Penalty Block

Darcy has been to a fair number of hockey games in his short life. He explains some of the subtleties to his friends.

“If you do a bad thing to another player, you’ll go to the penalty.”

Arthur grasps this concept somewhat incompletely, and remarks to George, “At ten o’clock you have to come with me and go to the penalty.”

George is having nothing of this. “No I won’t go with you. I don’t have a penalty.” He’s a little indignant at having been so impugned.

Darcy tries a second time. “You don’t go when you want to. It’s only if you do something bad.”

Arthur is not to be deflected. “Come here, George, and I will give you this penalty.”

George and Darcy look at his offering in some disdain. “That’s a block. A penalty isn’t a block. It’s where you go if you were bad to another player.”

“It’s like the Quiet Stair, Arthur,” George adds.

“Yeah,” Darcy concurs. I’m impressed. It is like the quiet stair. The parallel is perfect.

“But I wanted to give this penalty to George,” Arthur insists, holding out the block. Evidently, Arthur’s mind is made up and is not to be deflected by mere facts.

“That’s NOT a penalty!!” Darcy and George bellow together in exasperation. George makes an appeal to the referee.

“Mary, can you tell Arthur to go sit on the Quiet Stair? He’s not listening to us at all.”

Two minutes to Arthur for wilfull oblivion.