What a way to die!

Most people will tell you that they'd rather die peacefully, without pain, even in their sleep.  But I'm not so sure.  Since you only die once, maybe you should have a big, flamboyant exit.  Something like James Cagney in White Heat, climbing to the top of the oil refinery and blowing the whole place to kingdom come.  And there was a guy in Hiroshima right below the bomb, and all that was left of him was his shadow on a wall.

As for what to do with my body, I'd prefer cremation.  My only problem with worms is that they work slowly.  And I don't care for getting a little section of land that posterity has to grant sanctity to.  Tibetans and Parsees feed you to the vultures, which is eco-friendly.  In China they have "tree burials," where they cremate you and plant a tree over your ashes.  I think that's what I'd like best:  the idea of a living memorial appeals to me.  And the tree species I'd prefer is oak.

Hair coloring

When I was a teenager, one of my only heroes was Sex Pistols lead singer Johnny Rotten, whose hair was a flaming orange.  And I didn't even listen to punk rock that much, I just liked the idea of it. Dare to be negative! (I remember the last episode of The Brady Bunch where Bobby was peddling a shampoo that turned Greg's hair orange.  At least they said it was orange--we only had a black and white TV set back then.)

Beatrice, my choir director, used to dye her hair black, but recently she's let it go gray.  I have a few gray hairs, but if anything I'd rather frost my temples to increase their number.

A landmark building

When I was a Ph.D. student, I often visited the Robarts Library on the University of Toronto campus.  I have to admit it looks pretty ugly (though Umberto Eco admires it). Remember those British cartoon adventure shows from the 1960s like Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet?  Those puppets would be at home in that building.

But it is a great library.  To get to the main stacks you have to take the elevators up to the top floors, so you're studying in an "elevated" milieu. (I like that there's a mezzanine connection between the tenth and eleventh floors, and between the twelfth and thirteenth.)

I've also spent a lot of time on the fourth and fifth floors where they have microfilms and stuff. (They also have a big globe there.) One an earthquake tremor happened in Toronto and I felt it slightly on the fifth floor.

I haven't been there in recent years.  But it has the biggest book collection I've ever encountered.  If the Toronto public library system doesn't have a book, chances are Robarts does have it.

Impromptu speaking

I haven't had a lot of occasions to speak in public.  One came when I was living at Goodenough College in London back in the mid-'90s.  Desiree McGraw organized a recycling group and I helped a lot with it.  I'd take things out to the big recycling bin out on the street.  Unfortunately, at first I didn't realize that in Britain "cans" only mean aluminum cans. (Tin cans they call "tins.") I also took some stuff up to the big recycling center in Camden Town.

A lot of beer and wine bottles accumulated in a smelly basement room.  One time I was taking away a big load for recycling.  When Mrs. Vickers the warden saw me carrying them, she thought they were my bottles and said, "I hadn't thought you were a drinking man." That was really funny to me because, like my parents, I never drink.

So the occasion for me to speak came near the end of my stay when my residence, William Goodenough House, had a big meeting.  Unexpectedly, it was up to me to speak about the recycling program.  So I got up and talked about how we were doing it and encouraged other volunteers.  I did it pretty well.  In fact, some people were impressed that I managed to do it in two minutes flat!

The best therapy (marijuana)

I really can't say anything about smoking pot.  I've never smoked it or noticed anyone else smoking it.  But I will say that it should be legalized and regulated, not because it's totally harmless but because its illegal status just makes it more harmful.  That goes for other drugs too.  History will look back on the "war on drugs" as a prolonged disaster.

I once saw a drug transaction on the northeast corner of St. Clair & Oakwood.  A couple of scruffy-looking guys exchanged money and a pill capsule.  They weren't bothering me, and I didn't bother them.

Classroom fights

(This is a subject I suggested.)

I'm not the type who usually gets into fights.  But I remember when I was twelve.  I was a sensitive kid, and some kids gave me a hard time.  Grownups expected me to ignore it all and call that a solution, but I got angrier and angrier.

One spring day, in science class we had a complicated experiment to do involving Bunsen burners.  We normally did these experiments in teams of two, but for this one the teams were paired into groups of four.  Now this science teacher bore a grudge against my family because my university professor father had given her husband a failing grade, as a result of which he couldn't graduate.  Now she paired me and my lab partner with the two people she knew good and well I didn't get along with.  I begged her to pair us with someone else, but she wouldn't listen.

I ended up hitting one of these guys, and got sent to the principal's office. (No consequences for the other guy.) Later, when I told my mother about it, she got really angry.  Getting mad at the teacher and the school was her second reaction; her first was to get mad at me.  My parents were so angry that they actually took me out of school for a whole week, until they lost their nerve.  I was a bit resentful:  they shouldn't have suggested this course of action if they didn't mean it.  But Mother simply couldn't think of anything else to do about it.

I also got in a fight that fall.  I'd made a promise to myself, "If this guy bothers me one more time, I will let my fists fly." (It was the only way I could get through the day.) Then one day, before long, I had to deliver on my promise.  This time I didn't tell my parents, and they only found out when the school phoned them.

Snowstorms

I used to like snow when I was little.  We had a big yard compared to Toronto, so we sometimes got big snowdrifts!  Then we'd need the big scoop shovel to clear the driveway. (We never bought a snow blower.) The last winter snowstorm would often happen around St. Patrick's day.

Days when school was cancelled because of snow weren't uncommon in rural New Brunswick.  But not all winters were the same.  I remember one year when they started a cross-country skiing group in my junior high school, but there was never enough snow for it!

Snowmobilers would sometimes pass through our property. (They killed a couple of our trees.) I've never ridden a snowmobile myself.  I prefer stuff like tobogganing and skating.

There aren't a lot of big snowstorms in Toronto these days.  But when one happens, I remember my youth.

May

Living in the city today, spring doesn't mean so much to me.  But when I was growing up in rural New Brunswick, winter was fiercer and spring was more welcome. (Or at least it seemed that way in my youth.) There'd sometimes be warm weather in April, but it was in May that the real warm weather started.

Mind you, it could still get cold in May.  When we drove on rural roads we'd sometimes see some vestigial snow in the ditch.  In a few years, it even snowed in May!

May was the month when we'd start to prepare our vegetable garden.  I'd start by deepening the ditches around it, digging up mud and dumping it on the garden side banks.  My brother John complained that this had a "diking" effect, but I couldn't see any other way to do it.  I should have said, "Do it yourself if you want it done better." (John was the big gardening expert, but I did more of the work.)

We'd also till the ground before planting. (We used to rent a machine for that.) We bought our seeds from a Vesey's catalogue in P.E.I.  After I'd moved to Toronto in 1990, for a few years I'd continue to visit New Brunswick in May and get the seeds planted, until my parents moved to Toronto too.

My first date

This is actually a recent memory:  I had my first dinner date about six months ago. (Better late than never.) It started when I went to a trivia contest at Kramer's near Davisville station.  My team won, and the prize was a Kramer's gift certificate.  I was willing to share it with the others, but I'd so dominated the team that they let me use it myself.

So I took Cecilia to dinner there.  She's a Brazilian whom I met in the Classic Movies Meetup group.  I wore my green cardigan, which I don't usually wear.  I kissed her hand, but maybe that was overdoing it.  For the life of me, I can't remember what I ate.  I have yet to go on a second date.

February

I'm partial to February simply because my birthday is then. (I was born on the same day, month and year as the actress Jennifer Jason Leigh.) When I was little, there was a hit song "The Age of Aquarius" from the hippie musical Hair.  So I associated the Aquarius sign with hippies, who rather scared me.  Imagine my surprise when one day I looked up my astrological sign and found out it was Aquarius!

People talk about the February blues, but they don't seem to affect me that much.  I've always been a bit of an indoor person myself, so winters don't get to me.  I really enjoyed snow when I was young.  Today I'm in the city and don't encounter as much of it as I did back then.

February is also the month of Valentine's Day, which never really interested me.  Even today I'm not much of a romantic type.  My idea of something romantic is fighting for Tibet's liberation.

Betrayal

When have I felt betrayed?  There was the time when I was about fifteen and my parents had taken me out of school and had me take Grade 10-level correspondence courses with the New Brunswick Community College.  The first math lesson involved a Venn diagram, and I correctly answered 9.  But there was a mark next to it so the market thought I'd written 91.  He would have known that I meant 9 if he'd looked at my diagram, but he just wrote on it, "Too small and messy." He concluded, "Do over properly!" And I couldn't ignore him, I had to do it over again.

I asked my parents to contact the Community College and complain, but they just said, "We aren't going to have anything to do with him because he's unreasonable!" Which meant I was on my own.  What bothers me is that they were rewarding him for being unreasonable!  Because they were afraid of him, of course.

That was just the start of the troubles in the six courses I was taking.  As my course work went on, I got angrier and angrier. (I eventually got an ulcer.)  It went on so long that I ended up writing rude things to the markers.  And now Mother started worrying that I'd hurt their feelings.  When they hurt my feelings, that just meant that I was too sensitive.

Now here comes the betrayal.  My parents insisted that I write a note of apology to the markers.  Even though there was never a single complaint about my rudeness, Mother got the idea inside her head that I had to apologize in order to finish the courses.  Though what I wrote wasn't an apology, my resentment was (and is) permanent.  It was a very bad time in my life.

My biggest mistake

I don't like to think about the mistakes I've made.  Sometimes I consider what I'd do differently if I were living my life over.  One thing is that I'd have started developing my singing and acting talents while still young. (As it is, I've started developing them in recent years.)

Another thing is that I would have made a bigger effort to reciprocate friendliness.  There have been times when people were friendly to me and I was capable of nothing beyond an awkward response. (My social development has been slow, possibly because of Asperger's Syndrome.)

There's one mistake that I remember in particular, though it certainly wasn't my biggest one.  Back in the 1990s I moved to London for eight months to research my Ph.D. thesis and was living alone for the first time.  On my first weekend there I went out to do some shopping on Oxford Street, which has a lot of stores.  Unfortunately, that weekend was the 50th anniversary of V-E Day, and they were having a big World War II exhibit nearby in Hyde Park.  So Oxford Street proved to be even more crowded and uncomfortable than usual.  It was the wrong time to go there.

The funny thing was, I actually ended up feeling pleased about this mistake, because it was my mistake!  I liked the feeling of being completely responsible for myself, even in my mistakes.  I made a mistake and world didn't stop.

Potluck dinners

I've been to a few potluck dinners.  The problem with them is that people tend to bring way too much food.  If I were arranging one I'd have about half the people bring food, and the other half drinks and such.

At home we sometimes have potluck to get rid of leftovers. (How did people do this before microwaves?) I can usually be relied on to finish off the pasta, especially when it includes fettucine alfredo. (I cook a good fettucine alfredo.) Except that I don't care for vegetarian lasagna.  Sometimes I'll get corn on the cob and eat that while the others eat the leftovers.

Sometimes my brother John and his girlfriend Kathrine come over and bring dinner.  Except that they're vegans, and I rarely care for vegan food. (Vegans make you appreciate mere vegetarians, who are easier to cook for.) Generally I'll sneak out to McDonald's or KFC after a while.  So I don't care for vegan leftovers either.

But I do approve of people eating as little meat as they can.  In both world wars they had Meatless Mondays, and I say we should bring them back.  You could say that I'm a hypocrite to encourage others not to eat meat while I eat it myself.  But there it is.  I'm just glad that I like some foods without meat.

Being chosen last

(This is a subject I suggested.)

When I was in Grade 7 gym class, when we separated into two groups for a game, the teacher would sometimes let the boys choose their own teams. (No doubt progressive educational theory talked about giving children responsibility.) But I say they should pass an Act of Parliament to outlaw the practice.  For yes, it was my lot to be chosen last.  Every single time.  If I'd just been chosen second-last I wouldn't have minded.

At least the guys who did the choosing enjoyed it.  After all, they were being given the power to rate all the others, in order.  One time I was not only chosen last, but both teams insisted that the other team take me, and they both stood their ground.  There always has to be someone chosen last, but this was sheer meanness.  They were simply drunk with power.

Some kids enjoy gym class, but I never did.

Something that was not as it appeared to be

I don't recall being fooled by appearances too often.  There was the time that my family and I were staying at a place in France.  When they served dinner, the host brought out this big fancy soup tureen, and filled it with Campbell's Tomato Soup.

Of course, there have been times when I belied my own appearance.  I remember when I was a Ph.D. student at York University preparing for my comps (comprehensive exams), my sister Moira doubted that I was taking the prospect seriously.  Then when the exam happened, I knocked 'em dead!  Similarly, on the night before my final Ph.D. examination I went out to the movies. (Appropriately enough, it was a German silent film titled Destiny.) But I passed in the end.

A Meetup group

Just thought I'd mention that I started a Meetup group for people to attend these memoir sessions.  At the pre-Thanksgiving session only six people came (at least we had time for a third subject), and Selia was concerned about the group's future.

Since I'm already organizing a Meetup group (for people reading aloud), I can organize a second with no additional fees.  In this way we can appeal to a whole new group of people.  And I enjoy the group this much that I want to guarantee its future.

So I created the new group on Meetup, and it's already attracted about ten people!  At yesterday's session three of the nine people were from Meetup, and a couple more are likely to come next week.  The sky's the limit!

Saturday rituals

(Note:  this is a subject I suggested.)

My big Saturday morning ritual used to be reading the newspaper with the big weekend comics.  I followed Peanuts and Li'l Abner and Dick Tracy. (Mary Worth and Rex Morgan, M.D. I mostly skipped over.) The year we were in Mississauga we got The Toronto Star, whose weekend comics included Mary Perkins on Stage and Steve Roper & Mike Nomad.

I used to watch old movies on Saturday morning TV. (They'd introduce the show with a jazzed-up version of Verdi's Anvil Chorus.) These films included Shirley Temple and Joe E. Brown vehicles, and movies of the comic strip Blondie.

In the afternoon we'd often go swimming at the university athletic center.  The pool would play this Tijuana Brass record on the speaker system, so I've always associated "A Taste of Honey" with swimming.

In the early '70s I'd watch Mission:  Impossible on Saturday evenings.  What a cool show that was! (Especially the music.) I'd often watch the beginning of Hockey Night in Canada, though I was never interested enough to watch a whole game.  Before it came on, I'd watch the closing credits of Hawaii Five-O, with the Hawaiians paddling a canoe to another cool musical theme.

Bad grades

(Note:  this is a subject I suggested.)

I my school years, I usually got very good grades.  But I had difficulties in one year when we moved to Mississauga and I entered Grade 7 there.

In history and geography class the teacher wrote stuff on the blackboard in note form and the next moment I'm hearing, "Write it down, write it down, hurry up!" So I copied the notes into my exercise book, feeling stupid but not knowing what else to do.  Then I got an E in history and a D Minus in geography.  It turned out that I was supposed to expand on these notes, and after this was belatedly explained to me my grades here improved.

In science class we were told to do reports on weeds, so I did a report on chicory.  The science teacher called it "atrocious" and sent a note to my parents. (She had to ask me for their address.)

In art class the first week we were told to paint squares, so I painted some blue squares.  I'd never been in an art class before and thought it was an accomplishment just getting it done.  The following week the art teacher returned my painting with a 1 out of 5 grade and a comment that the edges were messy. (If someone had advised me to improve the edges, I would have been willing to do so.) What bugged me is that she didn't have time to grade each week's work and only graded the first week in order to start out with a show of power.  Which meant that kids like me didn't get a chance to earn a better grade next time.  I ultimately got a D minus in art.

I failed industrial arts class, but who cares?

Not all my courses were troubled.  I've always been good at math, and did somewhat better in English (though I got a D on the Jack London story "To Build a Fire.") I also did well in French, but that was easy because I'd been learning it for years in New Brunswick, while the other kids were only starting on it.

I also failed a swimming course that fall.

Breakfast

I eat a rather austere breakfast:  an apple, an orange, a banana, a carrot, sometimes an extra fruit like a pear or a peach. (Fried foods in the morning I don't care for.) I always eat the orange first, and the carrot last.  And I usually avoid eating the banana second-last:  for some reason,  I don't like eating a carrot when I still have the taste of a banana in my mouth.

My sister Moira likes the big breakfasts they serve in New York City.  She once said that her only reason for visitin New York would be to have a New York breakfast, but she knows places in Toronto that serve it. (There are also places that serve a high-calorie British breakfast.)

I remember the TV commercials for sugar-coated kiddie cereals that called them "part of this nutritious breakfast," and they'd show the cereal next to foods that were nutritious.  It was pretty shameless.

Trips & vacations

My mother was born in Cape Breton, and we'd visit that area most summers.  We'd camp near Baddeck, and some of us attended the Gaelic College and learned things like piping. (That didn't interest me.) We also visited my Aunt Alma near Sydney.  And we'd go up to Cape Breton Highlands National Park, with Ingonish Beach and walking trails.  The scenery there is pretty dramatic.

We'd also visit Prince Edward Island in the summer. (This was before they built Confederation Bridge, when you had to use a ferry.) There was a national park there too with a nice beach at Cavendish.  And we went to Charlottetown's Confederation Center, where they put on musicals like Anne of Green Gables.

We visited the United States a few times.  We happened to be in Washington, D.C., at the time of the Watergate break-in. (Mother spotted it as something important.) We were also in the underground parking lot where the reporters met Deep Throat.

At first we used an umbrella tent, but later we bought a trailer. (We eventually sold it for the same price we'd paid, though there'd been some inflation in the meantime.) Later, after we started our garden, we'd store vegetables in the trailer.

What I remember about farm life

I've never lived on a farm.  But my family had an organic garden starting in 1976. (My brother John was big believer in organic principles.) We'd plowed an area next to our back yard, then bought a big pile of horse poop to put on it.  We also got some seaweed from near our cottage for more fertilizer.  Then we hired a guy to come harrow it with his machine.  Father was out back talking to this guy, who was laughing a lot, and Mother thought Father was telling him stories.  But it turned out he was drunk.

Gardening can be a lot of work.  In that spring of 1976, I was out back digging ditches around the garden, where there hadn't been any ditches before.  It was so exhausting that I ended up in bed in the afternoon.  Then later a friend came around with gardening experience, who said that the ditches had to be wider and deeper.  That got to me.

Success varied year by year.  In 1979 the weeds really took over, and the only thing that grew well was pumpkins.  But other years were better.  In 1986 one of the parents got the bright idea of growing extra peas between the rows of corn, and between rows of potatoes.  The only problem was that these extra rows were hard to weed, and the result was that we had to all go out on the rainiest day of the year and pick weeds.

Even after I moved to Toronto in 1990, I'd come back to New Brunswick in May and plant the garden.  But that ended when my parents moved to Toronto too in 1994. (That last year we only planted peas.) Here in Toronto we only have room for a small garden, but I'm still trying to make a go of it.  It's now time to harvest our potatoes.

September

[Note:  this is a subject I submitted.]

September's probably my favorite month.  The weather's no longer as hot as the summer peak, and it isn't yet cold.  That's also the time when school starts, and for a long time I thought of it as the true beginning of the year.  And I guess I hoped that the new school year would be less aggravating than the last one, though it usually wasn't.

September is also a time when the leaves start dying on the maple trees, changing color and falling off. (The oak leaves take longer.) After we started a garden, there'd be vegetables to harvest then.  I remember the smell when Mother cooked our tomatoes with vinegar and spices to make chow chow preserves.  And there would also be the first frosts, with the lawn turning grey in the morning.

I guess I think of September as a time to get serious and start your long-term plans.  For me, it's a time of beginnings.  There was this Japanese movie called After Life where people who have just died spend a week deciding on a single memory of their life to take into eternity.  I think my memory would be coming home from school in Sackville for lunch along York Street, lined with tall trees, in September.

The best compliment I've received

I'm not so anxious to get complimented. (I'm happy if I don't get criticized.) I do remember one from the year I spent taking dancing lessons at the Arthur Murray studio about a decade ago.  It cost me about $15,000, but it improved my posture. (Watch how I push a shopping cart now.)

Anyway, my dance teacher Cynthia called me a gentleman.  That's because at the studio's dance parties I'd make an effort to dance with every girl in the place.  And if I saw a new girl, I'd dance with her first.  It wasn't so much that I wanted to be gentlemanly; more that I needed some scheme otherwise I wouldn't know whom to dance with at all.  I have Asperger's Syndrome and we tend to be like that.

I've had a lot of people tell me I'm smart, but that doesn't seem so important. (Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge.) Sometimes when people like me, I wonder why.  But that's better than wondering why people don't like you (or worse, knowing why they don't).

I saw a documentary about Dolly Madison which mentioned a compliment she received:  someone said that after you met her, you'd not only like her, you'd like yourself more than you did before.  I hope I'll be worthy of a compliment that high someday.

Unusual meals

I'm not much into unusual foods.  I didn't start eating Chinese food till I was fourteen or so.  I discovered Indian food when I was twenty-six, living in Glasgow. (I later found out that Glasgow is a big center for Indian cuisine.) Later, when I moved to Toronto, I discovered Ethiopian food, which is served on a bed of puffy bread that you break off to hold the meat instead of silverware.

It was also in Toronto that my sister Moira and I discovered some new kinds of food.  I learned to make fettucine alfredo and stir-fry food, both from recipes on a calendar promoting milk.  I also know how to bake gingerbread.

I have eaten a few unusual foods in my time.  When I was little, I liked to eat a single frozen french fry raw from time to time.  When I was thirteen, my brother John dared me to eat a whole can of cherry pie filling, and I did it! (I don't think I got sick.) When we started growing peas in our garden, I liked to eat them raw. (I think they like raw peas in Finland.)

Change of residence

I moved from a small town in New Brunswick here to Toronto back in 1990.  One of the first things I noticed about Toronto was all the Chinese people. (There were few Chinese back in my hometown.) When I travelled on the subway it was such an amazing experience that I couldn't imagine how anyone could read on the subway.  But within a month I was doing it too.

I'd changed residences before.  My father was a university professor and every seven years or so he'd get a sabbatical and we'd move elsewhere for a year.  When I was four, we lived in Brighton, England; thirteen, Mississauga; twenty, England then Toronto; twenty-seven, Glasgow, Scotland.  I remember the strange feeling I'd always get when we returned home and I recognized the house's smell, which lingered for a few days.

I also spent eight months in London, England, when I was thirty-three, researching my Ph.D. thesis and staying at Goodenough College in Bloomsbury.  It was the best eight months of my life!

I still miss the expanses of the country somewhat.  Back in New Brunswick we had a big garden next to the back yard where we grew peas, potatoes, corn and some other stuff.  Here in Toronto we have a garden, but it's a lot smaller and the shade from the house and a nearby tree limits how much you can grow.  These days I'm just growing potatoes there.

TV commercials

When we were kids, my older brother disapproved of TV commercials.  He said they were "brainwashing" me.  What bothered me is that he'd insist on changing the channel during commercial breaks, not to watch something else but just to avoid the commercials.  And every second I'd be wondering, "Will he turn back in time, or will I miss part of the show because of his purity?" (I was the type who hated missing part of the show.) So I'd start nagging him, well before I had to, asking "Are the commercials over?"

I do remember a lot of commercials.  Back in the mid-1970s the Jello people were concerned that their product was seen as artificial, so the Mad men came up with "the Jello tree." And there was this commercial where some cute kids were stealing Jello from a tree, and a farmer would shout "Hey, you kids get out of that Jello tree!" But they got concerned that these kids were bad role models, so they redubbed it as "Hey, you kids getting me something from the Jello tree?" (A whole generation must remember that commercial.)

Another commercial I remember is from the early 1980s, for a group of video games.  Some guy said, "You own a computer and you don't have Pac-Man and Defender and Donkey Kong?  That's like having a stereo with no hit records!" I found that unintentionally funny:  what's wrong with having records that are good rather than popular?

I don't recall ever buying a product specifically because of a commercial I saw.  But maybe I'm just too brainwashed to realize it.

Expectations

I'm not big on expectations.  I'm the type who lives in the present.  But I remember that when I was a little kid in the 1960s, people like me expected that in the twenty-first century we'd be all over outer space. (The present time seemed to be eons into the future back then.)

I've been reading the reprints of the comic strip Peanuts and last week there was this episode where Charlie Brown said that the key to happiness, among other things, is having three things to look forward to.  And I realized I don't have that much to anticipate.  Tonight I'm starting my old choir with a new director and she's giving it a new focus which will mean a lot of new music to learn. I'm looking forward to that, because I remember how much I enjoyed my first year in the choir, when all the music was new to me.

I'm cautious about looking forward to things today, partly because one of my life lessons is that if you look forward to something too much you're asking for disappointment.  Sometimes something will justify your hopes, but even then in hindsight it won't seem very important.  It's the defeats and disappointments that we really seem to remember.

Forbidden fruit

When I was young, my mother had a lot of things she didn't approve of.  One of them was the TV show The Monkees.  Another was Mad magazine.  But I did read some Mad reprints, and sometimes the humor went over my head.  I've read those reprints again as an adult and now I get all the jokes.

I think Mother also disapproved of the TV show Laugh-In, but I never watched that. (I saw an episode as a grownup, and it was dreadful!) I also recall they wouldn't let me watch the Gilligan's Island episode where the headhunters wanted to sacrifice Mrs. Howell to a volcano.

My parents were also choosy about the comic books we read.  They approved of Donald Duck and Little Lulu and Archie and Richie Rich and Classics Illustrated, but I read very few superhero comics, let alone stuff like Conan the Barbarian.

My parents were very concerned to keep me away from scary stuff, but I'm not sure that was best for me.  In the miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man there's a scene where Nick Nolte puts a snake in his son's crib so he won't be afraid of snakes when he's older. (The boy's mother has a fit.) Sometimes I wish someone had put a snake in my crib.

The joys of senility

My mother died a few months ago, and in her last years, I could see her slowing down.  She spent a lot of time in bed, and when she went outdoors she needed someone's arm to hold.  And her eyesight declined.  She could no longer sew buttons back on, and she had a hard time reading, something she greatly enjoyed.  But my father is still very active, selling used books online and helping to renovate the house.

I'm only 51, and not yet senile. (People tell me I look young for my age.) I now use bifocals, and sometimes have trouble focusing on really small writing, but my eyesight is basically intact.  And I still hear well.  I have a few grey hairs, and I'd actually welcome some more around my temples.  Seems to me I'd have a more sophisticated look then. (Maybe I should frost them!)

But it's true that I don't quite have the energy I once had.  I've visited London, England, several times and always do a huge amount of walking and sightseeing.  But when I visited last year, my feet got sore.  After visiting the big museums in South Kensington, I was glad to bathe my feet in the Princess Diana fountain.  Or maybe I'm just more sensitive to sore feet than I used to be!

Clocks & watches

Mother always liked antiques.  At our home we have a fancy antique clock with a case in the style of a Greek temple with pillars and such.  I think it was built by German-Canadians.  There's a label on it that shows it was built in Berlin, Ontario, where a lot of Germans lived, before 1914. (Then World War I broke out and the local Germans showed their patriotism by renaming the town Kitchener after the big British general.)

I miss windup watches.  Today they only seem to sell battery watches, which run by themselves until the battery dies and needs replacing. [In fact, my watch battery had died just that day.] I miss the daily ritual of winding your watch in the morning.  It was a bit like feeding the pet I never owned.

I never had any difficult learning to tell time, what with the TV age and all.  But I was a long time learning to tie my shoes.  A neighborhood kid once jeered at me, "Can you tie your shoes?" I remember once in school when we took off our shoes for some reason, and when we were putting them back on some girls made fun of me because I had to retie mine in a sitting position while they were doing it in a crouch. (Whoopdedoo.) [I moved away from the table to demonstrate these positions to the rest of the group.]

Customs & Immigration

I've never really had problems with customs and immigration people.  I remember getting my first passport when I was seventeen.  When I got my picture taken I was so afraid of the camera flash that my expression ended up an inelegant frown.

I haven't often visited countries that require a visa.  Almost twenty years ago I visited my sister who was teaching English in the Czech Republic, and I had to get a Czech visa beforehand, but that was pretty easy.  I visited China a few years later, but their visas were also easy to get:  they value their tourists.

I did have one problem in the mid-1990s.  I'd spent eight months researching my Ph.D. thesis in London, England.  Almost a year after returning to Toronto, I had to apply to get into the Ontario health care program.  I had a Canadian passport, and thought that would be enough.  But it turned out that the bureaucrats wanted proof that I was a Canadian resident as well as citizen. (They were afraid that I was a Canadian citizen who'd become a British resident who was now returning to Canada to sponge off the Canadian health care system.)

What bugged me was this.  At the place where you applied you'd stand in a preliminary queue for twenty minutes, before ascertaining that your papers were in order.  Then you'd go to the main queue and wait two more hours.  In my case, they told me at the first place that I had the right papers, but then at the second place they wanted more.  The first time I went back for better papers, but the second time they said it still wasn't good enough!  This time I put up a fuss about all the time I was wasting in their queues.  I was lucky:  they ended up giving me the coverage.

Looking through windows

When I was little, I'd sometimes look out the back window at nothing in particular.  My mother said it ran in her family and called it "foxing," like a fox staring out of his den.

When I woke up in the morning I'd open my curtains and look out the window at our front yard. (We lived in a small town in New Brunswick and our front yard was pretty big.) In late September and October, the temperature would get cold enough for frost at night, and in the morning when I looked out the window I'd see a light white blanket over the green grass, which soon thawed.  In hindsight, that's one of the things I miss most about life in New Brunswick.

When I first lived in Toronto, twenty years ago, I had a room in a house just south of the Wychwood Barns.  Back then they stored their old buses and streetcars there and you could see them from the window.  When they got rid of the electric trolleys, they all came there, too.  The advantage of living there was that they patrolled the Wychwood Barns a lot, so the nearby houses were pretty safe from burglars.

Today, when I look out the window of the west side of my room, I see the tall tower of our neighborhood fire station.  I've always wanted to climb that tower and see the view from the top.  It's near St. Clair West, and I'm sure you can see the downtown skyscrapers from there.  But I imagine I never will see that view.

Bargains

I'm not the sort who's always alert to the best bargains.  It goes back to when I was little.  I didn't get an allowance, and I didn't need one, because I rarely spent money.  I was slow to get into consumer culture.

But I must say that my father is alert to them. (I guess it comes from being a Depression kid.) When he buys an appliance he's almost certain to buy the cheapest model in the store:  you have to fight him before he'll buy the second cheapest.  My sister says it's a way to avoid making a complicated decision.  On the other hand, of course, you could also avoid the decision by buying the most expensive model.

Father's also a rather stingy tipper, so I try to be more generous with my tips.

So I really don't know much about the value of money.  I'm unemployed, and still living with my family.  I still don't spend that much.  I occasionally travel, but most years I don't. (It's nice to live in a big city that many people travel to.) 

In recent years my main indulgence has been singing lessons with Giuseppe Macina.  And he only charges fifty dollars a lesson.  He gives good value for money:  some teachers charge twice as much, but that doesn't mean they'll be twice as good. (And he's a colorful character.)

Talking to yourself

Sure, I talk to myself.  But I don't think I do so audibly or moving my lips or anything, so I'm not afraid of being thought crazy.  I have heard people talking to themselves in the street--that's one feature of life in a big city.  I guess I feel sorry for them, but I do tend to keep my distance.

My mother used to sing to herself a lot.  That used to bug me, especially when she sang a song repeatedly.  But now I wish I'd been more tolerant of it.  She knew a lot of songs.

As craziness goes, I guess talking to yourself is a mild form.  There's a big difference between barking and biting.  Even religious craziness doesn't scare me that much.  I'm more scared of patriotic craziness, like in an online forum discussing the Bradley Manning trial when someone says, "The government didn't do one thing wrong!" That's a matter of faith.

Of course, when a whole group goes crazy, as in wartime, the people who stay sane may look crazy just because they don't fit in. I've always been a bit of a misfit myself.

Hoarding

We used to keep a lot of old magazines like The Saturday Review down at our cottage.  Mother resolved that she'd get around to reading them someday, but she never did.  We also had a lot of comic books, but Father burned most of them just before our cottage was sold.  I guess I should have intervened to save them, but I was too proud:  I was sick of whining about things like that.

In recent years, I've been buying stuff on Ebay.  I have a big collection of Sunday funnies, many of which I remember from childhood. (In Canada, of course, Sunday comics usually appear in the big Saturday papers.) Collecting Li'l Abner, I've finally noticed that the Lower Slobbovians talk in a Yiddish accent. (That was over my head at the time.)  I've also bought some comic books, including a lot of Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge and Classics Illustrated.  I've mostly stopped now.

But our big hoarding has always been books.  We own thousands of them, and about ten years ago Father started selling them online through ABEbooks.  He's still buying new ones, often finding them at Goodwill or library sales or this neighborhood buy & sell owned by an Iranian-Canadian.  We just assembled a new set of bookcases in our living room.

We also have a lot of VHS movies and vinyl records.

Clouds

I guess I like cloudy skies.  I've always thought of heaven as a place with an overcast sky rather than a blue one.  I also have a soft spot for fog and mist. (We used to get it in my New Brunswick hometown more often than here in Toronto.)

As clouds go, there's something to be said for a cumulonimbus thunderhead with its dark, top-heavy look. (I read about different cloud types in the Boy Scout handbook.) I was on a plane once and saw a thunderhead whose shape reminded me of Godzilla.

I also like a mackeral sky, which you can get at sunset if the clouds appear at just the right place above the sun.  And a jet trail can be interesting.

Seeing the sun or the moon through light cloud can also create an unusual sight.  But I don't recall ever seeing a "sun dog" image.

To tell the truth, I find blue skies a bit boring.

I used to play the piano when I was young.  I played some of Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, which are pretty nice, thought they tend to sound the same.  One of them is called "The Fleecy Cloud." It's kind of complicated because you have to play four notes against six.  But I think I managed to play it.

Things that scared me

[Note:  this is a subject I submitted.]

When I was four, I saw the movie The Great Race, which includes a scene where Tony Curtis swims across a lake at night, climbs into a dark tower and challenges a baron to a swordfight.  That scene scared the daylights out of me!  I also remember seeing a movie of Oliver Twist where the scene where everyone chased him and yelled "Stop, thief!" made me freak out.

I also remember hearing the the story of Hansel and Gretel on a record and getting scared. (But most people must have been scared by that story.)

At the beach near our cottage seaweed sometimes formed big clumps and I was afraid to go near them.

In gym class we once played battleball, a game like dodgeball but with a whole lot of balls being thrown at once.  Near the end of one game everyone was out except for me and one guy on the other team.  I suddenly got afraid and ran in a panic, and he got me out easily, so the other team won and I was the Charlie Brown.

When I was little, we had a Classics Illustrated comic book of Victor Hugo's The Man Who Laughs, about a 17th-century freak whose face had deliberately been made grotesque by early plastic surgery.  The look of his face still gets to me today:  I bought the comic on Ebay but I still can't get up the nerve to read it again.

I used to swin when I was young.  Our pool had a low diving board and a high one.  I could jump off the low one, dive off the low one and jump off the high one easily.  But I only dived off the high board a few times.  I was afraid that when I bent over and prepared to dive, the board would snap in two just before I did.

Family cars

I was born in a car.  It was our first family car, a Ford Consul sedan from 1957 or so.  I was a long time getting born, so Mother took castor oil and had a bath.  When it finally happened, it happened so fast that Father didn't have time to get her to the hospital. (And we weren't far from the hospital, with only small-town traffic to deal with.) There was a bit of gossip about it at the time.  My parents only revealed this to me when I was 37.  Oh well, who wants to have been born in a hospital?

Our next car was a 1969 Chevrolet Brookwood station wagon.  It was better-suited than the Consul to vacations, and to our family of seven.  It had a door at the back that you could swing open horizontally.  It also had a cigarette lighter but we removed it to make room for a radio hookup.

In 1978 we got a Chevrolet Malibu sedan.  It had new-style seat belts, combining a shoulder belt with a lap belt.  Then in 1987 we got a Dodge Colt subcompact.  We took it to Scotland for a year.  Its licence plate started with the letters ANZ and someone from down under thought we were from Australia or New Zealand!

Our most recent car is a 2001 Mazda Miata.  We bought in on September 11 that year.  We've had it for twelve years, and we're going to give it up next month and not get a replacement. (Father does most of the driving, and he's now over eighty.) When this happens, we'll truly be city people.

Children's books I liked

[Note:  this subject is one that I contributed.]

When I was a kid we borrowed a lot of children's books from the library.  I read a lot of Dr. Seuss. (I actually preferred The Cat in the Hat Comes Back to the original!)  I also liked Munro Leaf's Wee Gillis, a story about a Scottish boy in a kilt.

When I was nine I started reading the Tom Swift Jr. science fiction books, but my mother thought they were too exciting for me, so I stopped reading them and didn't resume till I was thirteen. (That was the first place where I read of drone aircraft!) It was at thirteen that I started reading Hardy Boys mysteries, which I read enthusiastically for almost two years.

Some of these children's books that I read while young I've reread as an adult and appreciated more fully.  One example is Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books, which are way better than the shameless TV show!  Another is L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables and its sequels.

Later I got into longer books.  I read Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and Kidnapped, Charles Dickens' David Copperfield and Oliver Twist, and Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and The Prince and the Pauper.  I heard of Lord of the Rings, but thought it was about circuses!

I've never quite stopped reading children's books.  I read Michael Ende's wonderful The Neverending Story at twenty-three.  I've read quite a few of Roald Dahl's books, largely as an adult.  I recently read C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but I hated it!  Moralistic nonsense from start to finish.

Countryside around home

[Note:  I arrived late to my first memoir slam event and found the others reading their pieces on the first subject: "Countryside around home." The second subject was "Bodybuilding," but I couldn't think of anything to write about that, so I wrote a piece on the first subject instead.  They didn't complain, even when I digressed!]

I grew up in the New Brunswick university town of Sackville, near the Nova Scotia border.  We had a cottage out in Tidnish near Northumberland Strait.  Sometimes when we went there we'd bring ice cream, but by the time we ate it, it would be half-melted!  Today I still feel a fondness for half-melted ice cream.

When I was about four my father had a year-long sabbatical from his job as physics professor at Mount Allison University and we lived in Brighton, England.  This was around 1966, when it was a big mod center, but my parents didn't notice this, let alone me.  My mother remembered seeing the live TV talk show where Kenneth Tynan used the F-word, and I remember watching Australian singer Rolf Harris playing his wobble board.  I remember many smells from that time:  butcher shops, grocery stores, diesel bus fumes, London's coal smoke. (When I visited England years later I recognized the smells again.)

We also visited Expo '67, but I was only five and ended up walking too much.  I got into a foul mood, and don't even remember the immediate reason.  The main thing I remember was the train that took us onto the site.

My mother was born in Cape Breton, near Fort Louisbourg.  We often visited it in the summer.  The scenery was pretty dramatic.

Introduction

Last month I joined the Monday Memoir Writers Group.  Every Monday afternoon at 2:00 we meet in the basement of the Lillian Smith Library and draw a random card from a canister full of subjects, all submitted by us members.  We then each write a short memoir piece based on that subject, after which we take turns reading them aloud.  On a typical day there'll be nine or ten people and we'll do two subjects before quitting toward 4:00.  

I call it a memoir slam because it reminds me of poetry slams.  Many thanks to Michelle of the Out of Your Shell Meetup group for introducing me to this group by organizing an event around it. (You can find her group at http://www.meetup.com/ShynessSocialAnxietySocial/.)

I enjoy this group greatly.  I like both writing my own pieces, and listening to what the other members write.  We all have some remarkable stories to tell! And I think I'm pretty good at it.  So I decided to start a new blog to publish the pieces I've written. (I already have a blog at http://canadiancommonsense.blogspot.ca.) Here's hoping some more members do the same:  I'd certainly like to read them.

If you'd like to learn more about the Monday Memoir Writers Group (including lists of past subjects and published memoirs members recommend), it has a webpage at http://astralsite.com/memoirs.