Hockey Town

I dropped a mate at the Bus station last night and on the way home there was a piece on the Canadian Hockey lock out on the BBC World Service it reminded me of the time a couple of years ago when I was in Toronto and first got an understanding of how passionate the Canadians are about Hockey.
I was in the Eaton Center doing a bit of shopping killing time between meetings. I was looking around one of the sports shops thinking about getting a hockey shirt. Was not serious about it was just a means of passing time. Four or five big guys were in the “shop” part of the store doing whatever people do with skates.
A middle aged guy stopped one of the guys walking around the floor and politely asked him were he could find mans figure skates.
The shop assistance had an expression of pure shock on his face and his expression screamed “FAG”. It took a couple of seconds for him to collect his thoughts before replying “man we do not sell figure skates this is a hockey town!”
The poor guy looking for figure skates did not take to kindly to the town and pressed his question asking were he could get such an item. The floor walker was just lost for words so walked with the customer over to the “shop”.
“Guys, this GENTLEMAN is looking for a set of men’s figure skates!”
All operations in the “shop” stopped as the guys turned around with looks of total disbelief, everyone of them with the “FAG” expression.
The lead man looked at the customer and said “man we do not sell figure skates this is a hockey town!”
At this point the customer was starting to feel a bit put out by the attitude of the staff. He tried a number of times to get information but it was clear that the guys had either never heard of men’s figure skates or had blocked them out of their mind. The customer ploughed on with trying to explain the number of Olympic success Canada had enjoyed in the figure skating. After a couple of minutes the customer left in disgust.