how about mel blanc ...

F12 time here, as the zombies approach their big scene. I'm beavering away at the book and making not much sense of anything else. I know I should be paying attention to the rest of my life, but somehow the book seems bigger. My larger children's essays, my smaller children's dinners, the hygiene of my person and my apartment (I'd love to call it a flat, which sounds British in a cool way, but it's really the upstairs of a house) --- all of these are crammed into the back pocket of my mental pants. My speeding ticket is on the back burner of my mental stove. My blog is in the back forty, my workout schedule is in the backwoods, my love life is knocking on the back door ... well, you get the idea.

Hey, maybe you can help. What's happening in the book is this: the town is on its way to being overrun, and our heroine is about to realize that she has been the cause of it all ... but she has no idea how to save the day from the consequences of her own meddling. The place needs a saviour. It needs Hugh Jackman or Jack Nicholson or Nicole Kidman (gee, that was fun. Where can we go with this? Kid Rock, Rocky Balboa, Bilbo Baggins ... okay, now we're stretching) --- in short, a hero for perilous times.


But I have no hero. That's my problem. I want to finish the book and return to the rest of my life, but I can't see my way out of my hero-less state. My cast of characters includes Ryan the misunderstood zombie, Marlee the lonely girl, her Uncle Ted the preacher, Dr Malik the worried hospital exec, assorted bullies who are due to get eaten, Granny Griselda, and her son Mr Grassmore the fifth-grade teacher and part-time Ninja. I don't see a hero there. Do you? (Yes, the picture's title is Part-time Ninja.) I don't see any of those roles played by Samuel L Jackson, or Jack Johnson or John Cougar Melloncamp ....

and we're back together

It's been a couple days since I posted, and do you want to know why? I have been driving all the time. There's nothing like recovering something you lost to make you appreciate it. I recall the mysterious disappearence of my Hot Wheels racer when I was eight or so. It wasn't my favorite toy, until I lost it. Then, suddenly, I had to find it. I hunted everywhere for it (which to a child means under my bed and in my closet and behind the couch in the living room), and whined to my parents (they told me to pipe down) and accused my brother of stealing it (he punched me) and was generally miserable for about a week, which is a long time for an eight year old. And then gradually I forgot about it, and went back to playing with dinosaurs and American Civil War soldiers (there were some mightly unlikely reconstructions, I tell you. Pickett's Charge with Stegosaurus support. General Grant leading a troop of giant T-Rex.)

A month or so later the Hot Wheels racer turned up in the basement, and I wept with joy. Couldn't get enough of it. I lived with the thing, brought it to meals, slept next to it. My parents were concerned. But they were smart enough to wait, and in time (say ... a week) I got used to having the Hot Wheels racer back in my life, and began to ignore it again.

So with the car. Give me time, and I will go back to taking it for granted. But for now I am in the bliss of a second honeymoon.

One other reason I spend so much time in the car is that I am driving slower. Much slower. Student drivers are passing me. Old men in hats are passing me. I wave at them as they speed by, several kilometres per hour over the posted limit.

Reckless, that's what they are.

job satisfaction

So after a week feeling naked (and not in a good way), I have my car and licence back. Saturday afternoon the DMV computer swallowed my name with hardly a burp, and then spat out my renewed licence. An hour later I was standing outside a barbed wire fence with a bulging pocket, waiting for my man. (No, this was not a Lou Reed moment. My man drove a tow truck and had keys to the wrecking yard where they were, uh, storing my car.)

I tell you, I felt truly tough. A real bad backroads criminal. Whoever writes the Highway Traffic Act must think I am someone real special to treat me the way they do. DUIs get their car back the next day, but weekend drivers enjoying a sunny afternoon -- dangerous guys like me -- have to wait a week.

The tow truck guy was nice enough, taking my money. I guess you tend to be nice when you are taking it in, rather than dishing it out. He did comment about the cops who gave me the ticket last week.

Those two are ticket kings, he said. They always work together, always at the top of the list at the end of the month.

That's great, I said, but I didn't mean it. Which is rare for me (not the polite lying part, I do that all the time), because I am usually happy to hear about people who like their work. Couple Fridays ago I ran out of my place with my hastily-filled recycling bag, and just made it to the curb as the garbage truck swung by. The guy on the back had the biggest grin on his face.

Give her here! he called, arms out to take my garbage. I tossed it, he dropped it in, and we shared an early morning thumbs-up. (Might have been a high-five if he had not been wearing the vilest gloves I have ever seen.) What I'm getting at is that he clearly loved his work, and that made me feel good.

Happy bees are one thing. Earnest, hardworking, productive, helpful. But there's something about traffic cops loving their work that's not so heartwarming. Hard to feel warm and fuzzy about happy ants, or happy mosquitoes.

equinox hangover

And we're up to Day 6 of my carless week. Purim today, time to get out the noisemakers. Or Good Friday, time to fast and abstain. Whichever of these festivals applies to you, I hope you are enjoying your day appropriately. Me, I'm a Vernal Equinox guy. Today it's time to wash off my woad from yesterday and clean the remains of the bacchanal. Nothing on the calendar until Beltane, darn. (Mind you, I'm already looking forward -- that's a Beltane celebration in the picture.)

Want to know what I miss most about having a car? That's right, the very thing I used to complain about. I miss driving the kids around. I never thought I would say that, but it's true. Driving Ed home from a soccer game or Imo from band practice, driving Thea and Sam to school -- these moments are precious. Time in the car with the kids is close time, when you can pay attention to things that matter. Not justice and war and religion (Equinox, when dawn rose on the twins your dance began!) but the things that really matter to you personally: music and sports and TV and snack foods, weird things that teachers and friends and relatives have done. The actual building blocks of a shared existence.

I don't know if I'll get my licence back tomorrow (there's a problem with the timing, since the DMV closes before my licence is officially ready for renewal) but I hope to get the car back. And I'll sit in it while Imo or Thea drives home from Peterborough, and, you know, I'll bet we don't talk about God or Iraq once. We'll talk about important things. Guitar Hero, say.

being a sport

And we're on to day 5 of my traumatic week. Let's take a little time off from musing on speeding tickets and human frailty, to talk about furniture moving. That's what happened last night when the kids came over. There's less for them to do here than at the big house, and they get tired of eating, watching soccer and Simpsons, and playing cards, so when homework was over last night I asked them what they wanted to do and they said: Move the furniture.

Fair enough.

I thought the living room was looking pretty good -- two couches, book case, end table, TV, and some room to move around -- but Imo and Ed wanted to bring in The Big Chair. It's so comfortable, said Ed, and it is, but it takes up a lot of space. Trying to fit it into the living room would, I said, be like trying to cram more than one elephant into a phone booth. The kids looked puzzled.

(Time for a quick geezing sidebar on the vanishing phone booth. Nowadays if you need a public phone you tend to get a receiver on a pole. And it tends not to work. I wonder what college kids are cramming each other into. I wonder where Clark Kent is changing. To be honest I don't know that I miss the actual smelly dirty little booths, but I miss the idea of them. How do we express the image of a very small contained space with one function? Okay, I'm done.)

With a reasonable amount of grunting and lifting and pivoting and so on, we manoeuvered The Big Chair from the spare bedroom to the living room. It took up all the free floor space. Now there was nowhere to stand.

See what I mean? I told the kids. No room.

But they disagreed. Let us arrange it Dad, they said. So I went to the kitchen to do dishes, and when I returned, my living room looked like a cross between a furniture warehouse and the stateroom scene from A Night At The Opera.

Isn't it great? Imo called, from her prone position on the purple couch.

Isn't it great? echoed Ed from the depths of The Big Chair.

How do I get into the room? I asked. Because there was furniture everywhere. Forget wheelchair access, you had to be a bit of a steeplejack to find a seat. The kids laughed and laughed. Climb over! they cried. Come on, Dad, be a sport.

I opened my mouth to tell them put it all back the way it was -- but I could not form the words. They were having too much fun. And so I smiled and climbed the back of The Big Chair, sliding over Ed to get to the other couch. If I ever throw a party, I'll have to change things around, but for now I am happy to be a sport.

counterpunch

Day 4, and I am no longer reeling against the ropes. I have begun my counter-attack against the heavyweight in the black and white trunks, carrying a radar gun. I have my arms up, at least. I have hired Len and Cheryl, very calm folks with a background in law enforcement, to fight my speeding ticket for me.

They are a good team. Cheryl is sympathetic. Oh, that's too bad, she comments when I tell her my plight. She doesn't actually say much more than this, but her attitude shows that she is very much on my side. I can hear her thinking, You are such a good man, how could they have done this to you? There, there, honey, you put your head right here and let me make it all better for you.

Len is not so much sympathetic as non-judgmental. And calm. He is so calm. I can picture him on the phone with a murderer. Uh huh, he would say. And how big was the knife you used? Uh huh. With serrations? Yeah, I know that kind -- I have one at home myself. And, uh, how many times did you stab the victim? Twenty or thirty, eh? Yeah, it's tough to keep count, isn't it. Well, that's all I need right now...

It's important to have people on your side. I would not choose loyalty over competence, in this case, but I can appreciate the position of the dictator who brings in his guys simply because he can count on them. (I'd use inclusive language here but for the life of me I cannot come up with any female dictators. Plenty of tough female bosses. I'm sure Condoleezza has her guys.) Len and Cheryl are my guys

carfree

Day 3 -- The joys of carlessness. Yes, you'd figure this post to be a short one. Not that carful and joyful go together, but absence of something useful is seldom fun. I mean, there are lots of unhappy people out there who have the use of both their legs, but the odds are that the guy in the wheelchair is not cheering because he can't walk. Still and all, a couple of carfree moments come to mind. For instance, when I lost the car I was in the middle of farmland, and had to call a friend to pick me up. And I didn't want to stand around being snickered at by the police, so I decided to walk up the highway in the direction my friend would be coming. And after a mile or so I actually began to enjoy the walk. A sunny afternoon in early spring, moving briskly through the rolling hills of Northumberland -- not bad. (Of course I was used to moving briskly -- that was the whole problem. Maybe I should practice walking slower.) Took me back to my youth when I hiked through Europe. The sun lay warm on my back, and the rich smell of mud and water and cow rose pleasantly in my nostrils. As long as I concentrated on the moment, rather than the large picture, I was happy.

That's they key. Being carless, carfree if you like, gives me a chance to appreciate the now. Cars make time disappear. Toronto in an hour. Ottawa in three. Montreal in four. New York or Chicago in a day. You are always on your way somewhere. When you have to walk, or bike, or wait for a cab or train, you have a chance to be where you are, instead of where you are going.

And you can hear compliments. No one has ever said anything nice about my body while I was in the car (hmm, what does that say about my high-school dating career) but as I was riding away from the YMCA front door last night, proud and sweaty of my workout self, I heard a voice say, distinctly, Nice butt. I whirled round, but the door was closing on whomever had made the comment. I rode away with an absurd little smile on my face.