Scotty's Team

So there he was, winner of ten Stanley Cups, asking me if I wanted to be part of his team. Yes, Scotty Bowman, coaching icon and hockey genius, wanted me to take the test. Thinking that this was some sort of tryout for an old-timers' fundraiser where I might meet some hockey heroes from my youth and snag a few autographs, I read on.

Well, this was no hockey team that Scotty wanted me to join. No, my coaching hero wanted to know if I was "up" for the ED team...that's ED as in Erectile Dysfunction. I merely needed to take the short EQ test (for "Erectile Quality") to see if I have what it takes (or more accurately, don't have) to join the Bowman team.

If only I had known there was more to Foster Hewitt's "he shoots, he scores" than just a famous hockey play-by-play call.

Well, being a still youthful thirty-five, I'm happy to report that not only did I not make the team, but according to current statistics, I have at least five more years before I enter into the male equivalent of the medieval dark ages, when at least half of us won't be able to do anything but play pinochle with our partners and reminisce about the good old days when "Mr. Bill" would come out more than once a year for a little game of thread the needle. And if you believe everyone from Scotty Bowman to Mike Ditka (What is it with sports coaches and sagging libidos? Too much Gatorade?), this will play absolute hell with your self-esteem, ruin your marriage, and possibly lead to permanent exile in a recliner, watching endless reruns of Baywatch and cursing David Hasselhoff.

What is implicit in the current deluge of ads, spokesmen, and "men's clinics" is that male happiness, pride and confidence emanate solely from a tiny little organ that spends most of its time tucked away like a frightened field mouse, and the rest popping out at all the wrong moments, and in all the wrong places. Yet, you would be forgiven for thinking that all male job interviews involve an EQ test, that when a man restores a car or builds a house it somehow requires a visit from a guy named "Johnson," and that the pride a man feels watching his kids graduate from college has everything to do with a hot summer night in the back seat of Chevy, and not twenty-two years of hand holding, nose wiping, and tuition paying.

There also seems to be this notion (a sort of locker room rumour, really), that the key to a woman's heart, the avenue to her soul, and the source of her pleasure is that pesky little sausage men have trapped in their pants. Now this is something Scotty, your doctor, and the president of GlaxoSmithKline would like you to believe, but allow me to let you in on a little secret: there are many other ways to please a woman, and they don't entail staging a one man reenactment of the Battle of the Bulge.

And then there are some women, who quite frankly might like the fact that old Henry has stopped rolling over for a three-minute bonding session every time he's having trouble getting to sleep. Some just might be all right with nothing more than a little hand holding, perhaps a snuggle, and a man who spends a little more time cleaning their shorts than trying to get into them.

Have the folks at Pfizer, makers of Viagra, really considered the horror they may have unleashed upon unsuspecting grannies everywhere? I can't help but imagine terror-stricken old women running for their lives, chased by pot-bellied, naked men with three-day erections talking like Jack Nicholson.

"Here's Johnny!"

So, while Scotty recommends I talk to my doctor, I think when that fateful day arrives in the not too distant future, I'll talk to my wife first, and I highly recommend that you men out there do the same...she just might be okay with the pinochle.