Phillip had the nasty habit of absentmindedly retrieving earwax from his left ear with his little finger and wiping it on the side of his favourite armchair which was now smooth and no longer porous as he had been doing this for years. The side of the armchair was now shiny and mottled like some sort of caramel freak batik.
He had never recovered from responding to a particular emergency call that had shaken him to the point of catatonia and necessitating his early retirement. As an EMT, Phillip had had his share of emotional and visceral experiences: births and deaths and everything in between.
The call that tipped him over the edge was from someone in an apartment complex in a neighbourhood that had gone to seed. Buildings that used to be respectable and well maintained had suffered from decades of neglect. There was a stagnant pall in this forgotten neighbourhood.
The caller had not seen his neighbours in the apartment next door in a while and was suspicious because if they were travelling they would have asked him to keep an eye on the place and gather the mail and the inevitable flyers that crowd out the minuscule mailboxes in the lobby.
When Phillip and his team arrived, they tried knocking on the door to no avail. They got the concierge to open the door with his master key but the door was also chained which didn’t stop the intense putrid smell from being released through the aperture. A bit of shoulder made short work of the chain and Phillip entered the apartment with his sleeve covering his nose. The blinds were closed and In the dusty murk he saw two decomposing bodies locked in an embrace like a distorted Romeo and Juliet in the middle of the floor. The only life left in the fetid air were the swarms of flies and maggots consuming the deceased.
The coroner eventually ascertained that the man had had a heart attack and died a week previously and the woman had lain next to him for three days and had actually successfully willed her own death from natural causes, mostly dehydration and grief.
Phillip, although a seasoned and somewhat hardened veteran of Emergency services became disoriented and dizzy upon experiencing this tragic scene. He stumbled to the outer hallway and collapsed in a heap. Another ambulance needed to be dispatched to the scene to deal with this new development.
Something like this can simply not be unseen, unsmelled, unfelt. The horror was etched permanently in Phillip’s brain. His ruminating and constantly reliving the scene consumed his waking hours and sent him entirely off the rails unable to function beyond the bare minimum. Obviously he was going to need therapy to return him to who he was before this incident.
Every time he seemed to be making a slight recovery he would be thrust back into his disturbing overriding thoughts of that final embrace. Was it love? Was it a sick codependency? Is it even possible to will one’s own death? Is the loss of will to live powerful enough to do that? All of the deaths he’d ever faced: his parents, his sister, his beloved pets and the numerous victims of car crashes he’d ever seen raced in and out of focus through his restless mind dislodged from time and any sense of reality.
He was tempted to undo his twelve years of sobriety just to anesthetize his brain. Tempted, but unable to act on it. He asked Siri to play Willie Nelson on his HomePod which was a welcome distraction until the song came on that had Willie singing “it’s not something you get over, it’s something you get through”
This awoke something in Phillip that he hadn’t felt in ages. He got up and poured himself a glass of water and drank it all in one long and cleansing swoop. He asked Siri to stop the music and went back to the living room and decided then and there to throw out his favourite chair which had come to represent a sort of prison to him and may have stalled his ability to get through this nightmare.
The chair sat on the curb for over a week as he had just missed the bi-weekly heavy items pickup. He didn’t care if anybody else took it, but even the most ragged of the trash pickers were not interested. Just as well, he thought as the robot arm swung the chair into the back of the garbage truck and the hydraulic scoop descended and crushed the chair never to be sat on again.
He received his new chair the same day he picked up a kitten at the SPCA. It was a motorized easy chair that moved like a dentist’s chair. The kitten eventually grew weary of the box the chair came in and crawled up Phillip’s leg and settled purring in his lap. He decided to name the kitty “Willie” and Phillip closed his eyes and slept peacefully for the first time in years.
A daily 53 minute ride each way to and from high school in a big yellow school bus can be tedious. There are many ways to fill the time: Sleep would be one, getting high, another. Reading or doing homework next to impossible on Quebec roads.
Then there is doing stupid stuff. Yeah! That’s the ticket Stupid stuff! Woo Hoo!
Young and stupid “gland jobs” as I refer to adolescents regularly like to flex feats of stupidity on a dare.
Hanging a moon used to be a thing. Variations included a ‘pressed ham’ (butt against a screen) and ‘hanging a rat’.. (don’t go there). Hanging a moon means to expose one’s buttocks as a derisive commentary to the “moonee”.
We, at the back of the bus who thought of ourselves as badass (pun intended) had a perfect launch pad for mooning. The rear (also intended) door window.
We started off rather mildly by mooning cars for a second or two, barely(intended) enough to be noticed, but enough to get our own hearts pumping. After a while this grew boring and the novelty waned. Until Tony’s car was following our bus one day.
Tony H. Was a geography teacher who we particularly disliked. He had an arrogant personality that conflicted with our teenage hubris like colours that clash. He was a prime target and merited two moons. My buddy Todd and I mooned in Tandem and made sure we were noticed. This elated us in that we had dissed a despised nemesis.
The next morning the boys of bus 41 were called to face the principal and a fuming Tony.
The inquest did not last long as the demand for the guilty parties to step forward was accompanied by the phrase “one had a yellow jacket”. Oops! I stepped forward, followed shortly by Todd.
We were both suspended for five days in winter. Some punishment! We lived in a village that is a ski resort and we had season passes. We were forbidden from going out, but all our parents were working in the city and gone for ten hours a day. Enough time to hitchhike to the ski hill and back after terrorizing the weekday slowpokes on the slopes.
This scenario is part of the legend of my childhood.
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P.S. After I had finished my second stint of student teaching I felt I needed to make amends to teachers whose lives I had made harder. I drove to Lachute and rang the doorbell at Tony H.’s home. A lady answered the door and I asked to speak to Tony. She asked “who she should say is calling?”
“YOU’RE IAN HANCHET!!!!!” I may have gotten under his skin further than I thought.
I had a short speech of regret and how student teaching gave me a new look on the job of teaching. I apologized for having been a dickhead and told him that our field trip to view real examples of landform geography was pivotal in my school experience and despite our clashes, his lessons lived on inside me. He and his wife were speechless, but appreciative and invited me to stay for dinner. I declined, making up some excuse. I was sorry for my previous behaviour, but we weren’t about to become friends.
Tony died this last June, over fifty years since this story transpired.
Yesterday Sharon and I attended a celebration of life for the father of a friend of ours. The eulogies were lovingly inspirational and painted pictures of a truly remarkable man. Remarkable as a scholar, a professor, author, athlete, progressive thinker and father.
My friend had prerecorded herself reading the letter her dad had sent to the members of his Jewish family in the 1950’s announcing his intention of marriage to an African American woman and his hope that the family will accept her as readily as anyone else.
The power of his (and her) “damn the torpedoes” attitude in the age of McCarthyism was brave and admirable and got me to thinking about other marriages of people I know or knew from diverse backgrounds.
Today is the third anniversary of the death of my father in law. After attending the celebration of life, we went and laid flowers on my father in law’s grave. My father in law was a man whose love for a woman crossed the huge racial divide as well. A Sikh man in love with a white Welsh woman in Birmingham was a radical and sometimes dangerous departure from the norm.
My thoughts turned next to my late friend, a prominent Jazz musician, who met his future wife in rural Quebec (also in the 1950’s). Constance was forced to choose between him and her own family. Her heart won out and eventually her family softened and accepted him and the grand children their marriage produced.
I think of the hundreds of mixed marriages of famous musicians in the fifties and sixties that used to raise eyebrows and controversy and overt racist difficulties.
Venus and Mars are the usual barriers in marriage, but throwing in the cultural biases and visible otherness required other skills and strengths that I can only imagine.
Times have changed. Or have they? In my own immediate family my siblings all married people although not visibly different, from outside the expected, My older brother’s father in law had been a doctor in the Luftwaffe. My dad flew for the RCAF. My sister married an American, Catholic divorcée. Three strikes according to my grandfather who declined to attend their wedding. My younger brother married an American as well whose family is Jewish. My first marriage was to someone from the same town, same background, same denomination as mine. Worked for a while and then didn’t. My second marriage is to a woman born in India with mixed Indian and Welsh heritage. Sharon was accepted easily into the fold, as was I into her family.
The mild, insignificant to nonexistent misgivings to each of our unions is in sharp contrast to the obstacles overcome by the pioneers of the fifties.
The next generation in my extended family have an even more diverse and seemingly normalized differences. I have nephews and nieces from the US, Cuba, Mexico, Rwanda, Brazil. We have gay and trans family members breaking their own barriers bravely.
Despite the severe downturn in civility and tolerance the world is experiencing at present, Our families are maintaining a progressive trend. The unions that once would have been considered daring and counter culture are now commonplace and unremarkable.
We need to maintain vigilance over society’s regression and maintain our own core values (mine are aligned with Dr. King) and wrestle the Shire back from the Orcs.
Sid and Doris, Paul and Jennie, Charlie and Connie I salute you.
I am curating a series of performances based on my favourite songs. This is a very difficult undertaking for someone who loves music the way I do.
Imagine having to choose one’s favourite twenty blades of grass from an enormous lawn.
I tend to revere music that moves me intellectually and viscerally that I feel I could recreate in a meaningful personal way. That being said, it is still hard to refine my choices categorically or by artist.
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The song I opened up the evening with was “Biloxi” by Jesse Winchester. Why Jesse? If Jesse, Why not “Yankee Lady” or “Isn’t That So” or any of the dozen or so of his songs that are in my repertoire? Indeed. My job as a curator is to cull but also point toward the light.
Biloxiwas written at a time when Jesse could not return to the USA because he was evading the draft. The memory and longing for a place unreachable is something most people can relate to. Come to think about it, Yankee Lady is also a longing for a time and place unreachable as well.
I was fortunate enough to hear and see Jesse live many times in very intimate venues like Rose’s Cantina, La Sala Rosa, The Belladonna Ballroom, Le Petit Campus and The Yellow Door among many others.
One story I remember from the Yellow Door was when some regulars were hanging out with Jesse upstairs between sets and this young woman with “issues” burst into the room and flung herself down on the couch beside him while saying: “Oh Jesse I’m so afraid to lose the love we’ve found”. I don’t recall exactly what happened next with any accuracy, but there was much laughter and she was escorted out gently.
One of my daughters visited Biloxi and was underwhelmed. To me, Biloxi is a place like Narnia or Lothlorien or Shangri-La. The lure is in it’s attainability only through one’s imagination. The melody of Jesse’s song stands strong against so many other three chord hymn-like melodies. It build images and tension and the last line of each verse releases with the weather.
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When I was about sixteen I went to a tiny store in a village (Ste. Adele) near my home and they had a rack of about ten LPs and one was by a guy I’d never heard of whose name I thought was pronounced Cock burn (remember I was fifteen). I bought the album, and never looked back. Bruce Cockburn (silent ck) has featured in my listening ever since. I have almost all his albums and have about a dozen of his songs in my songbook.
“Pacing The Cage” is from deep in his career. He is musing on “is that all there is?” The coming of the outbound stage. I relate to this as we all age. The last verse is perfect.
“Sometimes the best map will not guide you
You can’t see what’s ’round the bend
Sometimes the road leads through dark places
Sometimes the darkness is your friend
Today these eyes scan bleached-out land
For the coming of the outbound stage
Pacing the cage”
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February 1964. I was in second grade. The buzz amongst all the clueless little knobs at my primary school was about something called ‘The Beatles’. Everybody vowed to watch Ed Sullivan and see what all the hype was about. We watched it weekly anyway. First I saw of a band that changed everything in my world and the whole world and who contributed so much to the lexicon of great songs. I was unaware of pop music at all up until this point my experience was liturgical music (I sang in an Anglican choir) Broadway tunes like ‘My Fair Lady’ and ‘Oklahoma’ and jazz standards that Ella or Frank sang and TV themes.
My cousins had the first five or six singles and I got to know the songs very well, and when I could control the radio I did. I’d listen to the local youth oriented radio station much to my father’s distaste.
The first Beatles record I owned was “Beatles ’65 and I love all the songs on it. No Reply, I’m A Loser, Baby’s In Black to name a few. I chose “I’ll Be Back” because of the lovely harmony between John and Paul. My arrangement takes it’s speed and specially tuned guitar from Shawn Colvin while maintaining the two part harmony of the Beatles. I love the way Sharon and I play this and we were each on really great guitars made by renowned local Luthier Michael Greenfield.
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The songs of Bob Dylan got on my Radar quite early on. I loved his songs and singing and loved versions by Peter, Paul and Mary, The Byrds, The Band, The Turtles and everybody else. I made my own CD of his music: https://ianhanchet.bandcamp.com/album/dealin-from-the-bottom-album and have another twenty or so of his songs that I perform. I chose “Queen Jane Approximately” because Sharon and I as Tumbleweed learned it only recently and I feel we do it very well. It is from perhaps my favourite Dylan album (Highway 61 Revisited). I particularly love the Bass note pedal point on the first Won’t you come see me (D/A and G/A ) of each verse. The song is similar to Like A Rolling Stone in that it is a warning to someone who used to be close. It is fun to play and sing.
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Fran Landesman was an interesting character whose poetry and lyrics resonate with me. She is perhaps best known for “Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most” and I am partial to “Ballad Of The Sad Young Men” which she wrote with Tommy Wolf. I first heard it sung by Roberta Flack. It is a portrait of loneliness and the relentless passage of time of several subsets of humanity who hang out in bars looking for something or someone to little or no avail. It has been covered by hundreds of Jazz artists like Kenny Burrell and Chet Baker, whose influence on me is great.
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I hesitated to put “Can’t Help Falling In Love” in the show because it is truly a chestnut. Jeff listened to my arrangement and encouraged me to keep it in. It turned into an impromptu choir sing along with the audience. The melody is based on “Plaisir d’Amour” but what I like is the way it was reharmonized and sits well on the guitar in this key.(G)
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I went through a phase of listening to jazz guitarist Bill Frisell and couldn’t get enough of his music. I read he was on an album called “West” by an artist named Lucinda Williams. I bought it and I immediately was drawn to her authenticity and the way the guitars were treated on her album but I especially was drawn to “Everything Has Changed”. The places of our youth transform over time and if we return after a long absence, it is off putting. I relate very much to this. The rural village (St. Sauveur-des-Monts) where my parents are now buried had no traffic lights when I was younger, but now is a bustling urban shopping, skiing and dining hub with dozens of traffic lights. There is a sad release in the song as the lyric “everything has changed” is sung. It is over an A minor (ii) chord and sung with a resigned acceptance of the facts. Up to that point we have heard nothing but G (I) and C (IV) major chords.
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This next song was released a day before my 11th birthday. I heard it for the first time in my family’s car on the way to ski at Chalet Cochand. We were passing under an arced overpass on the autoroute just before turning off to go to Ste. Marguerite when “Strawberry Fields Forever” played and changed my life forever. I never thought about performing it until I heard Bill Frisell play it so beautifully on his Telecaster. I took some of his ideas, but I can sing too. Jeff Deeprose plays a wonderful counterpoint to my melody.
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The British Invasion was not only the Beatles and Rolling Stones, there were hundreds of combos whose songs were heard in North America at that time. One of my favourite bands was Gerry and The Pacemakers. My actual favourite song of theirs is “Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying” but I selected
“Ferry Cross The Mersey” because it fit the loss and longing theme and Jeff plays exquisitely on it.
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Even with a limit of only twenty songs, I still decided to choose another Fran Landesman song.I love her songs that much. This one is called “Scars”. She co-wrote this song with Simon Wallace who sent me an encouraging message after hearing my performance on a YouTube video, People who have lived have scars. Nothing to be ashamed of. The lyric has some very deep scars to ponder and forgive.
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It seems this song “Walk Away Renee” been around since I was a choirboy. After choir rehearsals I would walk home singing this at the top of my lungs. Trouble is I only knew that one line…lol. I learned the rest as an adult, but that hook still gets me. I love to sing it with wild abandon. I asked my friend Daniel Frankel to join in on piano.
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I first heard “You Shouldn’t Look At Me That Way” on a film trailer at the movie theatre as I was leaving. Usually I ignore ads, but I heard Elvis Costello’s voice on a song I was not familiar with. I knew immediately that I wanted to hear it again. Elvis’ writing had developed artful sophistication. This had “Jazz chords” and some real surprises in the harmony. I enjoyed transcribing and learning it. It is presented here as one of two Elvis Costello songs in my favourites.
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As a youngster I heard many songs by the Bee Gees, my favourites being “Words” and “I Started A Joke” and I’ve Got To Get A Message To You”. These tickled my pre pubescent intellect. It wasn’t until I heard Al Green sing “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart” that I “got” it though.
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As a fledgling guitarist, the music of Cream offered easy to pick out riffs. Almost everybody I knew who played could play the riff for “Sunshine Of Your Love”, “Badge” and “Strange Brew”. I have always wanted to learn “White Room”, so I did. The songwriting in Cream matched the virtuosity of Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker (and Pete Brown lyricist). I still listen to these songs and they are as fresh sounding and yet hauntingly familiar as when I first heard them.
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I have always maintained that the best gig I ever had was being a dad. I have two wonderful resourceful and independent daughters, and even though my marriage to their mother didn’t last, they survived and thrived. My sister told me I should seek out this song called “Daughters” by John Mayer out as she thought it was a fit for me. She was right. I had fun learning John Mayer’s chord voicings of what turned out to be easier than it sounds.
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The next song is perhaps the greatest description of unrequited teenage crushes that I am aware of. David Francey observed one of his step children agonizing and this gem flowed out of him. I have felt it. The imbalance between desire and ability. As we age, we tend to be more realistic and hopefully have the communication skills to follow our hearts. The feelings in “Broken Glass” are wonderful to evoke and experience again through this perfect song. Jeff and I are both teachers, and well aware that this scenario is universal.
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I decided to include a second Bruce Cockburn song. This is also from deep into his career.
“Candy Man’s Gone” is about the false promise of expectations of success and prosperity. It gives pause for thought. “Catch it in a dream, catch it in a song” is one of my favourite lines to sing.
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I heard “At This Moment” over thirty years ago. It was a throwback to R&B from an even earlier era . Billy Vera and the Beaters recorded this and I have always loved it. It tells of a wrenching breakup.
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The song “So Sad” is my favourite of the favourites for now. I first heard it sung by Jennifer Warnes, but it was written by Mickey Newbury. I get to wail on it and use my lung power to wring out the wretchedness. The song name drops iconic figures from American culture which is kinda fun, but the real power of the song is in the chorus “I’m Sooooooo Saaaaad”.
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I concluded this first evening of my favourite songs with “Painted From Memory” which is by Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach. We have already established my reverence for Costello’s work, ut the addition of Burt harkens back to the soundtrack of my youth where Dionne Warwick dominated the radio waves for a decade. The premise of this song is so sad. He paints from memory a face that he loves but who no longer loves him. The smile is not for him. “Funny how looks can be deceiving”.
I am sometimes surprised by random messages I receive from former students who have come across posts of mine or videos that I have made or they recognized me on stage and these former kids more often than not reach out and tell me I had a profound influence on their life. It is both heart warming and validating that that portion of my life was not purposeless and a waste beyond making a living. One encounter was with a young man with a beard who approached me after a set and called me “MR. HANCHET”. He asked me to guess who he was and I honestly had no clue who he might be. I asked for a clue. He said I taught him in first grade at a school I hadn’t taught at for around twenty years. He was disappointed that I still was unable to guess, but twenty years is a long time. I maintained my youthful appearance (eyeroll) but he went from being a mousy grade one kid to this bearded behemoth. When he told me his name, I actually remembered, but said to him: “Oh yeah, you haven’t changed a bit…” He missed the sarcasm.
As I age further away from my mostly cherished long and varied teaching career, encounters like this happen less and less.
Last night I dreamt that I was at a local restaurant called Sciroli’s which is a place I have only been to before to celebrate events such as birthdays or retirements. From across the room I made eye contact with a beautiful young woman who ,when we made eye contact confirmed it was me and put her two hands up to form a heart. She immediately came over to my table and we embraced. She had obviously been an important student of mine and judging from her age, probably ten years had passed since we last saw each other. I, for the life of me, could not conjure up her name. In my defence, this was a dream, so she may have been a composite of many students, and the last time we would have met if she was an actual student she was a pre pubescent girl. The shame and guilt I felt for not recognizing who this was beyond her being a student woke me from my slumber.
There are some students I still have correspondence with and some whose lives I am able to keep track of because I am friends with a parent or other family members, this apparition was not one of them.
I haven’t had any encounters from beyond the grave (either of us). I can wait.
I haven’t lived in the city for ten years now. I live in a quiet suburb of Montreal on the West Island called Pierrefonds. I still go into the city regularly, however, because many of my friends and activities that I pursue are minimum thirty five minutes away.
There are two main traffic arteries to get to the city from here by car. Highways 40 and 20. Depending on where I want to go determines which artery I will take. I often travel to boroughs in the south west (NDG, Verdun, Lachine, Montreal West), so I will choose the 20. Anything North or East of these destinations I will probably choose the 40.
I prefer the 20 because it runs parallel to the major rail corridor between Canada’s two largest cities and more often than not I see any combination of freight or passenger trains. I inherited my love of trains from my paternal grandfather. Papa used to subscribe to The Railway Magazine (British)and every six months or so got the issues bound together. My dad inherited a shelf full of Railway Magazines and held onto them until he had to downsize. The bound magazines were donated to the railway museum in St. Constant.
I love trains. I marvel at the system that manages the traffic. It is not uncommon for me to witness 100 car long trains of mixed type (tankers, boxcars, flatbeds, container trolleys, etc.) going in either direction.
Sometimes a train will just be idling waiting for another to pass, sometimes a train’s speed means we are racing neck and neck and conversely the combined speed of our two conveyances pass each other at 200km/hr. Once in a while I see the silver VIA train carrying people to and from Toronto, Kingston, etc. more often I will see the EXO commuter train that serves the West Island.
I think about what a huge industry rail transportation is. Must employ tens of thousands of people across Canada. Of course the rails connect to trucking hubs and ports where cargo transfers. Huge.
Even better than seeing the trains is taking them. Resident Passengers over 65 get to ride public transit in Montreal for free. My doctor’s office is adjacent to Vendome station, so I take the train to medical appointments. I love ripping along in comfort and not having my mind on the road. I love not having to find parking or having to deal with detours etc.
It’s not all peaches and cream though. Recently A friend was on the train to Montreal from Ottawa and the train had to stop in Alexandria because there had been a derailment of a freight train further on down the line. Frustrating when a two to three hour trip becomes an eight hour ordeal. Fortunately these are the exceptions and not the rule. Still better than needing a tow on the highway.
Elizabeth Cotten put it more succinctly.
Freight train, Freight train, run so fast Freight train, Freight train, run so fast Please don’t tell what train I’m on They won’t know what route I’ve gone
When I am dead and in my grave No more good times here I crave Place the stones at my head and feet Tell them all that I’ve gone to sleep.
When I die, Lord, bury me deep Way down on old Chestnut street Then I can hear old Number 9 As she comes rolling by.
I simply can’t be trusted to do the shopping. I invariably get at least one item wrong.
Let me explain: I am dyslexic. I am able to compensate for this most of the time and many people are surprised to learn this because I am well educated and an avid reader and quick with words.
Every once in a while it rears it’s ugly head and I will glean the opposite meaning from a sentence or I’ll skip a line of music I am reading or I’ll write a b as a d, etc. this occurs mostly when fatigued or if I am in the throes of a Migraine.
Back to shopping…..
The worst place is the pharmacy, although all big box stores are a challenge. This will be hard to write without using the word “fucking” as an adjective before every fucking item in the whole fucking store not to mention the fucking piped in music and the use of different fucking names for the same fucking thing.
I am tired of writing “fucking” just assume it is in front of each proper noun that follows.
Try buying toothpaste for someone else. My wife likes toothpaste with no whitener. Just plain toothpaste. It is usually hidden on the bottom shelf which is so convenient for a 6 foot tall man. It is far from the pimped up glitterati in the wall of toothpaste above it. I am guessing that there must be eighty to a hundred products in flashy packaging and different formats and sizes and brand names. Maybe 20 of these have a red tag in front indicating a sale of some sort with an arbitrary reduction from another arbitrary sticker price. Flavour is another option. Spearmint, peppermint, just mint, clean mint, fresh mint, regular, original, new, new original and on and on…. This is a nightmare for a dyslexic. In Quebec this is also compounded further by bilingual packaging and the price using different (English smaller by law) fonts. I hope you are still injecting my favourite adjective.
Let’s say that Pharmaprix doesn’t have what I am looking for, my neighbourhood has several alternatives within easy walking distance (in opposite directions. Northward there is Jean Coutu and southward a Jean Coutu and a Uniprix opposite arch other all on the same busy boulevard. Each store layout is almost the same, but usually there is at least one quirky difference. This difference usually involves the product I am looking for. Painkillers for example are so ridiculously separated. There are cold and sinus type painkillers and there are the regular and extra strength. Back pain, headache, muscular pain, etc. The really good stuff is behind the counter and some needs prescription. There are brand names to contend with and the generic equivalent. Some people swear by the brand name (costlier) and say the generic is not as effective. I say it is all a scam. When I was a kid my mum had Aspirin. She switched to A.S.A at some point which is one of those immediately forgettable meaningless acronyms that are anathema to dyslexics. The good stuff was 222. Fucked if I care what 222 stood for. Those babies worked on migraines.
While still at the pharmacy try the hair product section…..nightmare. I simply won’t buy for someone else. It’s like Where’s Waldo for masochists.
Needless to say, Pharmacies are not my favourite place. Soviet Russia is preferable. One product you line up for I can get behind…..
Groceries are also a pain in the ass. Let’s pick a product like yogurt. 1%,2%,full fat, Greek style, whipped, fruit on the bottom, natural, organic, I am sure I am only scratching the surface and I am not going to research it completely which would involve doing the very thing I want to avoid. While in the dairy section, different formats for milk. Skim is not even milk. Compound this with almond milk and oat milk and canary milk etc. ‘Full fat, Greek style, whipped, fruit on the bottom’ sounds kinda sexy put together like that…
I am getting tired of writing, so, you, the reader (if still here) must be as well.
Last week I needed to get black ink for our printer. Great. I went to Bureau en Gros (Staples) and upon entering an enthusiastic young man asked if he could help me. I disappointed him by saying I knew exactly what I needed and pointed to the wall of cartridges half a kilometre away. I went to the wall… HP65 black (good for hp envy 7000 series). I checked. Not my first rodeo. In and out in 5 minutes. Smug.
Sharon put the cartridge in, and it didn’t work. She put the spent one back in, didn’t work. She turned the machine off, same result. If there were tires, she would have kicked them. I was called, and I went into ‘hp help’ etc. and found a YouTube video and unplugged for 20 minutes and tried again. I tried to get hp on the phone but I forgot my password. After dealing with the password I found that my warrantee for free help was expired so I googled “life expectancy of printers” and realized that maybe it was time for a new one. I googled my model and Lo and behold there was one left at the same store I get my cartridges. This happened to be Boxing Day and it was on sale for the cost of several cartridges. O happy day!
I went to the store expecting to buy the same model thinking ‘I already have a full cartridge’ and they were offering 3 months of “free” ink. When I finally found a ‘clerk’ (dr. Livingstone, I presume?) he was a spiritless drudge who checked to see if the model was in stock. Turned out that the display model was it. I checked inside to make sure that the cartridges were still the same. The cartridge was staring at me with its name “hp64”. I left drudge boy behind and got an hp64 black off the wall. Brought it home and our printer works again.
This is a rather sensitive issue, you may want to skip it.
On a normal day no man gives his testicles a second thought.
One day a few months back I noticed that when I turned over in bed I had to adjust my crotch to achieve comfort. I thought at the time that my thighs must be getting fat. Same thing the next night. Weird. I got up in the morning and put the dogs out for a pee and plunked down on a stool to wait and let them back in. Felt like I’d had what I’ve called a “Charley horse“ but means “kick in the nuts”. Shortness of breath and extreme discomfort. Very Unusual to sit on one’s balls. They are not made for that. Still didn’t think too much about it, just carried on with my day.
Later, out shopping at the bookstore I went to the rest room and had some difficulty with my fly at the urinal. I reached in to facilitate the exercise and was alarmed that one of my testicles that was usually grape sized was the size of a plum. My mind was immediately in catastrophe mode imagining testicular cancer and I called my GP (doctor). It was just after four pm and the answering machine was on so I had to leave a message describing my problem. The secretary called back within the hour and I got an appointment for first thing the next day.
My doctor asked me when I first noticed the symptoms, and I truly answered that I couldn’t accurately say because I was long past adolescence and no longer in the habit of fondling “the boys”. He laughed. Upon inspection, he said he suspected a hydrocele but ordered an ultra sound just to make sure. I got an appointment for later that morning and went to the Montréal General Hospital and gowned up. I was waiting outside the changing room to be called and a nervous young man came in and asked “Mr. McLean?” I was the only person there and replied that that was my doctor’s name and I, being the patient was Mr. Hanchet. He apologized and explained that he was a “resident” I impishly wisecracked that the ultra sound was to be of my testicles (just to be clear). He was actually very professional and thorough and explained that after he was done another doctor would confer with him and then come and explain to me what they saw. The female doctor confirmed that it was indeed a hydrocele and that there was no evidence of anything else to be worried about. She said she’d send the result to my doctor and urology. I thought she said “neurology” and impishly quipped that unlike a lot of men I didn’t think with my crotch. Funnier to me than to her….oh well.
A week passed. No call from urology. I called my GP and asked what to do and the secretary said I could bypass the system and get seen by a doctor who was private (meaning outside of the Medicare system) meaning there would be a fee. I decided to wait, but another week went by and my situation was starting to affect other aspects of my life. Driving was becoming awkward and uncomfortable. I called the private urologist’s office and the secretary informed me that the operation would be $850.00. I said I had to think about it. I decided to wait.
My brother in law is an eye doctor and had told me that if I needed help he “knows a guy”. He called, but the dr. was on holiday. A follow up call got me an appointment for surgery. I will go under the knife at the end of August.
Meanwhile it was still growing. Now an avocado and every time I needed to sit, I did so gingerly on the edge of the chair and slide back. Hoping I wouldn’t need a wheel barrow soon. This was just nuts!
The avocado grew into a tangerine in a ski mitten as my problem expanded. My crotch entered the room before I do and my head is filled with quotations I have heard before that now have new meaning. “He must have big balls” meaning he was brave. The opposite of timid. I don’t see how the size of one’s nuts determine one’s bravery, but I digress. Cojones? Forget about it. Great target for an enemy.
The urologist gave me four options: 1. live with it. 2. drain it. 3. drain it and inject medicine. 4. go under the knife. One was out of the question and three and four needed to be done in a hospital. I chose #2.
At the urology clinic there is a small room set aside for these kind of “procedures”. I nervously was humming the same “The Dance Of The Sugarplum Fairies” under my breath. I had decided an apt nickname for this operating room was “The Nutcracker Suite”. The medical staff were all business as after a small prick (pun intended) I finally earned the sobriquet of “Numb Nuts”. The extraction took a minute or so, and it was all over. 220ml of gross fluid which is almost a cup. I stood up and immediately sensed the difference. Perversely I started to sing “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing” which I didn’t even know I knew. I did a Pierre Trudeau pirouette …(Pierreouette) in my relief.
It has been over a week, and the return to normalcy has been a relief. I am very grateful for this resolution to my minor issue and has made me more mindful and empathetic of those with less easily resolved medical issues.
The other day while having a coffee in one of our favourite cafés, Sharon and I were delighted to be joined by two friends. One of those friends is a favourite professor and mentor from my days as a music student and the other was his life partner who is just as delightful. This is the second time this has happened in as many months. Every time we talk there is such a rich and humorous exchange of ideas on a variety of subjects.
Sharon and “C” got into their various experiences with their recent eye surgeries and the positive and negative emotions evoked from their experiences. I didn’t hear much of that conversation because on our side of the table we were having our own conversation. I always love talking with and listening to “K” and I believe he delights in it as well. The time before I had intended to send him an e-mail to express how our conversation had actually elated me and had altered my mood for hours afterward. I forgot to do it, of course, but this time I was determined to let him know how much he has meant and still means to me.
I was reminded of a message I received from a former student who I was quite fond of. I had found him on Facebook and he messaged me back with a series of re-acquainting stories and ended with this message: “You had a huge impact on my life, Ian!”
I wanted ”K” to hear a similar sentiment from me. He surely already knew. Most teachers are aware of that special connection. I have been fortunate to have had many great mentors and have been lucky enough to have been a mentor to several myself.
As we were wrapping up and taking our leave I heard Sharon say to “C”:
“Aging is a series of losses and adjustments”
Which struck me as quite profound.
”K” and I had talked about career moves and loss of loved ones through death and/or neglect and loss of various abilities including changes in eyesight, mobility, location, etc. and Sharon’s statement rang so true for both conversations.
Sharon has experienced this through her job as a home-care physiotherapist and more recently through her father’s illnesses and death and the erosion of her mother to the afflictions of aging.
“K” and I had talked about losing our parents and several colleagues and several contemporaries. I, also had the experience of my kids leaving the nest and needing less of me. I have lost some ambition and some skill through realizing I can’t do it all.
My older brother who showed me my first guitar chords can no longer form those chords because his fingers are distorted by arthritis. My fingers may be following. I recently saw Bruce Cockburn whose arthritis requires him to use two canes to walk. He talked freely about having to adapt his style to accommodate the physical changes befalling him. he’s still great by the way.
We all lose things, seeing them drop away from our reality until the only thing left to lose is our own life force.
At twenty I knew I would live forever. In my forties my dad stopped living forever. In my fifties my mum stopped living forever. Here I am in my sixties and I see more of my musical and literary heroes stopping living forever. It is starting to sink in that maybe I won’t live forever.
On Monday as I drove home from my eldest daughter’s thirtieth birthday celebration I was overwhelmed by a cloud of sadness suddenly realizing that I would not see my children grow as old as I am now. I couldn’t help that feeling or that realization. Reality sucks. I have my strategies for coping. I am a creative person. I revel in imaginary worlds and escape into art.
Now I adjust more than I want to, but probably not as much as I need to as the years flash by. Realizing this is like a sudden growth spurt of several inches.
My mind is expanding as my spine is contracting but my heart remains constant.
As a teenager I made extra spending money by doing gardening chores for some of my mum’s friends in the countryside around the town of St. Sauveur-des-Monts, Quebec in the lower Laurentian mountains. One friend of hers in particular gave me lots of work keeping her “Canada lilies“ under control. I had to dig up these obstinate orange monsters and divide them and replant the halved plant and dispose of the other half in a designated compost heap a short wheel barrow trip away. Mrs. Henderson had perhaps two dozen of these plants whose root systems were huge and intertwined. Cutting the roots with a spade was a particularly satisfying feeling and I am happy recalling this memory.
My story is not about plants, though, it is about teenage lust and paralyzing self-loathing.
Next door to the Henderson’s was another friend of my mum’s named “Hope”. Hope was a single mum and had several kids. One of those kids was Kathy. Kathy was a year younger than me and because of zoning went to a different high school. I only ever saw her from afar at the Bell theatre in Morin Heights or at community events like Canada Day or la fète St. Jean Baptiste.
One day as I was working on the lilies I saw Kathy out of the corner of my eye setting up a chaise longue on the balcony of their chalet and discretely kept watching as she slathered her limbs and torso with sunscreen as she prepared to sunbathe in her bikini less than sixty feet from me. She looked perfect. Blonde, already tanned, nubile. I was smitten in that dumbest of ways because we were really just strangers and I lacked the skill and/or confidence to do anything about it.
In those days, I had a six pack and often worked shirtless. I continued working and needlessly flexing certain muscles in hopes of luring Kathy into my orbit. Talking to her was out of the question because she was a Goddess and I was not. As I write this I am being re-traumatized by the pent up anxiety I experienced at the time. I had desire to meet this girl, but was missing the information that even though a goddess, she was just a teenager like I was and was sending off the signals that she was approachable. I feel like such a coward admitting my social impotence here. I was clueless and felt worthless.
I returned several times to the property to continue gardening, but the weather never seemed to reproduce the perfect conditions of that first day, and Kathy did not reappear. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
In the fall, I headed off to University in another province and got on with my life as did my pals from this era. Eventually Got married, raised a family, etc.
Thirty years or so later I was back in St. Sauveur attending a funeral for the mother of one of my friends and ran into Kathy’s mum “Hope”. We struck up a conversation and I nonchalantly asked how Kathy’s life had turned out. I let out that I had had a crush on her that summer. Hope exclaimed “YOU had a crush, boy oh boy, Kathy had an overwhelming crush on you that summer and couldn’t figure out why it appeared that I had no interest in her!” Doh!!!!
I have often used this story in my teaching to children. Essentially, we never know what someone else may be thinking. It isn’t a great idea to put others on a pedestal so as to make them seem unapproachable.
Vignettes and Bagatelles 