In the other room, the boys were playing Lego Batman on the Wii, and the seven-year-old said to the five-year-old, “Stop freelancing!”
Was he offering his younger brother career advice, advising him to take a secure position instead of working as a contractor? No, he was repeating something Kelly Chase used to say (and still might).
When listening to Kelly Chase do color on St. Louis Blues hockey broadcasts, he’d say a defenseman who moved out of position to try to join the play was “freelancing.” Usually he said this when the opposing team took the opportunity to use that newly free space to attack the St. Louis Blues goal.
And sometime in their (continuing) youths, my children’s father took to tell them, usually when they were wandering a bit far from him in a parking lot, to stop freelancing and get back into position. I also tell them they have to have their heads on a swivel, another Chasism, when they’re in a parking lot.
So what the older youngster meant is that his brother, acting as the second player in the game, should follow his on-screen Batman instead of wandering to other parts of the screen.
Which is probably better than other colorful metaphors children could learn from old hockey players.
(Yeah, the blog is going all Linkletter of late. But the kids have been home on break, and they’re saying better things than our self-appointed betters in the capitals are. Also, trivia to connect Art Linkletter to the St. Louis Blues more tidily than I deserve: Art Linkletter was born in Saskatchewan.)