do you know what this is?

Do you know what this is in the image on the left (I'm not very good about making photos go where I want them to on blogger)? I found it on my son Leo's bedroom floor last night. I thought that it was an old juice box that he hadn't thrown away. So I picked it up, only to find this (right image, held by Leo).








I asked what it was, because an empty juice box taped to two tubes from the centers of large rolls of paper must have been something else to a six year old's imagination. He informed me that it was his hockey stick. I turned and stared at him. First because he has been ice skating once, for less than five minutes, and has never seen or played hockey. (Note to parents or future parents - don't take your son ice skating for the first time at the end of the day when he spent the morning and afternoon skiing for the first time. He was exhausted and it went very badly.) Secondly because we live in California, and there are two ice skating facilities in a metro area of about 1.7 million people - and I only know that because I looked it up, since I didn't think that there were any here. Thirdly, because I thought "I never really thought about hockey until a few months ago and now it's showing up everywhere it seems." It all started with Mikey of hockeykidmn.com. I read a one line note on Towleroad.com back in November, followed the link, found a fascinating story by an articulate, funny, nice guy and got hooked. I also discovered other blogs and decided to try it myself. And here I am a few months later, reading blogs by hockey players, runners, pilots, students, middle aged guys like myself, a woman who loves horses, etc. The blogs I read are from Canada, Mexico, South Africa, Australia, Germany, the UK and perhaps other countries. It all started with hockey, and now my son is talking about hockey. But I don't think that he really knows what hockey is. When I asked him to demonstrate his hockey stick, he held it like a bat up in the air. I tried to show him how I think a hockey stick is held, but what do I know, and he wasn't interested. Here's his best attempt.