A CHRISTMAS STORY​ - 2015. (Hollywood style)

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​SCRIPT PROPOSAL

Holiday Greetings to one and all. To capitalize on the season, we’ll cover the story of Tom, an older gentleman who has suffered from profound autism throughout his life, and who comes to learn the joy and meaning of Christmas once he finds a magic pair of reindeer antlers and puts them on his head.  With the antlers in place, Tom immediately makes his mark on society.  His first act is to take a selfie.  His second is to become a political pundit.  Tom’s life grows in celebrity, from an endorsement contract for Metamucil, to appearances on ET, to being placed on the cover of Time Magazine as the world’s most enigmatic man.  

We'll call this story “Rein(deer) Man.”   Dustin Hoffman is unavailable to play the lead role, but Tom Cruise remains interested in playing the brother.

 

The scars

Like moths to a flame….  Children and suburban males are drawn to bulldozers, steam shovels, backhoes, and the host of diesel powered earth-moving machines.  What they fail to appreciate is how dangerous this machinery can be. Workers have been maimed or crushed by these devices when they back up, or move along the work site.  The equipment may roll over while traversing slopes. Operators may exceed load limits, and the excess weight on the bucket or blade may cause the machine to tip or nose dive.

I recently suffered what could have been a devastating injury from such heavy machinery.  Our Mildew Shores home, situated in the wildly overgrown coastal area of Vancouver Island, needed significant intervention in order to bring its vegetation back under control.  Our neighbour, Frank Parcel, owns a land clearing business, so we hired him to bring his bulldozer and steam shovel over to the house, along with a work crew, to sculpt the slopes of our property, to remove the old soil, the excessive vegetation and trees, and an old wooden structure on the property.   

With the equipment and crew in place, work began.  The steam shovel labored down the lower portion of the land, moving soil from the area around the retaining wall and knocking down the rotted gazebo.  The bulldozer carried up the debris and soil.  After a morning’s work, the crew stopped for lunch, leaving the steam shovel at the edge of the steep slope leading down to the water, its boom raised, with the bucket in a lowered position, ready to again bite into the soil.

My job was to remove 45 years of detritus from the boathouse, and to bring it up to the waste pile.  The only path to and from the boathouse, down at the beach, was along a short but steep path, covered with slate steps only partially secured in the soil.  I wore heavy jeans, a stiff and substantial shirt, and – my downfall – a baseball cap bearing the logo of a local law firm.

I carefully stepped down to the path leading to the beach, walking around the steam shovel’s boom and bucket.  I descended, strode over to the boathouse, and began removing piles of wood, foam, sheet metal, and random bottles and jugs, some with fuels likely having deteriorated into mysterious hydrocarbons.  Cranks, winches, an iron tank, I dragged all out the door and over to a pile at the foot of the path leading back up the slope.

Gathering my strength, I picked up a mish-mash of the junk, and carefully started up the slate steps.  The bill on my hat allowed excellent vision below, but no ability to see above eye level.

I neared the top of the slope, straining with my load.  Suddenly, it felt as if a nuclear explosion had ignited in my head.  I involuntarily sagged, nearly dropping to my knees.  Had the top of my skull been sheered off?  Time stopped. Waves of pain crashed over me.

Slowly, slowly, I tried to come to grips with what had just happened.  Dropping my load, and with trembling fingers, I felt the top of my head through the fabric of the hat.  With my hand in place, I carefully moved my head.  With sickening certainty, I realized I had just walked into the steam shovel bucket.  What a klutz. 

The outcome?  I had two small scabs along the top of my head for about 5 days.  The steam shovel seemed undamaged.  I again have come to realize that shortness is not full protection against those hazards of life that exist above me.  The lesson here is that sometimes the bucket is lower than you think.  Also, soft cloth caps aren’t anywhere near as good as yellow hard hats.  Go figure.  I guess that’s why there aren’t signs at construction sites telling everyone they need to wear baseball caps to enter. 

​​​​miscellaneous writings

flying out to vancouver island  -  sometimes it is the trip, not just the destination.

A CHRISTMAS STORY - 2014.

​(Mario Puzo style)

​This next piece is something I wrote and emailed to my wife last November, when I flew out to Vancouver Island by myself to spread out the mulch that I mention elsewhere in this website.  I stuck this item here in "Miscellaneous Writings," since the article primarily describes getting to Vancouver Island, rather than being there.  Go figure.  I omit actual names of other people for privacy reasons, although the website listed is correct.  

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.Another “Duh” moment

Just like everybody else, probably you too, I’m sure I’m above average.  Sharp as a tack, logic-driven, up-to-date, and current on everything going on in the world.  Unfortunately, I often end up proving to myself, and to others, that this just isn’t true – and if you have this same attitude, you might want to re-think it yourself. 

Yesterday, I was talking to one of my co-workers.  She’s 33.  Half my age.  I think we needed to get an exception to the child labor laws just to hire her.  At any rate, somebody involved in some case or another that she and I were discussing had just had a baby girl.  My colleague didn’t remember her name, so I said it was probably “Mary.”  She asked why.  I said Mary is the most common girl’s name there is, everybody knows that.  My colleague looked at me oddly.

So, I was born in 1951.  In 1951, “Mary” was really only the second most common baby girl’s name.  This was a bit of an anomaly, though, since “Mary” had been the most popular girls’ name every year from around the time of the Civil War and up until 1946, at which time “Linda” snuck into first place for a 6 year run.  The “Linda” mania died out, and Mary moved back into first by 1953 and she remained there until 1961.  Now, you didn’t sign up for a statistics class – you’re wondering why I am writing all this.

Because a huge number of women older than me were named “Mary,” a great many women my age are named “Mary,” and this trend continued on just about until I hit my teens, so many of the younger sisters of my classmates and friends are named “Mary.”  So, if this were still 1961, “Mary” probably would still be the most common baby girl name, and I might have been right.

Spoiler alert to Tom. It isn’t 1961 anymore.  This is the “duh” moment.  Lots of things true in 1961 aren’t nowadays.  Turns out that “Mary” took a deep dive after 1961, falling out of the top five names for baby girls by 1967, never to reappear. In other words, any woman who is 49 years old or younger is almost certainly not named “Mary.”  Instead, she is most likely named “Jennifer,” “Lisa,” “Isabella,” “Sophia,” or “Emily.”  Isabella?  Really?  That’s been the most common baby girl’s name for a couple of years?  Where have I been?  The last person I knew of named Isabella gave Chris Columbus some gold coins and a few leaky ships.

Now, I have friends.  They have kids.  Their kids have kids.  Considering all the baby announcements I’ve received, all the weddings, bat mitzvahs, christenings, confirmations, graduation parties, etc., that I’ve attended, you think I’d have noticed that nobody in the younger generation is named Mary.  

It just hadn’t dawned on me that the world has moved on. So what other out-of-date information from my youth do I blithely rely on as I wander through the world?  I’m pretty sure the “Food Pyramid” of my youth, with meat and dairy in the top slots, is now considered bad.  I am sure that “duck and cover” would not have saved me from a nuclear blast when I was in elementary school.  I even accept that plastic bags are not toys, although we had sure fun with them when we were kids, carrying around our broken glass and mastodon sandwiches.  I’m so out of touch sometimes.  What do you still believe that hasn’t been true for 30 or more years?  You might want to check into this.

This piece is another one that I emailed to my wife last year, having arrived at our Mildew Shores house following my solo three day drive from Michigan in a medium sized U-Haul truck filled with the first load of furniture and belongings that are moving out west with us.  

Claus Enterprises and the mob merge. New Christmas tradition to start.

Fat Man and Big Squid Tony had a sit-down.  Fat Man had been getting his whiskers in a twitch, tired of the same old children acting out each year, makin’ him re-pack the sleigh and visit Coal-town before he could leave on Christmas Eve. Fat Man had put his money on “Elf on a Shelf,” but it just wasn’t working out.  Too bad, cuz’ he still had 200 million of the little bastards wrapped in plastic back in the warehouse.

Big Squid said: " no problem, F. M.  We got a solution for ya.  It’s Vinnie, the Special Christmas Elf.  HEY, here’s Vinnie now.  Vinnie, show F.M. what you got."

Vinnie:    “Yo, kids.  Be good, or be dead. “

######.

Got up at 7:30 a.m.  Had coffee, and reviewed work emails.  Not much I can do until the movers come to unpack the truck.  I see the usual sea lions patrolling past the house.  I also see an otter dawdling along out in front of the house.  Its shape is different from the usual sea lions or seals, and it is floating on its back, so you see a longish shape.  

The movers do appear at 9:00, we have a brief chat, I point out where things go, and they get everything unloaded in a little over half an hour.  $50 Canadian to each, and I’ve got the first task of the day done.  I clean out the truck, fold the blankets, and then start assembling things. 

The legs for the desk cabinets in the office, which we picked up at the Ikea back in Michigan, attach just as one would expect.  Simple, efficient.  Takes five minutes and the job is done.  The kits even allow the two cabinets to attach to each other, if one so wishes, by the use of included metal braces that attach to the screw holes for the inside legs.  This holds the units together, and then provides a mount for a single leg to go in-between.  Amazing.  

The cabinets match the desk height, so we now have a long desk unit against the office’s outside wall.  The sofa bed is placed along the wall behind it.  I pulled the bed open, and there’s plenty of room between the end of the bed and the desk.  There is not room for end tables next to the coach, but there is room for a lamp at one or the other end.  I’d like a lightweight coffee table to go in front of the coach.  There’s room for a piece of furniture on the wall by the door.  Maybe we can find something that will serve as a dresser, without being too obviously a dresser. 

Having finished the office, I then went into the first floor bedroom and reassembled the bed.  Not too difficult.  I flopped the new mattress on top of it, put the two night stands next to the bed, put the lamps on top of the night stands, and “Bob’s your uncle,” the first floor master bedroom is done.  Unclear if we have sheets or a mattress pad for the bed, but I’m not sleeping there, so what do I care.  I placed the cedar chest in one of the closets for the moment.  There is not a lot of empty space in the room with the bed and nightstands in.  I think the idea of a folding screen between the window walls and the bed will work well.  The space below the window, between the two closets, indeed will be a great place for a chair.  There is a good sight line over the deck and out onto the water.  There is room for a bench at the end of the bed as well. 

I unpack the boxes of kitchen stuff.  I stick things in the pantry, knowing that I’m doing it in an inconsistent and inappropriate manner that will require rearrangement when you get here.  I also add the old teapot, vases, decorative pieces, the tablecloth and the place mats, etc., to the pantry, just to get them out of the way. 

The bikes and kayak are put in the garage, the futon goes upstairs but I don’t have time to assemble it now, as I need to take the truck into Courtenay and swap it for a car.  I dither, because we’ve got a lot of cardboard and Styrofoam in the garage from the lighting fixtures and other items that have been installed.  I finally decide I can sort some of it, and take it to the recycling center at the dump on my way to town.  I load it up, and drive off.  A few miles from the house, I observe odd Canadian driving behavior.  

Some nut job in a little car honks and gestures at me.  Not being able to translate this, I continue on.  However, it seems unusual enough that I pull over, and sure enough, the back door of the truck has popped open.  Some of my cardboard has spilled out.  Oops.  I retrace my drive, and find what I sincerely hope is all of it, but which I suspect isn’t.  I stuff the cardboard and Styrofoam back into the truck and indeed go on to the dump.  Again, irony.  Who else can take a good idea – recycling – and turn it into an environmental assault.  Oh my (amazing foreshadowing here – this is 4 months before I find out that VW rigged my and every other “clean diesel” Jetta they sold to spew noxious gases anytime the car isn't hooked up to an official sensor - read The VW Diesel TMI).  

The truck swap is easy.  The drop off location is about a mile from the car rental place, so I walk over and pick up the car.  It is a Chevy Cruze – sort of a VW Jetta or Ford Focus - sized car.  The woman working at the rental place says it’s an upgrade from the “compact” that I ordered.  Could be, but its not particularly impressive.  I go to Thrifty’s and buy some small items as appetizers for the Gin &Tonic happy hour, coming up in a little bit.

On the drive back to the house, perhaps four or five miles from the ferry depot, I see cars all pulling over to the side of the road.  No dummy me, I realize there’s got to be something exciting out on the water.  Sure enough, turns out to be a pod of Orcas.  At first, I see some dorsal fins cruising a ½ mile or so off shore, but as I watch I start seeing tail-wagging  a bit closer to us (the tail is out of the water for five or more seconds).  I also see two orcas cruise within 100 yards of shore.  Meanwhile, one of the orcas is lunging up, so half of its body is out of the water, facing towards shore.  This is called “spy-hopping,” per Robin. Amazing.  

I drive home, drag the new kayak out of the garage where it had just been offloaded, and I walk it down to the beach through Robin and Jane’s lot, so I can knock on their door and tell them about the orcas.  I do, get the kayak to the beach (it’s a lot longer, and heavier, than their kayaks so this is a bit of a workout), and launch.  Well, maybe launch sounds too professional.  I put it in the water, perpendicular to the shore, and then try to put myself into the kayak.  Lack of grace and style commence.  I ultimately get myself, and perhaps 6 gallons of water, into the kayak and race out, like Ahab, looking for my whales.  

The kayak is much quicker than the smaller ones that I’m accustomed to.  However, it is also more tippy.  I’m not sure if this is because I’ve brought my own extra six gallons of water to slosh about, or if my body has not yet figured out how to balance the boat.  I paddle down past the Mildew Shores dock, looking for signs of the orcas.  While true mariners would be scanning the skies for circling birds or watching currents, I’m looking for boats, since I figure they’ll be hanging around the orcas. 

Alas, no luck.  The orcas may have gone around the other side of the nearest island, or they may have been heading north to Courtenay when I saw them, but for a bit of sport and circling about by the shore. 

I return home, perhaps an hour of paddling behind me, and ground the kayak by our boathouse.  I am a bit more circumspect getting myself out of it, I turn the boat over and return the sea I had been carrying back to its mother ocean, and I put the kayak away.  Today’s lesson – 14 foot sea kayaks are entered into, and exited from, by placing them parallel to the shore.  Six foot lake kayaks can go into the water either perpendicular or parallel.  Size matters, once again. 

I have 20 minutes to get ready for Robin and Jane.  I put the cashews into the pottery serving dish with the attached bowl, gracefully drape red and green grapes along the edges, cut up cheese and stick the olives onto plates, and viola, fine dining.  Robin and Jane knock, and I show them the new stuff, and we retire to the kitchen nook, since this is the only place I can figure we can use, absent small tables or counters upon which we can place things.

I make our drinks, using the lime they brought.  Not having a shot glass here, I use the Waterford crystal toothpick holder.  Jane says it looks like it holds an ounce, so use it twice per glass.  I do, and conviviality commences.  We chat of many things.  Ultimately, they depart, and I clean up a bit.  You call, so you probably already know most of this.  I go up, put the futon together, and call it a night.

 

You dropped me off at the airport, and I wandered up to the Delta counter, clutching my extra bag, my passport, and my home-printed boarding passes.  The nice Delta staff checked my bag in, gave me two new boarding passes, and sent me on my way.  The two new boarding passes were those flimsy little slips, perhaps ¼ of a regular sheet of paper each, and printed on something that feels like paper would feel like if it had first starved to death in Biafra, not my nice, bulky full-page and weight paper. 

I tucked my new flimsies into my passport, recycled my home-grown boarding passes, and went through security.  I put my laptop in a bin, I put my shoes in a bin, I think I even put my coat in a bin.  I put my passport, with the new boarding passes slipped in between its pages, in one of the plastic bins.  I walked through the metal detector.  Shortly, my bins came through the x-ray machine and on down the conveyer belt.  At the end of the conveyer belt, I put my laptop back in the bag, grabbed my shoes and my passport, and immediately realized neither of the two boarding passes were in my passport.  I didn’t move.  I told the security staff what happened, the person looked briefly about the floor and couldn’t spot them, but she just told me to go on to one of the gates and the agents would fix it.

True that.  I told my tale of woe at a Delta help desk, and they printed out two new boarding passes for me (this would be the third set, if you’re counting).  Again, the flimsy little quarter slips.  The plane came, we boarded, I zipped my passport and remaining boarding pass into my carry-on bag, and I soon enough landed in Toronto.  Here, I had to clear customs, so I went down to customs/immigration and picked up my checked bag, turned in my declaration form, and went into the main airport.

Once again, I had to clear security.  Once again, I pulled out my passport with my remaining boarding pass, and I put it, my laptop and my bag into the plastic bins.  Once again, I went through the metal detector and waited for my bins to return to me following their trip through the Tunnel of Security.  Once again, my passport came through but the boarding pass that had been inserted between its pages was nowhere to be seen.  Once again, a security person made a cursory review of the area, but just sent me on my way – telling me to check in with the next Westjet counter.

I did.  Again, I got a new boarding pass.  This would be the fourth boarding pass issued to me for the second leg of my trip.

So, what’s with this?  Certainly, there seems no reason for anyone to grab my boarding passes.  My wallet, with credit cards and currency in multiple colors (colours for the Canadian currency) is in the same bin, my laptop is in a bin, even my very stylish shoes are in a bin (at least in the U.S.).  As I don’t believe in boarding pass gremlins, I wonder if the tunnel with the x-ray machine also has a “puffer” device to blow compressed air on the bins to check for chemical traces.  If so, then we need thicker boarding passes, because the flimsies are obviously being blasted out of the bins and into some backwater area of the machine.  If not, then there is a 17th dimension out there that has a blizzard of boarding passes whirling about it, and possibly the odd sock.  I wonder what we get back in return?

Things picked up, though, once I got on the plane.  My 4th generation boarding pass indicated I was assigned Seat 1 F.  I had no idea what “1 F “ would be, since my airfare was dirt cheap, so I certainly did not think it referred to a seat number reflecting position and status.  Rather, I assumed this was some sort of code for the seat next to the overflowing lavatory in the very tail end of the plane.  To my surprise, it indeed is the first seat on the right side on the plane, in what WestJet calls its “Plus” seating.  I actually asked the stewardess when I got on the plane just where or what “1 F” might be.  Suave and debonair, that’s me.  My fellow seatmate (yes, there was only one other seat mate in what would otherwise be a three seat row) was just as surprised to have found himself up front.  He and I both looked guiltily around, wondering just what mistake had been made that led us to these marvelous seats,  and just when we were going to be denounced as the frauds we were, and moved back into cattle class.  Oddly, nothing bad happened.

In fact, the stewardess cheerfully gave us each a bottle of water just because we were sitting there.  When the flight became airborne, she came by again, and she gave us lunch.  A cheese tray, with apple slices, fruit salad, and dessert.  All free.  With leg room.  With several visits by the lead stewardess, as time passed, to inquire if either of us needed anything.  With no seat in front of me, I could not tuck my laptop and bag away.  However, when you’re up in Plus Class, they don’t mind if you stick your laptop into the magazine pocket they’ve attached to the bulkhead.  Loose missiles flying about the plane in an emergency be damned.  Oh, the glamour of flight has been reborn.  I suspect I would have been sipping a Manhattan if it hadn’t been 2:00 in the afternoon (and at that point, as I was probably over Saskatchewan, it might actually have been only noon local time).

With the advantage of so much seating separation that we were not impinging on each other’s personal space, my seat mate and I began to chat.  As I ultimately learned, his name is [something other than John Doe], a professor at University of [some state in the U.S.] in the field of early childhood development.  I understood the students he taught were going for their education degrees, social work degrees, or some of the therapy specialties.  While I suspect he was not quite as old as me, he’s old enough that he is able to spend time on things other than career advancement.  Once a tenured professor, what else does one strive for?  He dedicates his non-teaching time to volunteer work in Africa, working both on educational opportunities for children, as well as work providing micro financing and basic sanitation improvements such as clean water for villagers.   Solar powered water pumps.  Very similar to the exhibit we saw in Portland, on technological advances for third world countries.  His charity’s website is www.waterbrookhills.org, and worth a visit (and a contribution).  A kind and noble person, he should be cloned.  Sadly, though, all good flying events have to come to an end.  We did land in Vancouver and went our separate ways.

I caught the shuttle bus over to South Terminal – the low rent district for seaplanes and puddle jumpers.  I had two and a half hours to wait, so I spent a fair amount of it writing one thing or another.  The terminal building itself is akin to Windsor’s airport, only less fancy and smaller.  The security staff are a hoot.  Several older women of east Asian descent who are delighted to have someone to screen, simply so they can chat with the screenies while scanning luggage, running metal wands over our bodies, and looking for the odd bazooka or two.  We traded travel stories.  Not quite the image of the “thin blue line” protecting civilization, but far more appropriate to the task then the usual major airport “security theater.” 

The departure area had one door marked “Gate 1” and a second door marked “Gate 2.”  They were right next to each other, and they each just opened up onto the same stretch of tarmac.  Smaller planes came in and out, just like rental car shuttles, and small groups were unloaded or loaded up and sent on their way.  The PA system was so terrible that I couldn't make out the destination of some of the flights.  However, the announcer knew what flight I needed, so when it came in, she just yelled over to me “that’s yours.”

I and two other people got on a thirty passenger Saab turboprop flown by Pacific Coastal.  No need for a jetway, or a wheeled portable stairway.  The plane had a little ladder attached to the door that folds out, and you can climb up or down.  The stewardess for this plane was also the gate worker  and I suspect she also had to jump out of the plane as it taxied in and then guide it in to the parking slot.  She said to us “I don’t want to sound bossy, but could one of you sit up front, one of you in the middle, and one of you towards the back?”  Weight distribution is obviously important with small planes, so we arranged ourselves accordingly.  This of course made her task more difficult during the 25 minute flight to Comox, because she was bound and determined to make sure we got our full cabin service during this time.  First, she came down the aisle with a wicker basket with my favorite Soy Snax.  Five minutes later, she came back down the aisle with a serving tray holding three plastic cups of water.  Finally, as we were almost ready to descent, she came down the aisle a last time and distributed little hard candies.  I loved it. 

We came in for landing on the longest runway at Comox –  the one that is probably an emergency strip for B-52s. I think we had to taxi down that runway for 10 more minutes after touchdown.   The three of us offloaded, and wandered into the terminal building. 

There wasn’t a huge line at the car rental counter - actually, there wasn't a line at all.  I started to check in for the car, waiting to hear the conveyer belt start up so I could go retrieve my bag.  When I still hadn’t heard it start up five minutes later, I excused myself and went into the baggage area.  Well, if it’s a plane with 3 people on it, they don’t run the belt.  That’s just for show.  I walked in and a worker said “your brown duffle is over there by the door.”  That person might have been the reincarnation of Jeanne Dixon, but I think I had the only stowed luggage, and I was the only person in the area.  Therefore, it was mine.

Ah yes, back again on Vancouver Island.