The following is your handy, all-in-one Vancouver Olympics comedown and re-entry guide-cum-souvenir column.

Think of it as a kind of methadone clinic in print to help you gradually break your dependence on the heroin-like rush of following the Games and all the touching sidebar stories swirling around them. Like the one about the snowboarder who went ahead and bravely competed even as a bad case of stem canker threatened the very life of his favourite marijuana plant.

Amazing Olympic fact

If Neil Young had gone from his performance at the closing ceremonies to the medal party of the Canada men's hockey team, he might have started jamming with No. 21 Eric Staal; No. 61 Rick Nash; and, of course, No. 87 Sid the Kid.

That would have been Crosby, Staal, Nash and Young. Talk about After the Goldrush.

(Explanatory note for younger readers: The above is a reference to a legendary superband from the Woodstock era, made up of crooner Bring Crosby, opera star Beverly Sills, broadcaster Knowlton Nash, and psychologist Carl Jung. They were known as Crosby, Sills, Nash and Jung.)

(Explanatory note for older readers: Young people will believe anything; they're so used to the scattering effects of the Internet. But don't feel smug. Admit it, you've forgotten that you watched the game, haven't you? C'mon. Time for your pills. Then an hour of home shopping channel and nappie. Don't worry about me misleading the younger readers. I don't have any. They're all on Twitter or some such newfangled, danged-sakes social media critter.)

Less-amazing Olympic fact

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is so emotionally contained and socially guarded that on several occasions during his stay in Vancouver he was mistaken for a curling rock.

Personal Olympic anecdote

I could not interest my two daughters in the men's hockey final. They stayed upstairs and worked on some dance steps inspired by the pairs skating. It's the first time they've ever turned up their noses at anything with icing in it.

(Olympic side note: The only difference between pairs skating and pairs dancing is that in pairs dancing the man's hair has to be longer than the woman's.)

To make matters worse, the girls got mad at me when Crosby scored. I jumped up and down so hard in the TV room, they claimed the floors shook upstairs, made their disc player skip and disrupted their imaginary routine.

Moreover, they said, I shrieked so loudly they called 911. But 911 couldn't come because the whole country was having a coronary, all the emergency workers were watching the game and had to see the replays before they'd put their sirens on and the streets were so clogged with Canadian flags they'd never get through anyway.

The girls told me they had been scarred. I told them they should be proud of their country.

"Listen to the horns honking," I said. "It's ... it's tribal. It's the call of your people. It's the sound of a country coming of age."

"It's the sound of too much beer," said Ruby.

Our coming of age

One of the differences between Canada and the United States is that we're always accused of coming of age and they're always accused of losing their innocence.

We came of age at Confederation, Vimy Ridge, Dieppe, Expo 67, the '76 Olympics and now again in Vancouver (except our women hockey players who were old enough to help us come of age but too young to drink).

Somehow we always seem to turn back into a minor so we can come of age again.

Conversely the Americans keep losing their innocence -- Civil War, Hiroshima, Vietnam -- then gain it again so they can lose it all over -- Watergate, 9/11.

Olympic first

The Vancouver Games were the first in which "fencing" was considered a winter sport, as organizers scrambled to deal with the protection and visibility of the flame.

What a time. The Slovaks, the Americans with more attack in them than Dick Cheney's heart. Yet, we won. The redemptive arc of the second week. The world in our arms. Hard to let go. But take heart. Soon -- spring.

(Everything in this column has been approved by Olympic sponsors Burger King, Pepsi and death metal band Slipknot.)

jmahoney@thespec.com

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