Month: September 2016

September 29: I titled this piece Human Nature, but the more I thought about what I was writing, the more I realized that it was not human nature but rather ignorance, stupidity, self-centredness or arrogance. These are things that people do; things that bother me enormously. A rant from an aging curmudgeon follows:

My apartment sits in a lovely landscaped court, and is surrounded by the leafy properties of Leaside. Not surprisingly, there are more than a few dogs – usually very big dogs, which I assume connote status of some sort, or very small dogs, which must be aiming for the “cute factor”. In any case, I am astonished at the number of times I see sacks of dog shit left on someone’s lawn. The dog owner has gone to the now politically correct extent of bagging the turds, but then leaves them behind precisely where the dog dropped them in the first place, neatly transferring the responsibility of dog ownership to the homeowner.

I detest timid drivers. The current bane of my existence is the flock of drivers who seem unable to move off the stop bar into the intersection when they are making a left turn at a signal. Everyone behind them is forced to sit and wait until they can complete their turn – usually at the end of the green cycle. If only they would pull into the centre of the intersection, as they are allowed and I was taught to do, others could pass on the right and we ( OK, I ) would all be much happier.

Similarly, there’s the driver in the left lane resolutely going precisely 2 KM/H over or under the speed limit. Much has been written about these idiots, so I won’t say any more. An interesting variant I have encountered is the guy (it seems always to be a guy) who enters the expressway and then aggressively switches lanes across to the left. I’ve been cut off many times by these bozos, who seem to be in a huge rush that only access to the left lane can satisfy. But no. Once there, like others mentioned above, they dawdle along at or under the limit forcing everyone else to pass to the right. Please, just stay to the right. It makes our roads safer and much more efficient.

My Sunday morning running clan meets for a coffee at Starbucks after whatever torture the instructor prescribes for the day. Usually the café is busy. For some reason, it seems to take an inordinate amount of time to get a simple cup of coffee, so there’s always a long line. On several occasions I’ve watched couples standing chatting in the line right up to the point where the server asks them for their order. Then – and only then – do they start to consider what they might have. We’ve all been waiting for many minutes and they could have been thinking through their options like the rest of us, but no. Now we all wait while they hem and haw about what to have. All I want is a damn coffee….

I could go on. And perhaps in another post, I will. Thanks for indulging my self-centred, arrogant, self-indulgent rant. I feel better.

September 27:

Mothers give sons permission to be a prince but the father must show him how…Fathers give daughters permission to be princesses. And mothers must show them how. Otherwise, both boys and girls will grow up and always see themselves as frogs.

Eric Berne

Relationships with our fathers have been central in shaping our characters. We catch ourselves saying what we heard our fathers say, or doing something that we know they did. Many of us have had pain and resentments in these relationships. We wanted more than they gave us, or we longed for praise but got criticism, or we were never sure we measured up to them.

Some of us can change our relationships with our fathers. We can do it not by asking them to be different, but by being our full adult selves with them. This new experience is the doorway to a new aspect of our selves. Many of us can not change our relationships with our fathers, but being with our sons and daughters in ways that nurture their growth is another chance to redo for ourselves, what we missed.

My fathers importance to me is a fact I must surrender to. I will take what he has given me and grow with it. (1)

_____________________________________________________

My father was in Alcoholics Anonymous for more than 40 years. I deeply regret that I was not more supportive of his recovery, and more aware of the work it required. After some exposure to his program I did understand that members conducted an inventory to determine who they had hurt, and then made amends to those people, unless doing so would cause additional harm.

I had always imagined it as a time when my father spoke of what had happened, why it had happened, and how sorry he was about that, but I don’t recall him ever making a specific statement of amends. It was never a huge issue for me, yet I felt that the impacts of his drinking on my childhood were vaguely unacknowledged.

It took me many years to understand that he was making a “living amends”; he was demonstrating to our family and his friends how he could live his life to try and mitigate the damage he had done. He was calm and reassuring; he was warm and funny; attentive, open and expressive;  committed and supportive. He demonstrated how to behave like a man, a parent and a partner.

It could not have been easy for him, and I say that because I know that it’s not easy for any of us to always behave in an exemplary fashion. He started later in life than many, but I thank God that he tried, and that he ultimately showed me how to be more of a prince and less of a frog.

(1) Touchstones; Hazelden Meditations; Hazelden Foundation; 1986

September 24:  I am becoming increasingly uncomfortable with our image of our nation as “hewers of wood and drawers of water” for reasons set out in this interesting piece by Naomi Klein.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/canadas-founding-myths-hold-us-back-from-addressing-climate-change/article32022126/

 

September 3: It’s that time of year again: back to school time. Although many people I know were happy to get back to school, I was not. While I recall elementary school as being enjoyable, secondary school was an unhappy time in my life.

This might have been due to the fact that elementary school classes didn’t change much year over year. Everyone pretty much knew everyone else, and there were no surprises. There was a natural order after a while and everyone knew where they belonged. This suited my need for predictability and consistency and I was happy. This changed a bit in Grade 7 when we were joined by kids from two other schools, but there were only 3 rooms of Grade 7 students, so it was not a huge change. Besides, my demented and soon-to-be life-long friends Chris and Harvey came to the school at that time, so there was an off-setting benefit.

Everything changed with high school. I went from one of the oldest kids to one of the youngest, and smallest. Suddenly I was surrounded by 17 and 18 year olds whom I perceived as being “adults”. While there was the promise of growing maturity for me, raging hormones made it an uncertain process. The natural order of elementary school was replaced with new classes full of kids who I perceived as being smarter than I.

This was exacerbated by the strange decision to stream me into the music program. I had never expressed a desire to be there, nor had I ever played any sort of instrument. Yet there I was trying (at least initially) to learn the baritone trombone. As a kid who never wanted to be seen making a mistake, the daily music class was torture. The vast majority of the class was musical and had experience, so they went ahead at a great rate. I found practicing hard and the repetition of mistakes was dispiriting, so ultimately, I pretty much gave up. When the school concert was held at year-end, I was asked to sit quietly and not play.

Things didn’t get much better in later years. Although I was on the swim team and had a bright red City Champions jacket to wear around, swimming didn’t have the social status of football or track, and I was that skinny little kid on the end of the second row not one of the stars. Academically I was middle of the field or worse, with the occasional effort to stick my hand up to answer a question often met with failure and further derision. I learned that it was better not to do that ….

And so it went until Grade 13, which my parents decided should be spent at the Canadian Junior College in Lausanne, Switzerland. Needless to say, this was a complete change and not one that I really wanted to make. I had a girlfriend and a gang of friends in Toronto, but thankfully, the decision was not mine to make. That year was a complete about-face. I was slightly better academically, which was surprising given all the potential distractions and cheap beer. Perhaps because of the cheap beer, I broke out of my little shell and took part in the school newspaper and yearbook. I was in a band and asking girls I barely knew to dance. I’ve written about that period elsewhere (see April 29, 2015) and it was truly a year that changed my life irrevocably for the better.

As Labour Day approaches though, I think not of the excitement of leaving for Lausanne, but of the dread of going to North Toronto. I was so intimidated and unsure of myself that I undermined who I might have been. Had I found the freedom to let myself make mistakes and grow during those years, my life would have been far more fulfilling and enjoyable.