One of the first times I went out to karaoke, I went to this Scarborough pub near Morningside Avenue. The M.C. was a funny Scotsman called Johnny Blue. When I handed in my song selection, for my name I wrote "James 'Mensa' Matthews." (I was actually a Mensa member for a while.) When he called me up, just to have some fun with me he asked, "What's the square root of 76523?" (Or some big number.) I let it pass, but later I wished I'd said, "Sorry, it's a secret. If I told you I'd have to kill you."
Back when I was taking ballroom dancing lessons at the Arthur Murray studio in Etobicoke, they had a Halloween costume party. For my costume, I decided to be a beatnik. I wore a turtleneck and blazer, and my mother's beret. (She'd stopped wearing it because of Monica Lewinsky.) And I went to Malabar Costumes and bought a fake beard and the glue to attach it with. Since it was Halloween season, the whole staff were wearing various costumes like sailor and convict and druidess. A guy dressed as Superman sold me the glue, and said, "After you put it on, wait a minute for it to get tacky." I wish I'd replied, "In the costume business, there's no such word as tacky."
And there there was the time a policeman came to my apartment and tried to intimidate me over a letter I'd written which he had not read. He advised me to take a certain course of action, and I said the two words: "I did." That made him explode: he yelled, "I'm talking to you!" I might then have said, "Actually, you're yelling at me. Do you think my neighbors want to hear about this?" But what I did say was probably smarter. Without missing a beat, I mentioned a second thing I'd done, just to show him he wouldn't shut me up by yelling at me. My immediate response must have taken the wind out of his sails, because there was a long pause before he spoke again. (He soon left without saying goodbye.)
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