morning pensees

Very philosophical, this post. Sam and I at the kitchen table at 8:00 -- after his shift, and in the middle of mine. I've been up and working for a couple of hours, but am always eager for a break. (Talking to your teenaged kid is a great break.) We were discussing the haircut he needed to apply for the summer job at the yacht club. Sam was having second thoughts about his looming appointment at the ... haircutting place.

Sidebar -- what to call the place where a modern guy gets a hair cut? Hair Dresser is still pretty much a woman's term. Barber Shop sounds too 1955 -- a place where you get a brush cut and your dad places a bet. Salon sounds too Christopher Street (not that there's anything wrong with that, as Seinfeld says). But a lot of guys are going to feel uncomfortable putting down their beer, wiping their mouth, and telling their pals they are off to the Salon. Hmmm. (Seriously, now -- is there a word and I'm just drawing a blank here? I guess I don't get my hair cut often enough.)

Anyway, Sam was having second thoughts about going to the place where guys go to get their hair cut. And he was tired after his night at the gas bar. Which may explain his mind bending towards the Jansenist school.

If I don't get my hair cut, I've lost the job, he said. If I cut my hair, and get the job, I've lost my hair.
This was starting to sound familiar.
But Dad, what if I get my hair cut for the interview, and they still don't give me the job? Then I've lost everything.
He sounded quite anguished. I wondered what Pascal's dad (that's Pascal in the picture, by the way. Our local yacht club wouldn't give him a job with that hair.) Probably what I did.

Have some more Froot Loops, and go to bed.

Next time: Sam gets the job -- or does he? Startling revelations!!!! And I get tough with my editor.

it's protest time!

I don't get many chances to take an ethical stand. No one has ever tried to bribe or threaten me into acting against my principles. Galileo tortured for the sake of scientific truth, Serpico the honest cop, all those suffragettes and conscientious objectors and union agitators and Christian martyrs --- they make for gripping stories, but not ones I can relate to personally. Shaw talks about the world as a moral gymnasium built expressly to strengthen your character. Well, mine is pretty flabby.
Fortunately I am able to live my life through my children. Sam has an ethical dilemma right now, and it's so exciting I can hardly stand it.
He decided, after several weeks, that working midnights at the gas station and never being held up at gunpoint is boring and tiring. (No, that's not the dilemma. Wait. It's coming.) He investigated other summer job options and, behold, an opportunity arose at the local yacht club. I don't quite understand the job, but it involves driving around in a golf cart and being polite to yachters. It pays better than the gas station, and doesn't involve night work. Sam called me after the interview yesterday. They like me, he said, but (here it is!) they want me to cut my hair.
Isn't that great? A classic 60's confrontation. Sam is a polite young man, really good at looking you in the eye and shaking your hand, but he is, well, flocculent. He's skinny, and his hair is long and dirty blondish and quite wooly, so that from a distance he resembles an ambulant floor mop. Management at a yacht club tends to be on the conservative side of conservative. (You can tell a rebel at a yacht club party because his blue blazer doesn't have a crest on the pocket.) They don't want their fresh-painted buttoned-down golf cart driven by a hippie.
So what should I do, Dad? he asked me. Youth requesting guidance. Self-doubt and inexperience prepared to absorb the wisdom of years. Moments like this are why you become a father.
I think ... it's protest time! I said.
What?
We'll get banners and signs, and picket the place. Yacht Club Unfair. How does that sound? Or Navigate -- Don't Discriminate! Ooh, that's a good one. I'll call the press.
Dad? You're kidding, right?
2, 4, 6, 8, sailors we don't need your hate! Is there a railing in front of the yacht club? Maybe you could chain yourself to it. A great photo that'd make.
I started humming, We Shall Overcome. He hung up.
They say you shouldn't work out too hard your first day. Maybe that's true of the moral gymansium as well.

i feel so un-canadian

I said about a thousand posts ago that I would have something to say about Tim Horton's coffee, and now is my chance. I'm sitting in a busy airport, and Tim's is the only place I can get caffeine. (Another Velvet Underground moment for me. And no I am not talking about a walk on the wild side. This is the waiting for my man moment. Me and the wild side will be the subject for a post in the very distant future.) So anyway I am here in the waiting area by gate C56 and the Tim's cup is on the seat beside me (why didn't I stop at Starbucks on the way in? In this section of the airport it's Tim's or nothing), and I almost don't want to drink from it.

What do they put in the mix? There's a definite something. Or maybe it's something lacking. I do not have a brilliantly finicky palate. I don't care if it's Coke or Pepsi, butter or margarine, fresh squeezed or frozen. I can't tell one type of chocolate from another, and wine talk (overtones of cherry, leather, smoke, etc) makes me snicker. My mom can taste a sauce, pause, and then, with that inward eye, proceed to list all the ingredients. So can my daughter Imo. All I can tell is that the sauce is whitish or reddish or brownish. (My comments are more based on how it clashes with the table cloth or shirt I have spilled it on.) I guess these things skip a generation. But this coffee -- this coffee I am drinking now, while the perky lady announces that my flight is boarding its business class passengers -- is different from what I make at home. Different, and not as good.

So what is it? The flavour is ... mmm, let me roll the liquid around on my tongue. Now let me wipe the dribble off my face. Now let me roll again .... the word I want is .... DUMBER. Sounds mean, but I think I'm going to allow myself to say it. Tim's is made from dumb coffee beans. There's no sharpness, no depth, no excitement. The coffee does not grab me by the throat and say WAKE UP, SCRIMGER. It does not run a finger down my arm and say, Well, hello, big boy. It does not even smile at me. It clears its throat and says, Uh, hi. Then it turns away and coughs into a kleenex. If I met this coffee at a party, I would excuse myself and walk away.

Now that the business travellers and small babies are on board, my flight is ready for me. I have a couple of swallows left. My caffeine jones is gone for now but, like MacArthur, it will return. Should I finish the cup?

No, as it turns out because I knocked it over. One decision I won't have to make. Oh dear, it's all over the seat next to me. You know, I should pack up and go. But when I land in Vancouver I'm getting a coffee right away. There's a city that knows its coffee. Maybe my second favorite thing about the place.

old technology

Down memory lane yesterday, visiting one of the elementary schools I knew well as a kid. I never attended the school, but I lived in the neighborhood and played on its schoolyard. In fact I remember walking hand in hand with a girl (gasp! a girl) after dark when I was in grade seven, one of the top five moments in my life up until then. Ah, me. But that is not the point of this post.

Sometimes when I visit a school, the gym is festooned with Scrimgeriana, but not this time. What I did see was an old-style multi-bar apparatus folded back against the wall. We'd had one at my school too. When you pulled it out from the wall it became a mini climbing gym, about twenty feet high, with ladders to race up down and swing yourself across, ropes to wriggle on, bars to chin yourself. Did you see The Silence Of The Lambs? The climbing gym looks a bit like Hannibal Lecter's secure cell in the middle of the big room. Anyway, like I said, it was folded away, but I couldn't resist climbing up one of the ladders anyway. My muscles sang with energy. Yup, I still had it. I freed one of the ropes, and overhanded myself down to the gym floor as the kids were filing in.

They were amazed. Look what he can do, they said. From the dust on the bars, I was obviously the first person to use the apparatus in a generation. After my introduction a dozen hands shot up. How did you make that thing work? they asked, over and over.

I explained the gym to them it to them, and they nodded enthusiastically and peppered me with questions. This was obviously more interesting than novels about ravines or noses or blind guys. They must have wondered about the climbing gym for years, sitting there like a dinosaur skeleton in their back yard. I was reminded of the scene in the post-apocalytic Riddley Walker where our hero finds the giant machines and wonders about humankind's past. What they were, he says in wonder, and then, sadly, and what we are. On a more prosaic note I recalled the awe I felt when, as a small boy, I went with my grandpa to a store that sold phonographs, and he, without hesitation, opened the lid, found the crank, wound it up, and placed the needle on the record. How did you make that thing work, grandad? I'd asked.

me and ariel

As I write, Thea is in bed, with her window covered, and Sam is behind the counter at the gas station, waiting and hoping to be held up. I am back from a long day dealing with editors and publishers and fellow writers and student manuscripts. It's purer at home, me and the kids, me and the zombies, but every now and then I have to venture outside into the world. What is the song that Ariel the little mermaid sings: I want to be where the people are. Yes, that place. I don't think I have ever identified with Ariel before -- don't know how comfy I am doing it now -- but I sympathize with her desire to do what the strange creatures are doing, walking around on their feet. I want to be like the rest of the world too -- I want to be where the money is.

But I don't want to live there. I want to visit, and go back home to what I care about. It's not that I don't care about money -- I do. It's an important part of a balanced and nutritious bank account. But it's not real to me. I use money to buy wine and hamburgers and tuition and electricity and car repairs and soccer cleats and concert tickets -- and soap and long long-distance telephone calls -- and those are real. (Funny how the wine came first, eh? I think it has something to do with the time of night.) But money itself is as hard to wrap my head around as a quantum physics problem or a board meeting.

There are people out there who do understand money. (Probably not you, if you are taking the time to read my blog.) To them, money is a living flowing entity, as real and powerful as the tide. I am envious on the surface, I guess, since these people are often rich enough to afford better wine and more concert tickets than I can, but deep down I don't care enough. And that's what the real world is: it's what you care about. Maybe I'm not Ariel after all. I want to visit with the people on land, but live under the sea. I'm off to Toronto tomorrow to help Thea look for a new apartment. That's real. And right now I plan to spend an hour or two on the zombies. Strangely enough, they are real too.

So my question is: if I'm not Ariel (and I'm okay with that), which Disney character am I? Opinions welcome. More later.

blind ambition

Geez where does the time go? Almost a week since I checked in with you guys, and it's not like I have solved global warming or anything. Life takes time, even if all you are doing is trying to make it from lunch until dinner. When you are trying to write a book and edit another one and run a writing program and talk to gymfuls of kids and read a dozen manuscripts there's no time for blogging. There's barely time for the bathroom. I took an afternoon to help Thea find blinds, because a girl needs a window covering in her bedroom. And I even managed an extra hour to enjoy my kids catching up to the rest of the world, entertainment-wise. Back to that in a sec.

First I'll finish the blinds saga. You may recall that my daughter Thea and I went to Wal-Mart a bunch of times picking out blinds that were okay-looking and cheap, but did not work. (Sometimes two out of three equals zero. If it doesn't work, no matter what else it has going for it it's no good. I might revisit that thought too, but probably not today.) So we gave up on Wal-Mart and went to the window treatment store downtown ....and what a difference. To begin with, the greeter wore pearls. (Good play title, eh? The Greeter Wore Pearls.) And asked us (actually, to put it in her accent, she awsked us) if she could help us in our search for the perfect window treatment.

What? I said. I was still getting used to the place. It smelled of pot pourri. The lighting was soft and pleasing. The background music was semi-classical. The rest of the staff went about on lissom clerical printless toes. There were displays of complex drapery and ingenious shuttery and bewildering blindery.

The greeter -- I never found out her name, but she looked like a Gwendolyn -- repeated her request.

Thea was too overwhelmed to answer so I said, Sure. And I held my hands apart. We're looking for a cloth blind about this wide.

Gwendolyn didn't blanch because she was already the colour of freshly fallen snow, but she blinked a couple of times. What are the precise measurements of the window you wish to enhance? she asked. (again, her accent would make the word mayzhuamnts. I nodded approvingly. I liked hearing her talk.)

I don't know, I said. But it's about this big. I held my hands up again. Right Thea? This about the size?

She thought a bit and held up her hands. Yeah, about that. We faced each other in the middle of the store with our hands out, comparing sizes. A couple of people stared at us.

You know, I said to Gwendolyn. A regular window. So, what do you got?

She smiled faintly and shook her head. I'm afraid I cawn't help you until I know the exact mayzhuamnts, she said.

Oh, I said, looking around. Well, is there someone here who cawn -- I mean who can help us without that knowledge? See, Thea and I aren't locked into a world where a centimetre makes all the difference. We don't really care if the blind doesn't fit perfectly. Say, let me help you!

I'd shocked poor Gwendolyn. She staggered, and I caught her arm to steady her. The scene stretched out a bit, but there's no time to go into it. What happened is that I caught sight of the price of a display draperies (something like the one pictured here), and the idea of paying more than my car is worth to cover my daughter's bare window just didn't make any sense at all. I grabbed Thea and pulled her --not unwillingly -- out of the window treatment store. We said good-bye to Gwendolyn, who looked puzzled (maybe it wasn't her name after all) and went back to Wal-Mart. We bought a different kind of blind, and Guitar Hero III, and came home. Fifteen minutes later the blinds were up and the rest of the kids came over, and I got to spend time listening to old rock and roll and the laughter of my children. Not bad for a too-busy guy.

blind rage

Social comment time. My topic is the irritability of the poor. I'm not good at class distinctions, usually, believing in the essential sameness of people, rather than their differentness. I figure, for instance, that just about everyone would want to have a time-travelling castle, and a cannon that fires alligators at people. The only difference between rich and poor is that the rich are more likely to be able to afford stuff like this.

But I went with my daughter to Wal-Mart this morning, and was struck -- hard, like a fish in the face -- by how grumpy everyone was. Outside it was sunny and bright, a great day in late spring. Inside, all was gloom and anger. Kids were bratty. Grandparents were vinegary. Parents -- peanut butter in the generational sandwich -- all seemed to act like Ralph Kramden. I was quite distressed.

That was my first trip to Wal-Mart today. By the third trip, late in the afternoon, I found myself feeling and behaving like everyone else, pushing, frowning, whining, threatening. I blended in. A 1984-type moment, really, as I joined the Big-Brother crowd.

Thea wants new blinds for her room. Simple pull-down blinds that screw into the window frame. You've probably got some yourself. Blinds shopping did not go well today. No, not well at all. Three sets of blinds have not worked, due to missing or malfunctioning parts. Which means that Thea and I have spent a great deal of time in return-merchandise lines, telling our tale to puzzled blue-vested store clerks, having our receipts processed and stamped and written up. When I dropped the third set of non-functioning blinds on the counter, the jolly middle-aged woman behind the counter said, You again? You guys practically live in the store! You should buy a tent and camp out!

Earlier, I might have laughed lightly at her drollery, or perhaps made a cutting but witty commment about the likelihood of a Wal-Mart tent's staying together long enough for us to be able to camp out. But I was tired, and irritated. I leaned over the counter, and raised my fist. One of these days, Alice, I said. I don't know if her name was Alice, but she gave me back my money with no questions at all. I took it -- all 21.94 of it -- and drove downtown to the store that sells window treatments to the upper middle classes. And on the other side of the aged wooden door with the wrought iron hinges was a totally different experience. Don't have time to go into it now, but it was night and day. We got the saleslady without the lorgnette.