an experience I'll tell my kids (or at least my sister's kids) about

Man, tonight was incredible.

When you're a kid you're not mature enough to appreciate the cool things that happen in the world around you because hey, everything's cool eh?

I'd imagine that when you're older you're too jaded to appreciate the cool things that happen in the world around you because meh, you've seen it all before.

Right now I may be in the peak of my appreciation for the experiences that I have in life, and tonight was flat out incredible.

It's true, it was just a hockey game. But man it really felt like more than that. 18,000 people acting as one. The emotions in the building were not scattered and diverse, as they tend to be when thousands of people crowd together. Nope, these emotions were united and in constant motion. Like a great wind, everyones hearts and minds would soar into the air as a Stars breakaway was happening. The whole building would quake with anger and disgust when the refs waved off a goal or when a Duck laid down a cheap hit. There was nothing but pure joy when a Star put a puck in the net. It was more than just the whole building cheering at the same time. It was just a remarkable symmetry of passionate emotion the likes of which I'd never seen.

The production crew did a first-class job of letting the fans own this game. Jeff K jammed the right songs while there were goals under review, and did the best thing he could have done when the crowd was at it's peak in the second and third periods: he didn't play a thing. He just let it breathe and the whole crowd heard itself screaming with excitement and emotion and joy and that clarity of sound just caused the cheers to get louder and more intense, feeding back into itself.

There will only be so many times in my life when I'm privileged enough to partake in things like that. I know it was only a hockey game, but it was also a hell of a good time.