Friday 30 December 2011

Post Holiday... Cheer?

Well, the holidays are just about over, and frankly I'm happy for it.  I've never been a Christmassy person, at least the glossy, shopping mall version of Christmas.  Or any other version of Christmas, come to think about it.  I don't have very fond memories of Christmas growing up, which every year followed roughly the same pattern:


  • Dad would drink way too much Christmas Eve
  • Dad would start yelling at people
  • Rest of Christmas was really awkward

My dad used Christmas as an excuse to indulge in hard liquor.  All year, he'd drink about 6-12 beers a night, but at Christmas, he'd buy about a dozen bottles 'for guests' and they'd all be gone before New Years Eve, so he'd usually have to make a second trip to the liquor store.  As I recall, we didn't have too many guests come over, and those that did would have a drink or two before leaving.  My dad worked for the railway, and he'd go in for a half-day at Christmas Eve with a bottle in his lunch box (which he actually did a lot of days, I found out later in life), which would be empty when he came home after lunch (after a drink at the bar).  Then he'd usually sleep for about 4-5 hours before waking up and beginning all over again.

Dad was not a happy, lovable drunk.  He could be, but dad was more of a wild mood swings kind of drunk, which meant he could be happy-go-lucky one minute and violently angry the next minute and then full of depression and despair the minute after that.  He was like this all year round, but doubly so at Christmas, because it seemed like he was always sauced at the holidays.  There is a line in a Meatloaf song that goes something like 'he was dangerous, drunk and defeated and corroded by failure and envy and hate.'  It's easy to dismiss my father as a villain in the story of my life, but he's a far more complicated character.

Me and the boys were over at mom and dad's, like we are every Christmas, because both my parents have a phobia about leaving their neighbourhood.  This Christmas was the first that my dad did not have any hard liquor in the house.  Alcoholism has ravaged his body to the point where at the age of 65, he looks about 80 and I have personally thought at about 3 separate occasions that he was sure to be dead by the end of the year.  When he can't drink hard liquor anymore (there was still plenty of beer), I know he's just about finished.  

I'm sorry, I really didn't intend for this post to go in this direction.  I do have good Christmas memories, and I do enjoy watching my kids have fun with it, but Christmas has always had an added dimension of anxiety beyond the usual stresses associated with it.  As years go by, I crave a Christmas muted and low-key and forgoing the gifts and lights and nonsense for something a little more thoughtful.  Apart from watching my kids having a good time, my fondest Christmas memory is having a Festivus drink with a good friend of mine at the local pub.  They did the airing of grievances on the open mic and everything. 

And New Years?  Forget it.  This year, my boys will be over armed with their Star Wars films and video games.  Excellent, I couldn't ask for anything better.  Watching Luke saving dear old dad and the Death Star blowing up for the nth time with chips and root beer is going to be awesome!  Take care, and all the best in the New Year.





Saturday 24 December 2011

Merry Christmas Movie House! Merry Christmas Emporium! Merry Christmas You Wonderful Old Building and Loan!






I know.  I’m a sap.  But I cry at the end of this movie every year.  I really do.  I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of other times I’ve cried since I’ve turned 13, but ol’ George Bailey gets me every time when he looks up to Clarence and winks.  I’ve spent years thinking about why.  I can think about the movie and the scene now and it doesn’t make me particularly emotional.  I can go through the whole movie, and while I enjoy it, my heartstrings aren’t tugged.  But when all those people bust through the Bailey’s front door, with their fists full of cash to bail George out, I get that pain in my chest and by the time that bell rings, I’m teary.  Every Christmas Eve without fail since the age of sixteen .

It’s a Wonderful Life would never get made today, and if it did it would be savaged.  First of all, I don’t think there’s a modern equivalent of Jimmy Stewart.  George Clooney is probably the closest, but can’t match Stewart’s goofy, yet affirming charm.  But more importantly, the idea that a banker values the needs of his community over his personal needs is crazy.  I’m sure it was crazy then, but It’s a Wonderful Life was filmed immediately after World War II, when there was a collective sense of community, a notion that we were all in this together, that we all sacrifice together, and we all gain together.  The film carries the idea that it matters to all of us what happens to George and Mary Bailey and Mr. Gower and the Martinis and Bert the Cop, because when they succeed, we as a society succeed, and when they fail, we are diminished.  That idea would be sneered at as socialism today.  Sad.

But what sets It’s a Wonderful Life apart is its faith in the inherent goodness of people.  Evil Mr. Potter is defeated in the end, not because he is arrested, beaten up or lynched by the residents of Bedford Falls, but because the residents of Bedford Falls help out one of their own.  They don’t judge or scold George, they just come to his rescue when he needs help, proving cynical old Potter’s view of humanity wrong.  And I think that’s what gets the waterworks going every year.

Even through all the years growing up into my early thirties where I was so cynical and jaded, I still privately believed in the inherent goodness of people.  And It’s a Wonderful Life is a celebration of that.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy (belated) Solstice Day, or Kwanzaa or Life Day or Festivus, or whatever you celebrate at this time of year.  It’s been an interesting one, and I’m glad I can share a small part of it with you.  Take care. 

Wednesday 21 December 2011

The War on Christmas… *Groan



I get a little sad when I come across a screed like this on my Facebook feed:

"WHAT A CROCK OF SH!T..... We can't say Merry Christmas now we have to say Happy Holidays. We can't call it a Christmas tree, it's now called a Holiday tree? Because it might offend someone. If you don't like our "Customs" and it offends you so much then GO HOME. I will help you pack. They are called customs and we have our traditions If you... agree with this...please post this as your status!! I AM A PROUD AMERICAN CITIZEN... MERRY CHRISTMAS Do you have what it takes to repost this? MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! If ya don't like......you can MERRY KISSMYASS!!!!"

Ugh.  Does anyone actually really believe in their heart that there is a ‘war’ on Christmas?  Is this a real thing?  I remember back a long time ago, I had a job in a hardware store.  This is where I first came across this War on Christmas business.  One of the cashiers wished a customer ‘Merry Christmas” as she left with her purchases.  Another cashier wandered over to her till and admonished her:

“You can’t say Merry Christmas anymore!  You have to say ‘happy holidays’!  They’ll get offended.”

“It’s all about them coming over here and shoving their beliefs on everybody else!  Soon we won’t be able to celebrate Christmas anymore” someone else piped up.

Really?  Because in the 35 years I’ve been alive, I’ve never personally encountered anyone trying to ‘take Christmas away’ from me or anyone else.  I don’t know anyone else who has had that experience either.  I’ve had plenty of people tell me that they heard from a friend about a guy who had a business who had to take down something Christmassy because someone or other got offended, but truthfully, no one I’ve ever known has had a ‘War on Christmas’ encounter. 

I find it so sad that so many otherwise intelligent and insightful people are duped by this nonsense, so in the interest of fairness, I will parse this statement and give my thoughts on it…

"WHAT A CROCK OF SH!T..... We can't say Merry Christmas now we have to say Happy Holidays.

Nobody has to do anything.  If I want to say Merry Christmas, I do.  If I want to say Happy Holidays or Season’s Greetings, I do.  It’s called freedom of speech.  I use all these phrases.  If I know someone celebrates Christmas, I wish them Merry Christmas.  If that person celebrates something else or I’m not sure, I use the generic Happy Holidays.  Wishing someone Merry Christmas who doesn’t celebrate Christmas isn’t offensive; it’s just stupid.  It doesn’t make any sense.

In a professional capacity, I do the same thing.  Now I realize other people have to, at the behest of the companies they work for, use the blanket statement of Happy Holidays, but is that really controversial?  Once again, not everyone celebrates Christmas, but you want to use an inclusive greeting.  What on earth is the big deal?  And don’t get me wrong, only a miniscule fringe actually object to the Merry Christmas thing.  Most newcomers to Canada understand and accept Christmas is what the majority of citizens celebrate and are more than happy to participate in the festivities, at least in a secular capacity.  But they aren’t obligated to.  It’s called freedom.

We can't call it a Christmas tree, it's now called a Holiday tree? Because it might offend someone.

Okay, I think ‘holiday tree’ is stupid too.  It’s a ham-fisted attempt to use neutral language, but it’s taking it to a ridiculous degree and giving fuel to the ‘war on Christmas’ crowd.  However, my simple antidote to that is to call it a Christmas tree.  Period.  I do.  Everybody else I know does too.  Nobody is forcing me to call it a holiday tree, like I’m going to get a fine every time I utter the words.  And to my knowledge, no one has ever been offended by calling a Christmas tree a Christmas tree.  I’m sure that if I dig hard enough, some story will turn up that someone, somewhere was rankled with a ‘Christmas’ tree, but that only proves that some people are waaaay too sensitive.

If you don't like our "Customs" and it offends you so much then GO HOME. I will help you pack.

Ours.  Yours.  Us.  Them.  I suspect this is the real point behind this diatribe.  And again, I’m not sure where these ‘offended’ people are… I’ve never personally encountered any.  I’m not sure replacing the word Christmas with the word Holiday or Season with the mindset that we live in a multicultural and multifaceted society and the word Christmas may not apply to people we don’t know qualifies as someone not respecting “our” customs (assuming you know who “we” are, and I think you do *wink wink*), but it’s one of those bogus arguments that sways otherwise intelligent and rational people.  The argument has twisted from using a respectful, inclusive and innocuous greeting into “them” (and I think you know who “they” are *wink wink*) taking away your right to celebrate Christmas.  Trust me, “our” precious Christmas isn’t going anywhere.  Wal-Mart and Best Buy will see to that.

Oh, and all you Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Atheists and everyone else who doesn’t like it can go home.  Someone will be along to help you pack.  Oh, you were born here?  Well, go back to where your ancestors came from, wherever that is.  Oh, you’re Aboriginal?  Well, go back to the reserve and stop spoiling the party by having beliefs and stuff.  Yeah, I mean, it’s human rights and all, but there’s human rights and then there’s human rights… if you catch my meaning.

They are called customs and we have our traditions If you... agree with this...please post this as your status!!

What are called customs?  Is saying Merry Christmas really such a sacred custom and tradition in our society?  I always thought of it as a seasonal greeting, like Happy New Year, Happy St. Patrick’s Day or Happy Easter.  But whatever… it’s not like anyone is actually STOPPING YOU FROM USING IT or anything.  You want to say Merry Christmas?  Say Merry Christmas!  Say it to everyone!  Say it until you’re blue in the face.  But allow others to say whatever they want to say.  Once again, freedom of speech.

“We” (*wink wink*) have our traditions?  And…?  Who is screwing with it?  Nobody.

By ‘tradition’, you mean ‘I want the cashier at Wal-Mart to say Merry Christmas to me because if the cashier says Happy Holidays, it’s like they’re saying Hanukkah or Ramadan is just as important as ‘our’ (*wink wink*) Christmas, and we all know that slippery slope and soon they’ll be taking away our Christmas trees and tearing down churches and such…’  Sheesh.  Who needs that kind of validation?  If Wal-Mart wants to say Happy Holidays, Season’s Greetings, or Have a Wonderful Life Day, that is their right.

You know, freedom of speech and all.  (Am I detecting a theme here?)



I AM A PROUD AMERICAN CANADIAN CITIZEN... MERRY CHRISTMAS Do you have what it takes to repost this? MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! If ya don't like......you can MERRY KISSMYASS!!!!"

Sweet… what a great Christmas message this is: Say Merry Christmas or you can kiss my ass!  I’m sure Jesus is thrilled with this.

And that’s ultimately my point.  Isn’t this War on Christmas nonsense really, really antithetical to what Christmas is supposed to represent?  Do average people who are inclined to post this on their Facebook page stop to think about that?  I mean, I know someone like Bill O’Reilly knows that the War on Christmas is bullshit, but why not real people? 

Seriously, is this something Jesus is really worried about?  I’m sure Jesus is far more concerned about the incredible amount of stress his birthday puts on people in December, never mind the ongoing plight of the homeless and hungry, the victims of war and tyranny, the sick and neglected and abused and lonely… you know, the people with real problems, the problems that we as a society should be committed to solving instead of bickering over a non-existent issue. 

I know the person who posted this well.  She is a good, kind and conscientious person.  She has known her share of discrimination and bigotry in her life.  Which makes it all that sadder she is willing to foist narrow sentiments like that onto others.  I don’t get angry when I see this… I feel pity.

For the last time, there is no war on Christmas.  There are, however, numerous wars on common sense.

Monday 19 December 2011

My Weekend With the Boys #2





There are things even little Gerry can teach me about life. Like how relaxing colouring in a colouring book can be. Or the best stress relief can simply be us chasing each other around the park and laughing. Or how good dry Cheerios can taste when they are dumped from the bowl onto the floor (apparently), because that seemed to be the only way he’d eat them.



Go nuts kiddo, I’m not sweeping up any more Cheerios. My floor is clean. Does that make me a bad dad?



Nick’s bond with me is almost as strong now as when I left. He’s still burdened… I can tell by his posture and his unwillingness to talk past a certain point. Him, Gerry and his mom are going to be moving in with his soon-to-be step-dad soon and I think that’s causing him anxiety and more than a little guilt. Recently, Nick and I were talking when he asked me who I live with. When I told him that I lived by myself, he got really sad because he thought I was lonely. I told him that a lot of people come to visit, and I go out to visit a lot of people, and it’s okay, because I choose to live alone. And he’s welcome to visit and stay over anytime he wants to.



I think it has set in that mom and dad aren’t getting back together, but I don’t want him to choose sides. He tells me he doesn’t like his step dad, which I don’t think is true, but I think he’s saying it to try and make me feel better. I distracted him with other talk, because I don’t want him to feel like he needs to do this for my benefit. There will be times he’ll do this (as well as times he’ll tell me he hates me and likes him better), but I’ll deal with that as it comes. Soon enough, the topic is dropped.



We watched Newcastle United somehow not beat Swansea City Saturday morning, even though Newcastle absolutely, satisfyingly dominated for 75 minutes. Good news for the Magpies is that midfielder Cheik Tiote and central defender Fabricio Coloccini are back in after injuries. The bad news is that Tiote and Newcastle’s star striker Demba Ba will both be gone for January for the African Cup of Nations. There’s going to be little joy for the foreseeable future, even if the team avoids the injury bug. Oh well.



I had to arm-twist a lot to get Nick outside Saturday afternoon. He’s turning into a total couch potato and I’m none too pleased about it. We did get out, however, and of course he and Gerry had a blast once we were outside. We walked to the grocery store and picked up meat pie for dinner and vanilla ice cream for dessert. I cooked dinner while the boys played. We ate, had ice cream and I indulged Nick a small glass of 7-Up with some popcorn after I put Gerry to bed. We watched Star Wars Episode III, which is Nick’s favourite Star Wars film, and I find absolutely dreadful. I have to stifle the urge to laugh out loud when I see Heyden Christensen and Natalie Portman *ahem* acting their way through a scene, but Nick loves it so I can deal with it.



Sunday was our designated lazy day where we played, snoozed, watched TV, surfed the net, and played video games. Usually by late Sunday afternoon, the boys start missing their mother, and are visibly showing it.



She usually comes at about 6, but this time it was almost 8 before she arrived to pick them up. She was unusually cheerful and chatty as well, but I think that has a lot to do with her moving out of her parents’ house, where her and the boys have been living for the past year. Who knows? The boys run off with mom, but Nick has actually been giving me big hugs before leaving. Last night was no exception.



The aftermath is clear after the boys leave. Toys are scattered everywhere, dishes stacked up beside the sink and virtually nothing is where it’s supposed to be. I’ll deal with that all tomorrow. I pour myself a gin and lime, take some ibuprofen and put my foot up. I have Black Books queued up in the DVD player and turn it on.



I sincerely hope Annie can make it work with this guy. Not because I particularly care about her happiness, but because it may provide Nick and Gerry with a little stability and it's something they sorely need.







Wednesday 14 December 2011

Walking Straight and Standing Tall (At Last)




Yesterday was the first day in 133 days I haven’t walked with a limp.  At first I didn’t even realize it.  I was on my way to my office when I thought to myself:  ‘Hey… I’m walking!  Properly!’  I tested it out… and it was true.  I walked around in a circle.  I walked up and down the hall.  I walked around in a circle again.  I even did a little half-assed jig.  And about a half-dozen people were staring at me, smirking.  ‘To hell with your judging eyes… I.  CAN.  WALK!’

I shattered my ankle playing soccer last July.  Soccer was a big catalyst for the break-up of my marriage.  It’s funny how the most mundane things can push someone toward the edge.  Soccer.  Running.  Quitting smoking.  All positive things equaled one big (perceived) negative.

The seeds of my broken ankle and fibula can be traced back two years ago.  My then-wife was pregnant with Gerry.  She was not having a good pregnancy.  She was near-constantly sick and tired and cranky. 

We had not had sex in a few months.  We rarely had sex at all since we’d been living together six years previously.  And ‘making love’?  I can’t even remember.  I was rapidly becoming a veteran of the proverbial sexless marriage.  At this point in our marriage we reached what at the time we didn’t realize was the death zone; apathy.  I had gone past hating her coldness and manipulative ways and numbed myself to it.  But there were times I sincerely missed her and wanted her (sincere) touch.  Looking back it’s still funny how I could have been attracted to someone who was so fundamentally uninterested in me after I paid the bills, but hey, that’s the lug yer readin’ about.

I recognized that she wasn’t feeling well, but I also recognized that she was using that as a shield against me; it was a convenient excuse to put her intimate ambivalence on further hiatus… for a while… or maybe for good.

I made sincere, albeit pathetic and needy efforts to romance her and cuddle with her, hoping for some real intimacy in return.  There was none.  I became increasingly desperate.  And one day, things came to a head.

I planned an entire romantic day.  Breakfast in bed.  Massages in hot oil.  Flowers.  Chocolates.  Berries.  Dinner and (non-alcoholic) wine.  From morning to night.  And nothing.  Well, there was a perfunctory offer of sex.  Which I took like a hungry, belly-crawling dog.  She looked visibly disgusted with me.  I was visibly disgusted with myself.

I couldn’t sleep afterward.   I felt so out-of-control.  I felt so worthless and undesired and unloved.  And while I think in retrospect I’d been setting myself up so I’d have permission to feel sorry for myself, I searched in vain to figure out how a reasonably good looking, reasonably self-assured and fun-loving guy was reduced to begging and bribing his sick pregnant wife for a little affection.  God, I was such a douche-bag.
Things could not go on the way they were.  I had to do something.  But things had felt so utterly hopeless

But there had to be something.  There had to be something I could achieve.  I decided to quit smoking.

I was a smoker.  A heavy smoker.  An addicted smoker.  I had a love/hate with tobacco.  I hated the smell and the money they burned, the ache in my chest and the feeling that my nerves were rubbed raw with steel wool when I didn’t have them.  But God, did I love that hit of nicotine.  The head rush, the feeling of pure ecstasy coursing through my veins, the way I looked as a cigarette dangled out of my mouth carelessly.  God, it was love.

But enough was enough.  Cigarettes were another instance where I wasn’t in control.  And I was sick of relinquishing control.  So I went to a doctor’s office, got a prescription for Champix (or Chantix, depending on where you are from) and within two weeks I was a non-smoker.

And I had felt pride in myself for the first time in ages.  It was intoxicating to be proud of an achievement.  Addicting.  I wanted more!

Like many people I had gained weight quitting smoking.  I was 170 lbs in January when I quit.  I was roughly 40 pounds heavier by the time Gerry was born in April.  About a month later, when I settled into the routine of having another newborn in the house, I decided to go for a run one evening.  I had been vaguely planning to get back into shape, but never committing.  To hell with it, I said to myself, I’m just going to run and see what happens.

Annie looked at me with a raised eyebrow, but told me that was wonderful to hear, and privately expecting me to quit in a couple of weeks.

And with good reason.  I had never in my life voluntarily jogged or ran for anything.  I ridiculed those who did.  But there I was strapping on running shoes, wearing shorts and a t-shirt and jogging around the block.  My first run out I ran maybe a half-mile, stumbled home, barely made it into the bathroom before I threw up my guts along with about 15 years worth of phlegm and crap that were lying like cement in my lungs.

But the next night I tied up the sneakers and did it again.  And the night after that.  And almost every night after that for the next two months.  I incorporated a small workout regimen and slowly but surely shed the pounds off that I had put on since I had quit smoking.  For the first time in my entire life, I felt in control.  I no longer felt like I was uselessly reacting to life around me… I felt like I had power over my own destiny.  And what was further, I genuinely liked myself for the first time in my life.  My astronomically high stress level plummeted.  I slept better at night.  And for the first time in our marriage, I stopped being passive-aggressive and started being assertive.  And I did it all while maintaining my commitment to my kids. 

Annie quickly switched from curiosity to fear.  By her estimation (and she told me this later) I was getting in shape in preparation to either leave her or cheat on her.  I think that may have been what she possibly thought, but on a deeper level she felt her control over me slipping and was pretty anxious as a result.  I attempted to talk to her about the transformation that I was going through, that while it may have seemed scary, it was ultimately going to make me a better person, a better husband and a better dad.

Right around this time the World Cup was on in all of its ear-splitting vuvuzuela-trumpeting glory.  I had been a rabid soccer fan before we started dating, but had pretty much ditched watching it since she showed little interest in it.  But this year, I had decided to get back into the World Cup spirit.  I bought an England shirt and watched all the England games at the pub where England fans were congregating in the city, an old haunt from back in my university days.  She was more than miffed that I was doing something without her, but I held fast and reiterated my desire to have a social activity on my own, and that she was more than welcome to do the same. 

So on goes the World Cup, and England’s generally sucky performance thereof, and ended with the World Cup final between the Netherlands and Spain.  Annie asked if she could come to the final with me, and I although I really wanted this to be my time, I thought she did need a little getaway herself so I was cool with it.  She arranged her parents to watch the boys and we were set to go to the pub and watch the game the next day.

So it’s the next day, Final day, and I casually ask Annie when her parents are coming over to watch the boys.

After about ten seconds of silence:  ‘What are you talking about?’

‘The Cup Final?  You said you wanted to go?’

‘Oh, I thought you said you weren’t going…’

‘When did I say that?’

‘Uh… last night?’

‘Really?  Because I didn’t.’

‘Well, you said it wasn’t going to be as fun without England in it, so I took that to mean you weren’t going.’

‘Well, I did say that, but I didn’t say that I wasn’t going to the Final.’

‘Oh… well… I don’t know if my parents can babysit.’

‘Well, if you want to come with me, you better find out if they can.’

She phoned them a couple of times, but there was no answer.  I held on as long as I could.

‘I’m really sorry you misunderstood me Annie… but I’m going with or without you.  If you get a hold of your parents, then meet me there when you can.’

And I left.  If that all sounds really harsh to you, I never once believed a word of what she said that day.  That little exchange was a test to see how far I’d stand my ground.  In years past I would have folded up and quietly resented her for it.  But not this time.  It was her playing mind games, pure and simple.  She never wanted to come with me, she didn’t give a shit.  That day was all about an attempt to break this new-found self-respect I had for myself.

I think this moment was the breaking point between us.  A couple of months later, I discovered her affair and after giving her ample opportunity to come clean about it, left.

Workouts were sketchy over the next few months, but I didn’t allow myself to slide too far out.  After a little faltering, I got back on the horse and continued.  And the confidence in myself continued with it.

Things in the healthy lifestyle realm continued to be pretty good (despite my beer intake going through the roof), and this past spring I was looking for another challenge.  Soccer seemed like a natural fit.  The problem was, I hadn’t played soccer in almost 20 years.  I didn’t want to shell out a few hundred dollars to play league soccer only to find I didn’t have the talent and couldn’t keep up.  I needed a challenge, but not a foolhardy one.

I was browsing ads on Kajiji one evening when I read an ad written by a guy named Hector.  He had just come in a couple of years ago from Peru and was looking for guys to play soccer on Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings.  I emailed him telling him I hadn’t played since my junior year of high school and was well into my thirties.  No problem, he replied, come on down.

And I did.  Annie and I were at the sports shop with Nick to outfit him for soccer and I bought my gear at the same time.  It was merely a case of convenience, killing two birds with one stone, but I got to admit I did enjoy the surprised look on Annie’s face.

‘You’re playing soccer now?’ she asked.

‘Yep’

“Really?  Wow…’ she said

She was genuinely surprised.  And while I’ve (mostly) moved on from Annie, it was pretty satisfying being able to show her that I’ve been tackling challenges that a couple of years ago would have been unthinkable.

So that’s how I started playing soccer after 17 years.  And to be honest at first, it seemed like a horrible idea.  About ten minutes into my first game, I thought I was going to faint.  I was lightheaded and was on the bubble to jack it in. 

But I slowed down a bit and persevered.  After my first game I had to throw up again, and for a few days, my chest rattled with what seemed like the last vestiges of the crap that I put into my lungs for so many years.  But that passed, and I got stronger every game.  And while I had no illusions about my ability, I didn’t embarrass myself either.  I even scored a few goals over the course of the summer.

Anyway, we had a Sunday evening game going in late July, I was playing centre-back and the opposition’s midfielder threaded a through ball past me right onto the centre-forward’s foot.  I sprinted to catch up with him, but it was clear I wasn’t going to be able to push him off the ball.  He looked to his left where a teammate was bearing down on net, and I was convinced he was going to pass.  If I slid, I could cut off the pass.  I slid.  I could feel my cleat getting caught in the turf.  I could feel my foot wrapping itself up against my leg and a sound that I could only describe as someone twisting bubble wrap in their hands.

Something is broken.  I lay there waiting for the pain to come.  There is no pain, but there is a numbness in my foot.  After about 10-15 seconds, a couple of teammates look down on me.  Javier, another Peruvian fellow and Alexi, a guy from Russia carry me off the field and ask what’s wrong.  I tell them I think my foot is broken, but they don’t believe me.  Javier gingerly takes off my shoe, wiggling my foot around while doing it.  Now it’s starting to throb badly.  I strip off my shin guard, which was helping to keep my foot together and the foot flops uselessly to the side.  A collective gasp erupts from my teammates.

And now it officially hurts.

A guy from the other team offers to drive me to the hospital, which he does, and gets me there moments before I pass out from shock.  I come to in Emergency where I’m on oxygen and surrounded by doctors and nurses.  They give me Propofol (which the nurses very aptly call milk of amnesia) and the doctor popped my foot back into place (which I don’t remember… my sister told me all of this later, except I don’t remember calling her.)  He then sent me for x-rays which turned up negative for fractures, which the doctor couldn’t believe.  He wrapped up the foot, wrote a industrial-sized prescription for Tylenol-3, and told me to return tomorrow morning for a CT scan. 

Fast forward to next morning and the CT scan finds no less than 2 fractures in the ankle bone as well as a fracture in the fibula, and bone fragments lodged in the joint.  Whee.  They operated the next day and I spent 5 sucky days in the hospital.  And 12 sucky weeks on crutches.  And 6 sucky weeks of physiotherapy.

But no regrets.  I’d do it again… and yes, I’m still planning to play soccer this spring.  

Saturday 10 December 2011

What’s Goin On



Like many people, I watched the video of the middle school boy talking about being bullied and cutting himself through a series of cards, and like many people, I recognized that kid was me.

Until about the middle year of high school, school was mostly a living hell.  I dreaded going into school most mornings.  I liked school itself, as in the learning about new things and such, although I was pretty lazy when it came to the work end of things.  Teachers knew I was bright and were enthusiastic about my intelligence, although they were exasperated with my work ethic.  I’d much rather be chasing squirrels or reading books than demonstrating long division (while showing my work, naturally) a hundred times over.  I know it.  They know I know it.  What was with all the pointless bullshit?  I want to watch Indiana Jones!

In grade 5, I, with 7 other kids moved into a grade 5/6 split class, based on our teacher’s recommendations of kids who could handle a more advanced workload.  There were 3 other boys and 4 girls.

It was really good at first.  The teacher was interesting and engaging and taught a lot of stuff that wasn’t in the books.  We had whole afternoons where we discussed pertinent issues of the day:  pollution, the ozone layer, the Cold War, AIDS.  He was a serious amateur astronomer, a Sherlock Holmes buff, and a huge, gushing Trekkie.  He never once talked down to us.  He gave us hard issues to think about and expected us to form reasoned opinions about those issues, and he further expected us to defend those opinions from criticism.  For homework, he got us to watch the evening news or read the world issues section of the newspaper.

He sounds like a stellar teacher.  And he was.

Except he was a bully.  And he turned a blind eye to the rampant bullying that went on in his classroom.

If I were in school today, I would have been diagnosed with ADD and given some kind of corrective course of action.  Back in 1985, I don’t ever recall hearing about ADD.  There were kids who did their work and there were kids who ‘goofed off’.  And that teacher declared me a goof-off… and worse, a goof-off with real academic talent.

I’m not saying I had ADD.  All I can tell you is that what was being taught fascinated me.  I understood it almost immediately, but just couldn’t struggle through the tedious homework.  After a few minutes my mind would wander and I’d want to get into something else.  Trust me, this has followed me my entire life and I HATE it.  It’s not a question of discipline.  There are other things (like woodworking or painting) that I can do for hours until I’ve realized that I haven’t eaten.  Some things I've had a hard time focusing on.

Anyway, all of my friends were left in the other grade 5 class and the other three boys who moved with me and formed a little clique and then proceeded to make my life a living hell.  The teasing was non-stop.  Literally from opening class to end of day, I don’t ever remember the teasing subsiding.  Relief by hanging out with my old friends from the other grade 5 class wasn’t an option because word had gotten around that us ‘advanced’ kids were ‘too good’ for the regular grade 5 kids so in the space of a month, all of my old friends stopped talking to me and broke off into little groups of their own and didn’t mingle with us.  The grade 6 kids had their own clique and didn’t want to associate with someone younger than them.  The girls in our little class considered me way too radioactive to even be seen with, lest they be targets themselves. 

I was well and truly alone.

My only salvation lay in the teacher, but because I sometimes shirked the work he assigned me, he decided the best course of action was to bully and humiliate me at every opportunity.  When my work was less than stellar, he held it up for the class to laugh at.  He name-called.  He brow-beat me.  And when I plucked up the courage to talk about being bullied on a near-constant basis (which he must’ve observed in his capacity as a teacher in his classroom), he ignored me. 

My parents weren’t an option.  When my father drank, he could be a bigger bully than all of them combined.  My mother tended to side with authority figures and avoided conflict at all costs.  She tended to blame me for any bullying and teasing I suffered and advised me to ignore it or to not bring it upon myself.

When my grades in grade 5 dropped, the teacher’s solution was to put even more pressure on me.  Which in turn led to more bullying and more pressure from my parents.  School seemed hopeless.  Home seemed hopeless.  Everything seemed so utterly hopeless.

Everyone deals with being in this situation differently.  Some thrive on it to prove themselves.  Others turn inward.  Others bury themselves in personas in a desperate attempt to become someone else.

I decided the best course of action to deal with the constant pressure, teasing and bullying was to make myself as invisible as possible.  To fly so low under the radar that it wouldn’t be worth it to pick on me.  I got bullied, I’d take it, eyes forward and head down.  I got called an idiot by the teacher at school, I’d take it, eyes forward and head down.  My dad would go off on a drunken tangent that I couldn’t cut a 2x4 straight, I’d take it, eyes forward and head down.  Pretty soon that was how I was living my whole life.  And you wished you didn’t have to be so invisible.  You wish you could just be what everybody else wanted you to be.  You must be doing something wrong.

Thus the seeds of self-hatred are sown.

I’m not overly familiar with the psychology of cutting and self-harm, but I started hitting myself around that time.  I’m not exactly sure why I did it, but the prevailing feeling seemed to be punishing myself and relieving the pressure of living with the constant torment.  If I punished myself, I reasoned that I would be appeasing karma.

Yes.  I did make it through grade 5.  Yes it got better.

Temporarily.

Then in middle school it got worse… much, much worse.

In grade 7, I was already horribly awkward from puberty.  I dressed in my brother’s hand-me-downs.  Not that bad, except my brother was 7 years older than me, and thus all my clothes were 7 years out-of-date, which is immediately middle school death.  Whatever clothes weren’t my brother’s came from the thrift store bought by my mom whose concept of the world was permanently stuck in 1970.  Couple that with extreme nerdiness (how many 12 year olds have extensive Buster Keaton collections?) and I quickly became a target all over again.

This time it was a group of five girls.  For whatever reason, I was in their sights almost immediately, and it did not let up for three years until I entered high school.  I don’t know what it was, I don’t know why it was, but it was.  Every class.  Every lunch hour.  Almost every day.  They teased.  And teased.  And teased.  And teased.  And teased.  And when they didn’t tease, they got their boyfriends to bully me.  And when they didn’t bully me, others did, because they didn’t want to become targets .  As an interesting aside, the alpha female in that little group ended up marrying one of my first cousins.  This all happened over 20 years ago, and whenever we see each other (which isn’t often, but still), it is still really awkward between us.  She cannot look me in the face.

All the same old social rules applied.  While I had a couple of friends through middle school (and even briefly a girlfriend in grade 9, one who literally lived on the other side of the city), I was considered too radioactive to talk to.  Even the friends I made before the transition to middle school abandoned me in a hurry.  I cannot say that I blame them.  I retreated.  Made myself smaller.  More invisible.  I didn’t speak in class anymore.  I wouldn’t speak in class anymore.  I would take the zero, if I had to.  I look back in bemusement that not one teacher I had in three years (and by my estimation I had about two dozen in total) said anything to anyone about what was going on.  And most of them must have known how much I was being harassed. 

I continued hitting and hating myself and first entertained suicide as a way out.  Because when you feel trapped, you look for ways out.  Until recently, I blocked most of middle school right out, but the scars remain to this day.  There are still twinges of emotional pain that exist, and deeper gut-wrenching pain when I see kids like in that video.

To tell that kid in the video that it gets better is kind of like telling someone dying of thirst in the desert not to worry, that they will drink water in a couple of days.  It’s probably true, but it does nothing to immediately relieve the problem.

Never once in all the years growing up where I was bullied or teased did any adult stand up for me.  No one person in a position of authority put an end to what was going on in front of their own eyes.  Any one of them could have, but for one reason or another they did not.  Some of them lacked the courage.  Some of them didn’t know how.  Some of them thought bullying was just a rite of passage.  Some of them were bullies themselves, and believed that it was the best way to mold young adults.  And some of them did not want to admit that ‘that problem’ existed in their institution.

25 years ago, we didn’t understand the bullying problem as well as we did today.  Most of what was prescribed was for the bullied to fight back against the bully, to not make yourself a victim.  The bully will pick on easier targets.  Or simply to ignore the abuse, in the righteous knowledge that karma will pay them (and you) back.

Yes and no.  I was pretty fair with my fists.  I even took up boxing for a couple of years in my teens, and while I did dispatch or earn the outright respect of one or two of the kids, most of the school thought I was psychotic and violent on top of being weird and socially retarded.  In my personal experience, beating up the bully is temporarily satisfying, but doesn’t amount to much else in the long run.  People won’t flock to you like they do in the movies.  And I was lucky to be able to handle myself in a fight.  A lot of bullied kids can’t.  Or what about the girls who were teasing me?  Was I supposed to kick the shit out of them?  I may have wanted to, but stuck to traditional convention.  I don’t think it would have increased my standing either.

That kid in the video asks some hard questions out of all of us:  the bullies, the bullied, those peers who stand by and (especially) the adults in the world that are supposed to maintain order.  I don't have the answers.  I wish I did.


This kid could have been me.  Or could have been you.

Monday 5 December 2011

My Weekend With the Boys #1


It’s nice being able to even write this down as my relationship with my sons in the past 16 months have been turbulent to say the least. There was a time when my older son flat out refused to come over and spend time with me. In fact, when I came and got him, he would sometimes pitch the most ear-splitting fits. And he is not a kid that pitches ear-splitting fits. In fact, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times Nick (he should be christened with a name in this blog) has even cried or acted out in public.

Sometimes he would be stoked to see me, but more often than not, he DID NOT want to see me or spend time with me.

My ex was making a bit of an effort to reinforce the fact that he needed to see me, but quite often she would tell me that he didn’t want to come and if he pitched a fit when I came she was quite happy just to indulge him and that would be that.  I think for her this was some kind of victory.

And there were weeks I was fine with that, to be honest.  Not that I didn’t want to see Nick and Gerry (boy #2 is hereby christened), of course, but it was painful having them over for a couple of days having them over only to say goodbye to them again.  It hurt like hell, and to be honest, there were times I was too cowardly to deal with that pain.  Over time, that went away and I loved having them over, even if it was fleetingly brief.

Then one weekend about six months ago, things changed.

Me and Annie (the ex has now been christened) had agreed that we were no longer going to indulge Nick’s tantrums, that he was spending every 2nd weekend with me and that was that.  And that was what we did.  And he protested at first, but then he came around when he realized he was stuck with me from Friday night to Sunday night.  He actually started to have fun.

Every time we are together, I gently talk with him a little bit about why I’m not living with him, his brother and mommy anymore.  He grows distant and morose and taciturn and is unwilling to talk much.  I put this down to him being confused and angry with me for leaving, and there is certainly a lot of that, but one night he had revealed to me that mommy and ‘Dennis’, which was the guy my ex was having an affair with, were ‘together’ now.

I wasn’t sure what their status was, since he was married as well, but I had noticed they kept friending and unfriending each other on Facebook until last April when they unfriended for good, so I assumed there was an on-again/off-again something going on between them.  I really didn’t care, I had actually found it amusing more than anything else.

The problem was, Martin was good friends with Dennis’ son right up until the affair was discovered.  After I left, Nick never saw him again.

To this day, Nick is upset about losing his friend so abruptly.  And while sitting with him having supper one night, he revealed that he knew more than what he let on.

He told me that Mommy and Dennis were ‘together’ and he used to go over a lot to Dennis’ place ‘when his mom wasn’t home’, ‘mom’ meaning Dennis’ wife.  Dennis had just had back surgery and was off work for the summer.  My ex was on maternity leave with Gerry, who was three months old at the time.  I don’t know for certain what that means, but considering they were having their affair where he and Annie’s parents had summer cabins, I’m guessing that they were staying together while Dennis’ wife was in the city working.  That means my sons were there too while she was seeing them and all  while she was still married to me.  He was five.

I’m none too happy about her involving the kids in this, and I believe she did it for the basest of reasons, that is their presence helped provide cover.  In short, she used our sons to facilitate her fucking her boyfriend and getting away with it. 

There is actually far more to this story than I want to talk about today, but I will get back to it some day.  Back to where I was…

I told him I knew what had happened.  He asked me if that was why I left.  Yes, amongst other things I told him.  He asked if his misbehaving sometimes caused me to leave.  I told him of course not, that the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do was leave him and his brother.

He acted as if a great weight had lifted from his shoulders.  A big part of what was going on with him was his need to protect me from the truth – a job he felt was his.  He’s been through so much.  As I said, he puts the weight of the world on his shoulders.  We hugged and cried for a long time that night.

Things are by no means perfect between us, but they are much better.  He looks forward to coming over now and he always has big hugs for me.  He no longer pitches a fit when he comes over.

Friday we usually have dinner, we play for a bit and I put Gerry to bed.  Then Nick and I stay up late watching movies, playing video games or watching Youtube videos.  Then I read him a story and put him to bed.

Saturday is the day I take them out, sometimes to the park, sometimes out to the museum or the library, but we make an afternoon of it.  I cook supper when we get back home, play and bed again.  Sunday is usually our lazy day, at least in the morning.  I make a big breakfast.  Video games or TV.  Play.  Outside.  And then Grandma and Grandpa’s and then I take them back to Annie’s.  Once in a while I take them somewhere really special for a treat.
This weekend, poor little Gerry had a fever when he arrived.  His eyes were glassy and he was fussy and cranky.  And while his fever went down over the weekend, his mucous production went way up.  He ate and drank little and was in a generally miserable mood.  Nick was Nick… all balled up with excitement and anticipation and wanting to do 20 things an hour and disappointed 18 of them didn’t happen.

We baked cookies on Saturday and had to go to the corner store to get vanilla extract and carrots.  We baked oatmeal and peanut butter cookies, and he actually stuck with it up until the rolling the cookie dough onto the sheets, which he had a hard time doing.  I showed him, but he didn’t have the patience to work it out, so I ended up making mine look as lopsided as his, just to show him that it really wasn’t that big of a deal.

But that was pretty much it.  Gerry was in no mood to be outside or on the move, and neither was I or Nick.  We had a lazy weekend watching Youtube, playing video games and reading.

Nick was curiously talking almost non-stop about England’s football (soccer) team pretty much all weekend, which is odd because he stopped liking England after I left and started supporting Germany.  This weekend, he insisted I wear my England shirt, he wear his and Gerry wear his while we played Pro Evolution Soccer on my Xbox and play England football songs on my computer.  That’s definitely new.  Too bad England doesn’t play again until February, although when the actual soccer is on, he can’t be too bothered to watch it.  He loves Newcastle United (as do I) but he gets bored after about 10 minutes or so until they score.  When he gets older, when I take him to St. James’ Park in Newcastle to watch his first match, I’m sure he’ll appreciate it. 

Our weekend ended with an uncharacteristic knock on my door.  Usually the ex texts me ahead of time and I’ll have to boys ready to go.  Not this time.  She peevishly tells me she sent me two texts.  I shrug, check my phone.  No texts.  ‘Sorry Annie… didn’t get ‘em’.  She continues to act annoyed until I show her my phone… ‘See?’

‘Okay, okay, I believe you.  Give me your buzzcode so I don’t have to wait outside next time.’

I’ve given her the buzzcode virtually every time she’s been over.  Even if she can’t remember it or write it down or store it in her phone, I told her it was simply the first two numbers of the building’s address and then my apartment number.  To which she always tells me that she can’t remember my apartment number.  It’s 10.  Still as passive-aggressive as ever.

Hmm… must be fighting with her new fiancĂ©e; she’s really irritated.  Whatever.  I give her the buzzcode, which she stores in her iTouch.

Anyway, the boys go off and I watch them walking down the hall and out the door, Nick dragging the cookies he baked along the floor.  I tell him to lift the bag higher, or all his cookies will break.  He doesn’t listen, he’s too busy babbling to his mom about what he did on weekend, running circles around her.

I close the door and put ice on my foot.  It always feels beaten up after they visit.  I crack open a beer and put in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.  I laugh for a while and then sigh.

It’s going to be awfully quiet here for a couple of weeks.  Come on England!


Thursday 1 December 2011

Impromptu Snowball Fight



In June, I moved into the neighbourhood I currently live in. I found a decent two-bedroom apartment that was about $200-300 less than any other apartments I’d been looking at since I’d left my wife in August 2010. While the block is about 110 years old and rough around the edges, it’s clean, cheap and vermin-free. The people who live there are also super-nice (or at least quiet) and the caretaker is a really cool fellow, and the block’s residents are carefully screened and is decidedly yahoo-free. When I shattered my ankle this past summer, he lent me crutches so I wouldn’t have to rent them. To be honest, I love the building’s old-style charm, original oak woodwork and hope to hang onto it as long as I can before it inevitably turns into another set of condos.


The neighbourhood I live is where most of the city’s hipsters (I mean that phrase in a neutral sense), bohemians, bon vivants, artists, musicians, and hippies, as well as regular working and middle class people who have grown weary of the trappings of suburban life, have congregated.  I’m sure every sizeable city has an area of town like this.  It fits in with me just fine, and I’ve absolutely loved the area thus far, even though I haven’t been able to get around too well.  Most of my neighbours have welcomed me and my boys with open arms.  I don’t drive, so it was important for me to live in a neighbourhood where most major amenities are close.  Downtown is about a fifteen minute walk away or five minutes by bus, and there is a big urban park across the street with lots of neat stuff for the boys to do.  There are dozens of neat little coffee shops, book shops, corner stores, clothing and thrift shops and various co-op stores.  The best bakery in the city is also a block away from me, although it is quite pricey and very rarely buy anything there.  There is also a sizeable amount of holistic and alternative medicine places, although I’m a scoffer at all of that, the people are friendly and welcoming and bring a pretty good vibe to the area.  The main drag in my neighbourhood used to be a pretty rough area of town, but has cleaned up in the last 15 years or so and a lot of bistros and lounges and live music spots have cropped up.  It has gotten a little pretentious, but not oppressively so where I feel out of place, and it certainly isn’t quite as pretentious as the folks living in the new developments.

It’s an area of town that was built and grew for the middle and upper middle class between 1900 and 1930 and the architecture reflects that.  There streets are lined with stately elms whose canopies touch overhead in the middle of the street, and large three storey houses, many of them well-maintained with the original woodwork.  The area slid between the 50s and the 80s and a lot of the homes were converted into boarding houses, but the large homes, low property values and the neighbourhood’s aesthetic charm began attracting young people back in the mid-90s, many of them living in the neighbourhood while attending university, which is about a ten minute walk away.

It’s probably easy for many to dismiss the area’s residents as shallow tree-huggers, snobby, exclusionary artistes, hairy hippe earth-mothers and weird, dread-locked spoon-benders.  And there’s a grain of truth to that, to be sure.  There’s a bookstore/coffee shop that I go to once in a while where there are more than a few people are there to be ‘seen’ reading Camus or be ‘seen’ typing away at that first novel on their laptops.  I take those people with a grain of salt… they’re young and trying to find their place in the world.  Being a snobby twat is part of that, I think.  Get through the 20s and most of them will be fine.  If you’re 40 and still trying to be seen reading Camus in a coffee house and you’re officially pathetic.

Really though, there’s a lot less of that sort of wankery in the neighbourhood than people think, and personally I believe there’s more condescending snobbery in the suburbs.  That may be an unfair assessment, and that is only my opinion.

On the weekend as I was walking home from an antique store.  Across the street was a young 20-something couple walking hand-in-hand.  They were walking along the big park that is across the street from my apartment.  All of the sudden…

SNOWBALL AMBUSH!

Three kids pop out from behind the bushes and start pelting them with snowballs.  Instead of freaking out or getting angry, they take refuge behind the trees on the boulevard and start returning fire.  A few more kids who were in the park get in on the act and then two young women from the condos beside my block start tossing snowballs from across the street. 

What the hell…

I hobble to the shelter of an elm tree and start making snowballs before I get pelted in the back of the neck (the WORST spot to be hit, by the way) by Karly, my next door neighbour’s 10 year old daughter running away, squealing with laughter.  “You little bugger!” I yell after her, laughing.

This was like something literally ripped out of a movie.  And it was happening right outside my door.  We battled for about 10 minutes before it broke up and we went our separate ways.  I’m convinced this wouldn’t have happened in any other neighbourhood in the city.  And that’s why I’m glad I’m here.