My science column goes out via e-mail to a couple of hundred subscribers around the world. However, they get it for free, whereas the Regina Leader Post and Red Deer Advocate and (every two weeks) CBC Saskatchewan’s Afternoon Edition actually pay for it, so my e-mail subscribers get the version I write for Canadian consumption. It’s not necessary to explain what curling is to a Canadian. It is to, say, an Arkansan.
Which is why I got a handful of e-mails after this week’s column wondering just what the heck “curling” is.
It’s a question I fully understand, since it confused me no end as a boy who had just arrived here from Texas. I still remember my father trying to explain it to me.
“You play it on ice.”
“On ice? You mean you skate?”
“No, you just slide around on your shoes.”
“And you throw rocks?”
“No, stones. And you don’t really throw them, you just kind of…push them.”
“And you…sweep? With brooms?”
“Yes.”
“But…why? Is the ice dirty?”
And so on.
I just pointed my puzzled correspondents to the Canadian Curling Association, if they were really interested in learning more about the “roaring sport.”
Wait’ll I write about sippin’ Vi-Co down by the slough, in the shade of a poplar bluff.
