Posted on September 11, 2024 under Wednesday’s Words of Wisdom with 2 comments

Crosswalk or angry walk?

 

“Walk a mile in my shoes,

Just walk a mile in my shoes.”

Walk a Mile in my Shoes – Elvis Presley

It’s Saturday as I write this piece.

Warning.

A rainy day rant ensues.

It is a dark, dull rainy day and most of us are elated. After a hot, dry summer, we desperately need precipitation.  The brook that runs adjacent to my apartment is a mere trickle. Wells are running dry in the county and a water conservation order has been in effect for weeks. If today was your wedding day or you were organizing an outdoor event, you might not be as upbeat as I am. The summer was near perfect, but we are now paying the price.

What is one to do on such a gloomy day? Why, this is simple. Ignore the gloom. Embrace the gloom.

After reading Jane Austen’s classic, Pride and Prejudice recently, I decided to go “full on Jane” and I will spend a good chunk of the day reading her other major work, Sense and Sensibility. I also plan to make a coconut cream pie and go for a walk. If I eat too much pie, I will go for a second walk! Sense and sensibility.

So, what’s on my mind?

I’ll get the rant out of the way early. I write about this all the time but being a cranky, old curmudgeon, there is nothing stopping me from repeating myself. One of the joys of aging is that you can bitch and whine incessantly and none of your contemporaries will even notice. They are either doing the same thing or they have forgotten who you are.

I don’t own a car anymore. Don’t need one. Don’t want one. I live in town, and I can walk to all the places I need to in minutes. This includes, the library, the grocery store, the hospital, the Farmer’s Market and the liquor store. Sobey’s and the NSLC are “side by each” and an efficient walk can yield me asparagus and red wine.

On my daily 90-minute walk, I go through a dozen or more crosswalks. Some days, it feels like taking a casual stroll along the 401 in Toronto. Kenny Loggins had it right when he penned the words “Highway to the danger zone; Ride into the danger zone.” I am super cautious and vigilant when entering a crosswalk because many drivers are simply not paying attention. They are dreaming about their double double at Timmies or lamenting another playoff loss by the Leafs. Most likely, they’re checking their Messenger messages.

The other day, not far from home, I started walking across the crosswalk. A car that had been stopped at the stop sign, pulled out as I was a third of the way across the road. The driver of the car looked me straight in the eyes and continued along his merry way forcing me to stop abruptly. I didn’t give him the finger but threw up my arms as if to say “WTF”. Other drivers choosing to respect the laws of the land joined me in the gesture. If I had been distracted, say, by looking at my cell phone with me head down, a family member would be working on my obituary.

Maybe they need to change the name of crosswalk to angry walk!

What? People actually look at their cell phones while walking?

After nearly getting run down by a car, I nearly suffered a similar fate with a pedestrian moments later. The following description will certainly get me in trouble in some quarters but I’m 73 and I don’t give a damn. A tall, blond, beautiful young woman (a university student recognizable with het X t-shirt) was approaching me in the opposite direction. She was wearing earbuds and was frantically typing on her phone. Her body was on the sidewalk, but her mind was elsewhere. We were on a collision course. Now getting run over by a car is one thing but getting run over by a human, and a beautiful one at that, is another thing altogether. I have been threatening to do this for years. I planned to stand my ground and see what would happen. I mean, I have lived a long and happy life, and I wouldn’t object at all having my obituary state the cause of my death! As a matter of fact, I could have great fun writing that obituary myself. It would start off with something like this: BREAKING NEWS. Old Man Bowled Over by Beautiful Blond.

“And how can man die better than facing fearful odds”! Thanks, Horatius.

At the very last moment, I chickened out. Gallantry is a theme in Jane Austen’s book, and I did the honorable thing and stepped aside. The young lady, to this very day, never knew I existed. For the second time in a matter of minutes, I was muttering WTF. But old people mutter a lot. Nobody noticed.

Originally, I had planned to write a piece about Tupperware lids and missing socks, but I simply had to get this rant out of my system.

Is there a rational explanation of where Tupperware lids go? And can someone explain how a person puts laundry in the washer and dryer and somehow socks end up lost and mismatched? Maybe the missing socks turn into lost Tupperware lids or vice versa.

Time to finish the pie and go for my walk.

Pie. Walk. Pie. Walk. The perfect antidote for a rainy Saturday.

I will keep my head up.

Have a great weekend.

 

 

 

Posted on September 4, 2024 under Wednesday’s Words of Wisdom with no comments yet

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Building blocks of education

 

ABCDEFG

HIJKLMNOP

QRS

TUV

WX, Y AND Z

Now I know my ABC’s,

Next time won’t you sing with me.

Children’s Nursery Rhyme

It all starts again tomorrow. School buses will be running. Anxious parents and anxious children. Teachers will be bracing for the onslaught. It’s not New Year’s Day but the beginning of a new school year feels like the actual start of a new year.

Getting back into a routine.

And substitute teachers like me, will be waiting for that first call. It is highly unlikely that that will occur tomorrow. A teacher would be hard pressed to argue that they are stressed out on the first day of school. I suppose stranger things have happened.

Why do we go to school?

It seems pretty obvious until you dig a little below the surface. A few times a year, when I’m substituting with a difficult class, I will ask them to stop what they’re doing and ask them that very question. I start by suggesting that many of them would rather be anywhere else. School is pure torture for many students.

The first two responses are the obvious ones:

“I’m in school because my parents tell me I have to go.”

“I’m in school to learn.”

I probe and I poke and gradually several themes emerge.

Learning the Pythagorean Theorem might be relevant to someone who wishes to pursue studies in math and science. However, for the rest of us, knowing that the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides might not be particularly useful to a lobster fisherman or a musician.

Is it necessary to study English literature, science, history and geography? It might not get you a job when you get out of school, university or trade school but that’s hardly the point. If your life depended on it, could you write three paragraphs on the war of 1812? Did dissecting that frog in grade 10 biology set you on the path of discovery.

Here is what I tell the students:

You go to school to learn how to think and problem solve. You learn how to follow instructions. You learn how to read, write and listen. You learn about teamwork and cooperation. You learn about mutual respect. You learn about failure and success. You learn about accepting responsibility for your actions. You learn how to forgive and forget. You learn about relationships.

In essence, school prepares you for life after school, arming you with information but more importantly, life skills.

And why, pray tell, does a 73-year-old still get excited about going to school?

Community.

I often chat with people who have recently retired. Many adapt quickly to retirement and can’t get the grin off their faces. Others find it much more difficult. Losing one’s community and one’s reason for getting out of bed can be extremely challenging. Staying connected might be one of the most important determinants of a happy retirement.

I am very fortunate. I like being in school with teachers and students. This is an important community for me. Many of my contemporaries are shedding friends at an alarming rate. I am gaining new friends.

I have my writing community. I don’t have millions of followers but enough who keep in touch with me to keep me engaged.

I (gasp) have my Facebook community. Most days, I keep threatening to close down my FB account for good but then I hear from an old schoolmate from 50 years ago and am glad that Facebook reconnected us.

Most organized religions are in decline. They were once a primary source of community. Churches, synagogues, mosques were all places that people gathered. Even if you weren’t particularly religious, you got to spend time with a group of friends, neighbors or acquaintances once a week.

Chatting online doesn’t feel quite the same.

And unlike the good old days, people rarely visit anymore and dropping in on someone unannounced is as rare as common sense in politics.

Find and keep your communities. Stay engaged. Stay active.

The ABC’s of life.

Always Bring Coffee!

Have a great weekend.

 

Posted on August 28, 2024 under Wednesday’s Words of Wisdom with one comment

A field of dreams

“Take me out to the ball game,

Take me out with the crowd,

Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks,

I don’t care if I never get back.”

Take Me Out to The Ball Game – Jack Norworth

Summer is in its rapid decline and September lurks. You can feel it in the air. The days are getting shorter and the “Back to School” sales are in full force. In a few days’ time, the midway will roll into town, and we’ll be batting away flies and wasps at the cotton candy stand at the Eastern Nova Scotia Exhibition.

Speaking of batting.

I’m a sports junkie. I played many sports in my youth and still follow golf, hockey, baseball and football on television. I will watch just about any sport on TV if I happen to be bored… even darts. Cricket still baffles me. I’m warming up to soccer (football in most parts of the civilized world!).

I rarely attend live sporting events anymore. Sitting on hard grandstands doesn’t hold much appeal. My 73-year-old body doth protest when I sit in one spot too long.

Last week, I saw a post on Facebook announcing the 2024 U13 Eastern Canadian Softball Championships to be held here in my hometown. What an opportunity to re-live my youth so I wandered over to Dr.J.H. Gillis Regional school to catch a few innings… and to rekindle my youth.

As I made my way through “Liquor Lane”, a convenient path on campus for university students to get their groceries and beer, I started to have flashbacks. The path on which I was walking was once the field at the bottom of Bishop’s Bowl. Unless you’re ancient and a local, this won’t evoke a response.

I grew up just a few short steps from the university. In a wide-open field on the edge of campus (which has been transformed into a massive parking lot), I spent countless hours of my youth playing ball. On a street where families of 6-8 children was the norm, it didn’t take long to round up a couple of teams. We used old scraps of wood for bases. We scraped up enough money from collecting beer bottles and pop bottles and selling them to Pete Poirier to buy cheap gloves. No uniforms. No coaches. No umpires. Very often, the stitching on the baseball would come loose.

We played our hearts out. We were Mickey Mantle dreaming of swatting mammoth home runs or Sandy Koufax striking out the side. When we became bored of our own company, we challenged other streets in Antigonish. A quick call to Highland Drive or Brookland Street was all it took to arrange a friendly (?) pickup game. Bragging rights have always been an integral part of sports. Unorganized sports are some of my fondest memories.

A bat. A ball. A glove. Simpler times.

On a trip to San Francisco in the spring of 1974, I got to see the Oakland A’s play a double header. They were fresh off their second consecutive World Series championship. Their legendary lineup included the likes of Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers and Vida Blue. My back was much stronger back then and beer sales removed any discomfort that might have appeared after sitting for 5 hours in a ballpark.

Back when the Montreal Expos were Canada’s darlings, a few of us took a road trip to see a couple of home games in Montreal. We didn’t have enough money for a hotel and spent the first night of our travels sleeping on picnic tables in a park somewhere in northern Quebec. If I did this today, I would certainly be in traction for weeks! The Olympic Stadium, affectionately known as “The Big Owe”, after serious cost overruns, was not the best place to watch baseball but we still got to watch our heroes, the “boys of summer” do their thing.

I walked over to the Regional fields to catch a bit of the action. One of the local teams was playing. I watched a few innings and as the game was drawing to a close, it started to rain. I got wet but it was a warm rain. The visiting team prevailed but I saw lots of good softball and good sportsmanship.

As rain dripped off my hat, I dreamed of being young again.

“Let me root, root, root for the home team,

If they don’t win it’s a shame,

For it’s one, two, three strikes you’re out,

At the old ball game.”

Have a great weekend.