased a secondhand bubble hockey game in pretty great condition. We even negotiated the price down $400 from what it was listed for, so in the end we paid just a hair more than what was in the official fund. AND, the lovely woman we bought it from then helped us drive it back to our place, refused to take any gas money for her trouble, and sincerely wished us a nice life.

Eric's life is certainly nicer now that he can check this off his list. Co-starring in this photo is his friend Wayne, who plays this game like the little plastic men are a natural extension of himself. It is astounding to watch.

The fund did its job so well that now we're thinking we should keep it going for another "There's never going to be a good time to spend that kind of money on a non-essential" thing. The front-runner: a rowing machine.

I don't know if you'd guess it, but this one wasn't Eric's idea.