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.