school daze

I've never been busier.  More to read, more to write, more miles to drive, more people to try to satisfy (do NOT go there) -- and the same old amount of time.  Thank heavens for coffee, for not needing much sleep, and for low standards.  These last (the standards, I mean) are in fact invaluable.

All this is by way of apology for not posting more often.  I think of you guys sometimes.  I want to talk more often, really I do.  Only every time I turn around or look up I find another deadline ready to pounce on me.  Deadlines are like mountain lions.

You want to know about school?  Well, it's really fun.  I sit at the back with the cool kids.  I mark up my textbooks and pass around notes.  We trade lunches and everything.  I can hardly wait until birthday season! 

Seriously, it's more work than I thought, and the other students are way more talented than they have any right to be at their age.  I suspect them of mentally patting me on the head when I make a comment.  Poor old fellow, let's humour him.  He thinks we're back in the 1980s.  While I am struggling to keep up at school, I am also trying to finish a book about a kid with an accidental tattoo, and a kid who falls into a comic ...  and do some mentoring o my own ... and of course there are still my kids to drive around, and when I go too fast there are speeding tickets to collect.

Last time I was stopped I tried to tell the officer how busy I was.  She listened with a smile of sympathy.  You shouldn't be driving around at all, she said.  Say, do you want me to charge you, and confiscate your license so you can stay home and rest?
She was laughing, but I tell you I was tempted. It'd be a totally great excuse for not doing the week's assignment -- and a DUI or something might get me some more respect in school. Scrimger the bad ass.

3:20 moment

The saddest moment of my kid year was always Labour Day Monday, 3:20 pm.  At that precise moment the holiday ended.  Today might as well have been a school day, I would think, year after year.  If it had been a school day, I would have the same amount of time off as I do now.  I am already back at the grind.  Hello Grade 3  (or 4 or 7 or 12).  Three hundred more days until summer. 

Cheery little fellow, wasn't I?  No wonder I didn't get invited to many late summer barbecues.   (Sure, I'll have another hot dog.  Who cares about indigestion?  Holidays are over.  There's nothing to live for except the present  ...)

In fact, it was even worse than that.  I lived the entire season in a state of diminishing expectations.  I would divide the nine or ten weeks into little playtime-sized pieces, and count them like a miser:  how many were gone, how many remained. I loved the first week or two of July, but as the month stretched out I would be increasingly aware of time passing.  In the middle of August I would think:  Only a couple of weeks left now.  It isn't really a summer-sized holiday any more.  More like Christmas.  Another week and summer would be the size of a March break.  (March break?  Why, that passes in a flash! It's barely a holiday at all.)  I would play harder, faster, in an attempt to get more out of my shrinking freedom.  In the last week I would count down the days, until there was only a long weekend left.  Then a weekend.  Then a holiday Monday.  And then ...  3:20.

I told Ed about this last week -- one of those early morning coffee and toast musings.  I don't know what I was expecting.  A laugh, a head shake, a moment of sympathy.  He stared at me over the comics page.

What a weirdo, he said.

mmmff

Sometimes I don't know whether to be impressed or appalled. A particularly daring move at an intersection will elicit my mental applause even while I am slamming on the brakes. A mean but truly funny comment at a party will leave me speechless. I would never allow myself to drive or speak that way, but my hat is off to those who do so dare. I guess I am both impressed and appalled -- impalled.

Which brings me to today's incident. I was at the Y, huffing away, adding my own internal dialogue to the soundless TV screen (a movie with Nicolas Cage and a brunette who spent part of every scene with her hand to her mouth. Her lines were easy: Mmmff, she would say. What kind of mmmff do you think I am?) when a young woman in impeccable workout gear took the machine next to mine and said, That's not all! in a loud voice.

I looked over but she was focussed straight ahead, talking on her blue tooth type phone. I know it's ridiculous, she said, punching buttons on the treadmill. But there's more.

And there was. For the next twenty minutes she spoke without stopping or moderating her voice. It had been a tough shift at her restaurant, and she had every detail fresh in her mind. It did not occur to her that we (I was not the only one in earshot) might not want to hear about the picky patrons, jealous co-workers, missed orders, lousy tips, etc. None of us told her to shut up. I think an older guy wanted to, but she didn't give him an opportunity and he was too nice to interrupt.

I have to say, I was fascinated. She was a storm, heedless and destructive but entertaining, in an awful schadenfreudey way. (Imagine living with her?) I gave up on my TV movie, which had developed a boring office plotline (What is the mmff on those sales figures, JB?) and paid attention to the totally unself-conscious public monologue. Not the incidents so much as the idea that she thought this was okay behaviour.

On and on she went, swinging her muscular arms, working the treadmill hard, and talking all the time. Nothing wrong with her cardio shape -- just her personality. She had no sense of other, no concern for the world outside her own experience. Total self-absorption. I was ... impalled.

bros

After-dinner conversation overheard through my office window. Ed and a friend on the back porch, talking about a concert in Toronto the following night ...

ED - We're going to miss the last train home. For sure.
FRIEND - What're we going to do? I don't want to leave the show early.
ED - I know. How about staying overnight?
FRIEND - In the city? Could get expensive.
E - No man, my brother and sister and grandparents live there. I'll just call up.
F - At 2 in the morning?
E - Well, not my grandparents.
F - Cool. But there's like five of us. How big a place does your brother have?
E - Doesn't matter. There's a couch and a floor and a bath tub. Better than nothing.
F - What about your sister?
E - Maybe. But it's easier with my brother. We can just show up. Mind you, he gets up real early to go to work. He's going to be pissed.
F - You sure we can do this?
E - Totally. You don't have a brother, do you. Trust me, we can do it.
F - Oh. Okay.

A beautiful late summer evening. The breeze was picking up, carrying with it a hint of earth and cool. The boys were talking excitedly about a TV show. I smiled and went back to work.

shame

Back from Vancouver now -- the city of shame. Everyone I talked to there referenced the hockey riot a few weeks back. They all shook their heads. They all swallowed in embarrassment. They all talked about what a change it had been from a year previously when the entire city had united in a moment of shared good feeling. Get over it, city.

An exciting trip for me, I have to say. Caught up with some old friends, talked to some very nice audiences, stayed in a hilariously sleazy district, visited a nude beach, and found time to hit two great bars. If you get the chance, visit the Alibi Room down at the eastern end of Gastown. More hoppy IPAs than you can shake a stick at. And there's a place on Commercial Drive called Bier-something that has a fantastic mussels and beer special. Don't mention the hockey riot, though. They'll apologize for hours.

All right, all right. I'll get to the nude beach. I had never been to one before. Not even as a twenty-something travelling around Europe. Somehow the opportunity never came up, or if it did I was always sick or asleep or something. My friends would go and I would listen, yawning or vomiting enviously, to the stories they told when they returned to the hostel. So when I was visiting UBC and saw an arrow pointing own and a sign -- CLOTHING OPTIONAL BEACH -- and I had a free half hour, I thought, Now is my time!

I confess to a teenaged heartlift as I approached. What kind of wonders would be unveiled? (All right, I guess I knew what kind of wonders -- but not the precise ones.) I wondered if I'd be too embarrassed to disrobe, or if people would laugh and kick sand when they saw my pathetic scrawny torso? Imagine my chagrin when I found myself part of a small but impeccably dressed group of beachers. Every one of them (and I checked) wore shorts and tops, dresses, bathing suits. There was a guy in a vest and bowler hat, for heavens' sake. Not exactly like the picture there but you get the idea. Clothing was optional, and they had all opted yes. My heart sank back down to middle-aged territory. I walked along the shoreline, totally in fashion in my shirt and rolled-up trousers.

Maybe Vancouver should be ashamed of itself after all. That recumbent couple at the hockey riot were way more risque than anything going on down at the nude beach.

ugly? yes

Do I own the ugliest chair in the world?
Seems a sweeping statement, doesn't it -- a grand claim. In the world? But you know, it might be true. It's pretty darn ugly. Ed found it in the Goodwill store, and came home and told us, his eyes alight with the joy of the true philosopher. When something is a perfect platonic example of itself -- when it ideates a single pure form -- you are drawn in a way you cannot resist or comprehend.

We have to get this chair, guys, he said. We have to. It's perfect. It's big and ... words failed him here ... there's blotches and blobs and it's squishy when you sit down and it's so ...
Imo was looking a little dubious.
Um, I said.
And it reclines, said Ed.

Imo turned to me. She was getting it now. She was on the trolley. Like all my kids, she loves a reclining chair. I've never owned one, but when we are in a mall we spend a lot of time in the free test chair section
A recliner, Dad, she said. A blobby squishy recliner....
They were both giving me the eyes. Ok, I said. Ok.
Actually, I was getting intrigued myself.
They went together to buy it, and when they carried it through the front door fifteen minutes and about as many dollars later, my mental staggers matched their physical ones.
Wow, I said.

There can be a fine line between beauty and horror. With some high-fashion models you don't know if they are so ugly they're gorgeous or so gorgeous they're ugly. Well, this chair is not like that. It's way over the line, way over any line. It crouches, squat and menacing, the colour of fear and ice tea. It is warm and soft to the touch, like fresh vomit. It reclines with a groan and a snap of tired springs when you pull the lever at the side -- a lever which wears a matching fear and ice tea sock over its polished wooden handle.

Days later, I am still giving the chair a second look every time I enter the living room. It still makes me laugh. It is the world's ugliest chair.

really fake

Going to talk about essence today. What a thing is. (Is that ontology? My philosophy has been picked up second-hand in mystery novels. It's cheap but shabby, and sometimes it doesn't work.)

Imo found a package of gummi worms in the junk drawer. Oooh! she cried, taking a couple and chewing appreciatively. These are the real ones.
I was puzzled. What other kind would there be? I asked.
Well, there are those all natural ones, she said. My friend's mom buys them. They're not nearly as good.
I spend a lot of time in my mind. I don't get out much.
All natural gummi worms? I said.
Yeah. You know. You get them at the bulk food stores. They're kind of good for you.
I shook my head. No, I said. I don't know. I don't know at all.

Which brings me to essence. Can we agree on some basic definitions? A thing is what it is, and not something else. Right? Right. So what in the name of all that's advertised is a natural gummi worm? Surely the term is self-contradictory. Taking away the thing that makes it a gummi worm and calling it a gummi worm is an affront to sense. Who are these manufacturers? It's like pushing a breadless sandwich (less caloric) or a noiseless car alarm (easier on the neighborhood). If you eat gummi worms, then you want an instant hit of sugar and gelatin and chemicals. You are not craving something healthy. That would be an orange.

Imo caught the idea right away. The gummis in our junk drawer are the real kind, because they are not all natural. Real because they are fake.