Joining the Brotherhood

I had coffee with my second-youngest brother today. He’s in the process of moving here from Toronto as he recovers from that little accident he had earlier this year. You may remember me talking about it: he was hit by a train in the face, and lived. He looks better now than he did during the summer, although his facial nerves haven’t quite healed and he looks a bit like the Joker. The Jack Nicholson version, I mean.

Anyway, we were sitting in the coffee shop where they filmed that stupid movie Jumper a while back. In a strange twist, my brother worked on the post-production audio for that movie, and I was an accidental extra in the background of a Samuel L. Jackson scene, which may or may not have made the final cut. I don’t know, because when I watched Jumper I spent most of the film mostly thinking about hockey.

After we talked about how shitty Jumper was, my brother told me a funny story. He’s been living in a pretty crappy neighbourhood full of what appear to be members of a skinhead gang. They’ve been eyeing him for a while, as he’s big, tough and tattooed head to toe, and as a mixed martial arts fighter (currently on a break due to face-meets-train), he often carried his gear around with him.

I should point out that my brother looks like Vin Diesel in XXX. See, we’re African-Indian-Irish-Scottish, but it isn’t obvious, particularly to stupid people, that we’re a wee bit ethnic. Most people who do notice think we’re Italian or Arab. That’s what makes this work.

One day, one of them came to his door. This was the conversation:

• Nazi: “Hey, man, nice tattooes.”
• Bro: “Thanks.”
• Nazi: ”Boxing gloves, eh? You a fighter?”
• Bro: “Yeah.”
• Nazi: ”You ever fight any fags or Jews? Any niggers?”
• Bro (long pause): “I’m a fucking mulatto, asshole. You want me to fight you?”

The guy ran away. Ran. And now the gang steers widely clear of my pumped-up, tattooed and facially freakish brother and his boxing gloves.

Sometimes he makes me really proud, that kid.

Moral: Racists talk a good game, and they do a lot of damage in numbers, but one on one, they’ll run away every time.

Porcelain Telephone

I wrote this in February, 2007, on an old blog. And by “old blog,” I mean MySpace. I forgot I’d ever written this, and it was fun to read again:

This one is a little personal …

There’s a stomach bug going around the family, and tonight was my turn to get it. It hit while I was giving my three-year-old a bath. So I just leaned over and barfed into the toilet.
Tom saw this and was immediately intrigued. He had his own bout of bellyblasts earlier in the week, so he’s become quite interested in the protocols of pukeology.
“Daddy,” he said from the tub, “What are you doing?”
I couldn’t answer.
“Are you looking at my poop?” he asked.
Now, have you ever tried to hold back laughter while throwing up? Not easy.
“Are you barfing?” he continued in his deep little-old-man voice. “I barfeded and Mollie (the dog) ate it. It was yucky.”
Still trying not to laugh.
“I see salad,” he said, and he was right, because I could see it too.
I was finally able to sit back and look at him. “Daddy’s sick,” I said.
“Why?”
“It’s that stomach bug,” I said.
Tom held up the toy he had with him in the tub. “It’s not a stomach bug. It’s a lizard with a blue face.”
Man, my kids are fantastic.

Update: Three years later, my kids are still fantastic, Tom still fires off perfect one-liners all the time, and stomach bugs continue to make the rounds.

Hamster in Love

Yeah, it’s a trick, but finding it in YouTube made my daughter happy, and for a few minutes, I was the coolest Dad in the building.

My daughter loves her hamster, and the little thing has grown on me, too. I didn’t realize hamsters had personalities; this one does. Her name is Moonshine, she’s a little porker, and she’s gentle, quiet and friendly. She also looks just like the hamster in that video you just watched.

The Baby Dolly and Me

It’s just after 9 o’clock Wednesday morning. The sun has just cut through several days’ worth of grey and rain. I am walking through a forest, along a well-worn trail. Two teenaged boys, complete with shaggy hair, baggy jeans and that goaty smell, pop out of a side trail, stop when they spot me, and snicker.

I am a 40-year-old man, alone in the woods, holding a baby dolly and a bouquet of daisies.

There’s a story here. See, my kids, 10, 7 and 5, wanted to walk to school this morning. This is not something we normally do, even though their school is just a kilometre away. The road I live on has no sidewalks, and during rush hour is used by morons from the outlying villages who are commuting to their city jobs, or racing to shop at Wal-Mart. They bomb down my 50 km/h road at more than 80. It makes getting out of my driveway sometimes a problem; I don’t like the idea of my kids walking it, even with me there.

The other option is the forest. My field and the kids’ schoolyard back onto the same patch of forest, several square miles of trails and tangle. We spend a lot of time back there — always with a bit of caution, because we’ve come across a homeless campout or two — and we know the trails well. Well enough to know that after three days of rain, the trails are thick, dirty mud, and the going can be tough.

But they wanted to go. And I finally said “okay, what the hey.” We set off at 8:15 or so, the four of us. At the last minute, my daughter grabbed her favourite dolly, the one that laughs when you squeeze its belly, and said she wanted to bring it to school. I gave up arguing about this months ago.

The trails weren’t bad. We had a couple of puddles to manage, but we stayed dry. Along the way, my youngest picked a sizeable bouquet of daisies for his teacher. He loves his teacher. We all do, really. But as the bouquet grew bigger, it became harder to hold onto it.

• Him: “Daddy, you carry it.”
• Me: “I’m already carrying your backpack. You want to pick the flowers, you carry them.”
• Him (turning to sister): “I was kidding about giving these to Mrs. W. They’re for you.”
• Her: “Thanks! (adjusts backpack and doll) Daddy, can you carry my flowers?”

So this is how I ended up carrying flowers.

We arrived at the schoolyard. My daughter looked at her friends, looked at her doll, then had some kind of weird moment. She handed me the dolly. “I don’t want her after all. Can you take her home and babysit for me?”

I ended up standing near the doors (I have to wait until my youngest’s kindergarten class enters the school) holding the daisies and the dolly as students eyed me up and down. With my kids scattered acround the playground, it may not have been apparent that I was a parent. Finally, the bell rang, and in they went, and I headed home.

Aside from the encounter with the teenagers, the only other problem came when I ducked out of the woods to avoid the mosquitos and shortcutted down a street that runs off mine. This is a quiet cul de sac with a dozen or so McMansions on it, one of our city’s nicer streets. These people already eye my little old house with disdain; this morning, they got to see unshaven me trudging past their manicured lawns, with a doll and flowers, snickering away (I was listening to Crimes Against Food). While the teens in the forest made me blush a little, I didn’t feel bad about upsetting that middle-aged white guy hosing down his BMW.

Maybe I’ll wear my Spider-Man costume when I go pick the kids up. It looks really funny now that I’m carrying a few extra belt-pounds.

Random Wildlife Encounters

I’ve just had a bit of a fright. After making sure the kids were sleeping, I went out to the garage to retrieve the Easter goodies (we don’t hide things in the house, a lesson we learned one pre-Christmas day here when my daughter asked “Why are there a whole bunch of Littlest Pet Shops in your closet, and can I have them?”)

I noticed the door had blown open in the wind, which happens when I don’t lock it, but I thought nothing of it as I flicked the light switch. But as I was reaching up onto a high shelf to grab the bag of candy, I heard a sound from the darker depths of the garage. Looking, I saw nothing. But then, a moment later, a pair of eyes twinkled at me from the darkest corner, where I keep the snowblower.

“Whoah!” I cried, stumbling backwards. The candy bag hit the cement floor. Have I mentioned before how skittish I can be? Anyway, a moment later I saw a second set of eyes shining in the light from the ceiling bulb.

I whirled. “Get outta here!” I cried. Nothing happened. I grabbed the nearest object, which turned out to be a broken plastic street-hockey stick, and banged it against the wall. “Go on! Get!” Nothing.

After a moment, two small raccoons sauntered out of the shadows and ambled past me towards the door. One of them gave me a sidelong glance as they padded along, as if to say “You know we’ll just wait out there and come back, right, asshole?” Meanwhile, I was thinking about that accidental eunuch, Russian Alexander Kirilov.

They vanished into the night. I grabbed what I needed and came inside; this all happened just minutes ago.

These may be the same two raccoons I surprised our first night in this house, when they were digging through the trashbins. We moved the garbage and recyclables into the garage the next day. I have found evidence of other visits; on other nights when I’ve forgotten to lock up, I’ve noticed a trashcan knocked over, and wondered if it was the wind. Probably not.

Raccoons are cute and all, but they’re just so brazen — they know their role, their work as sneak thieves, and they know they’re unlikely to be shot over kitchen scraps. They’re like crows and seagulls; the smartest animals learned a long time ago to embrace urbanity, not hide from it.

Stupider animals, like the turkeys who showed up earlier today, run when they see humans. But then again, I’ve never served raccoon at Thanksgiving. So there’s that.

Heard From The Back Seat

Minivan backseat philosophizing: Here are two randomly funny things said by my children while driving today.

• Weatherette (7): “Daddy, why do people throw garbage all over the street?”
• Me: “Because they’re slobs who don’t care about their community, honey.”
• Weatherette: “If I could make a perfect world, people would always clean up their garbage. And no factories would close, and you wouldn’t lose your job, and you wouldn’t be allergic to dogs.”
• Me: “That’s sweet, honey.”
• Weathereye 2.0 (5): “And every TV would have video games!”

So, after that discourse on priorities, we explored logic. A few minutes later:

• Weathereye 2.0: “Daddy, what do bears eat?”
• Me: “Small boys.”
• Weathereye 2.0: “No! What do they really eat?”
• Me: “Big boys, too.”
• Weathereye 2.0: “It’s fish. Bears LOVE fish. Boys eat tacos!”
• Weatherette: “Unless the bear eats a boy who ate a taco. Then the bear is also eating a taco.”
• Me: “Can’t argue with that.”

Thanks for tuning in. Carry on.