Dog Days

When you’re hot you’re hot

 

The summers of my youth were hot and humid, and the nights were a muggy mess. We didn't have air conditioning, and the only cool place was on the floor beside the front screen door. In fact, I don't think anyone used their interior doors in summer.

Catching a breeze

My sisters, who figured out where the warmest place in the house was in winter (the floor vent in the dining room) had commandeered the coolest place in summer. They invented the, you snooze you lose phrase. I remember racing down the stairs only to see a ghost in a sheet hovering over the floor vent. It was no different in summer. Now my mother was with the girls catching a summer night breeze. My brothers and I would try to sleep with just our fruit of the looms on. Our screen windows caught nothing but the sounds of crickets and the sounds of the odd hot rod racing down the road. There is nothing like sleeping in sweat and drool and hoping it was your own. Still, the sun rose, the birds sang and we woke up to the splendor of another summer’s day. 

Catching some rays

After breakfast, we boys would go to the flat roof and soak in the kiddy pool. My sisters and mom would cover themselves in coconut goo and lay around listening to music to catch some rays. My mother's canine Trixie watched from the shadows. Her mission: to enforce the no fun allowed rule. They were supposed to watch us but they didn't do a good job. 

Boys will be boys

We caught our rays by default as we fiendishly planned our summer rooftop activities. Popping tar bubbles but the most fun was picking pebbles out and dropping little bombs over the railing onto our next-door neighbour's spoiled kids' head. We'd hide, laugh and listen. We waited to hear the usual rant. "I'm going to tell your mother on you!" My mother couldn't hear her so we continued our torment. The dog was too old and too hot to care. She would look at us with half-closed eyes and just let us be. 

Too hot to run

When it was too hot to play, we found less strenuous things to do. We didn't have Legos or Play-Doh. Our dinky cars were parked in the dirt pile city in the backyard. Silly putty was fun for a second. We were bored.  I don't know where they came from, but we had a pile of pipe cleaners and a pile of time to kill. 

The peace brothers

There we were, catching rays on the steps of our front porch with our pipe cleaner creations. I was sporting my elastic grandma bowl haircut. I'm wearing oversized pipe cleaner eyeglasses. My brother beside me was working on his masterpiece.  He was wearing eyeglasses too . The youngest brother had an upside-down peace necklace. It was a hot summer day, but we were still cool.

There are no dog days. It's never too hot. And boredom is just misguided ambition. Play.

Hopscotch

Hopscotch

Boys never skipped. The boys never played hopscotch.  Most importantly boys never played with girls. I didn't care; I was in love. Well, the kiddy version of it. Her name was Dee Dee. That's what everyone called her. She lived one block down the road. I couldn't tell you what house it was because in front of my house is where we played. 

Boys don’t play with girls

I must have been five or six at the time. It was in the late afternoon hours just before dinner. She'd come over and I would draw a hopscotch on the front sidewalk with the edge of a rock.  Chalk would have been easier, but the rock worked. We were together and when we weren't hopping, we were skipping. She was the best skipper on Buckingham Dr. Single or Double Dutch it didn't matter. She just loved to skip. I wasn't very good at it, and I didn't care. My brothers and the kids across the street gave me the googly eyes. "You're going to get the cooties," they all said. What are the symptoms of the cooties? I didn't know but I was willing to chance it. I didn't care; I was hanging out with my first love. It was a happy time.

My angel

One day she stopped coming over. She had just disappeared. My mother pulled me aside and told me that God had to take her away. I was told later that she had a hole in her little heart. I was too young to understand what death was. Why would God take her away? She was an angel. She was my angel. I guess some angels get their wings early. Now, I had a hole in my heart, but I would have to live with it.

Anger

I was mad at God. I was grieving and, in those days, the seen and not heard era, I learned how to not be seen or heard. I remember looking out the window during class. Seeing St Theresa's church across the street. The house of God. We were taught to fear God, but I was more angry than fearful. Now looking back at those early grade school pictures, it's no wonder why I see a sad little boy. Sometimes I still think I'm that same sad little boy. 

Coping skills

They say time heals hearts. I had to find ways to cope. I am writing this wishing I could have had therapy to handle my grief when I was a kid. I would have had better ways to cope. Instead, I learned how to cope by shutting down. I found ways to distract myself. In school that was doodling and daydreaming. At home it was drawing cartoons, being silly or trying to find something funny to hide the tears.  It was all I could do to survive. Truth be told, I'm still doing that today. It's a little different now. Now it's a blog or a song. However, my strange ways of coping taught me something.  Creativity. So, I guess it’s not all bad. Every happy clown hides a sad face. And I guess behind any wise-ass funny guy is a kid trying to survive. 

Where the path leads

There is a walking path that circles a park near my home. I try to walk every day changing paths, so I don’t get too bored. The park consists of two ball diamonds, a parking lot, a public library and a small play area for kids. I don’t know if it was on lap one or lap six when I looked down and saw it.  Right beside the play area on the pavement was the outlines of a hopscotch drawn with chalk. It wasn’t an ah-ha moment. In fact, I didn’t even think much about it at the time. It was planted in my mind for this moment and maybe it was there just to remind me not to forget. It’s funny when you write about things, things come around. It's like a farmer who forgot he planted seeds and suddenly out of the ground a gift.  That hopscotch planted a seed in my brain and took me back to a sidewalk in the sixties. To two kids and how those moments shaped their lives.

The end is just the beginning

In my life, I have seen many young people who never had a chance to grow old and I struggle to justify why they were called out of this world so early. I know one thing, if I ever get to heaven God’s got some explaining to do.  We are but a single grain of sand slipping threw the hourglass of eternity. Heaven may just be a hop, skip and jump away. But for now, when I see that hopscotch, I will do what have been doing for most of my life. I will walk around it.

Heaven smiles and angels wink 

There are no coincedences 

Blessings are for the eyes to see

The heart to behold

A for the soul to jump with joy

All you need is childlike faith 

and a piece of chalk

First Laughs

Where did I begin?

 

 

Well, I'm not going that far back. Besides, who wants to see that? Not me. 

It was September 2nd, 1959. My mother was in labour. It was my fault; the baby was me, and even though I was born five days before Labour Day, I was born on Labour Day. How I entered the world was a little strange. 

Ready for the dance?

It wasn't her first rodeo, and I wasn't the first clown; I was to be red nose number five.  My journey started in a hospital shower. That's when she saw it. My foot. Hanging out. My right foot was ready for the show. They must have looked down and said, Oh no. There I was doing the hokey pokey. I had my left foot in and my right foot out. They must have pushed my right foot in and shook it all about. Turned me upside down, and that's when I came out. That's what it's all about. The hokey pokey and the twist were my first dance moves. Throw in the mashed potato and the crawl, and you sum up my life as an infant.  Looking back, I wonder. Was I a funny baby, or did I just have gas? I had questions. 

Feed Me!

I had to ask my sisters one important question, and I don't know why.  Was I bottle-fed, or was I breastfed?  Why did I need to know? Maybe it was a Freud thing. Sorry, Mom, I love you, but I'm not in love with you. In hindsight, I'm glad to have no memory of this. Apparently, I was bottle-fed, and the bottle was filled with Pablum. My first protein shake. Luckily, other options were available as I got older. I want to clarify here that Ovaltine is not Nestle Quick. And just because I like peanut butter doesn't mean I have to like crust. Crust was for the birds, and at my house it was, literally. Eventually, I grew up. I ate big boy food and played with big boy toys.

Cowboys and Crusaders

I had a big plastic riding horse with springs attached to the hooves. Hours and hours of bouncy joy. My parents thought that the novelty would wear off eventually. Nope, just paint. I spent hours on a galloping horse that went nowhere, watching the Lone Ranger on TV. I never thought liking men in masks could be a bad thing. Eventually, I realized I wasn't going anywhere, so I gave up on the Lone Ranger and gave the horse to my younger brother. I had a new masked man to watch, and he had a cool cape and an even cooler belt. This guy could accessorize and fight crime at the same time. It was around this time that I discovered improv. When my mother wasn't looking, I would run into the Batcave, the bathroom and tie a towel around my neck. I was the household Caped Crusader. 

Finding my voice

The art of impression started with Looney Tunes. I didn't have a rabbit or a cat outfit, so there were no costume changes. But I could talk like Bugs Bunny and Sylvester on command. Yosemite Sam and Tweety followed closely thereafter. My audience, mostly kids, had challenged me, and I was up for it. Soon I was challenged to do Muppet voices. I do a killer Kermit. I don't think I should use killer and Kermit in the same sentence. My Kermit was good. My audiences weren't always kids. My father and I were big fans of anything slapstick. Peter Sellers was our favourite. My Inspector Clouseau is top-notch, just ask my brother-in-law.

What! No Way! Maybe?

I was once outed because I could do my teacher's voice and mannerisms to a tee. One day, he was late for school. There is never a bad time to do an impression. So, I thought.  There I was in front of the class, and I very flamboyantly lectured on T accounts.  At the back of the class was my sister in-law’s neighbour. She was an older lady and somewhat homophobic, and later that day, she outed me to my sister in-law. My impression left an impression on her. Maybe I was too good. 

Later that day, my family asked me to come out with it. Is there something you want to tell us? I had thought about it, but would never just come out with it. Besides, denial and suppression had worked for so long. What? I asked. Then the words came out. Are you gay? I couldn't believe it. No! I said, Where did you get that idea? My sister-in-law, one of many who participated in the intervention, spoke up. My neighbour is in your class and saw you this afternoon. I ranted that I was doing an impression of my teacher.  I turned around pissed off and went to hide in my room. In hindsight, I would have saved forty years of fear and shame if I had only said maybe. Lesson learned. I'm just glad my teacher didn't find out.

 

On The Road with Me

 

Every day is like a fresh page waiting for words.  This page is a place for a song, a memory of my youth or something funny along the road of life. This is what I write about. I have never taken life too seriously, and that's no joke. I hope my stories make you smile, chuckle or laugh.

 

 

Sock Hockey

To the rink, okay, the floor

 It was the late sixties or early seventies. We invented the indoor sports craze known as sock hockey. If the weather was bad outside, we would bring the hockey game inside. It was before the evolution of mini sticks and mini hockey nets. The game was played on a floor, usually consisting of vinyl or carpeting. My mother was a fan of Berber, and so were we. Our house had two rinks: a carpeted rink that stretched from our living room entryway to the built-in shelving unit just off the kitchen and the other, a narrow sheet of vinyl, which was the upstairs hallway floor. The upstairs hallway had bedroom doors on both sides. These doors were closed at game time. The rink stretched from the stairs leading down and the bathroom at the end of the hall. Our goalposts consist of door frames, entryways and cupboard doors.

 The rules

 When playing upstairs there was one rule everyone needed to agree on. The toilet lid had to be down. Nobody wanted a wrist shot to the face with a soggy sock. Downstairs, the rule was not to hit the hodgepodge of collectables collecting dust above our heads in the shelving unit.

 The Sock-ball

 How we decided on the game day sock-ball puck is a mystery. We must have experimented with many different styles and sizes and, by process of elimination, opted for the white tube variety. It didn't even matter if they stunk. I was lucky enough to have watched my mother folding them on laundry day, which at our house was an everyday occurrence. I soon figured out her secret and applied it to our simulated sock-ball puck. There was one small problem: it seemed the older we got and the stronger we got, the more the sock would unravel. The solution: elastic grandma. My grandmother, who was living with us at the time, had a year's supply dangling around her wrist. This was easier than rummaging through the junk drawer. Surely, we could persuade her to give up a band for our cause. Thanks grandma. The sock-ball puck was transformed with a new look. Rolled up and held in place with a big elastic granny band. Game on.

 On your knees

 The wide-open carpeted rink was our favorite surface to play on. Except for the rug burns on our knees and hands. Sock hockey is played on your knees. This explains why adults never played it.  We had a lot of practice, after all, we were good catholic boys. We knew how to kneel. Although it was the one part of the mass we couldn't wait to get over. Say Amen already. Back to the rink.

 Two Minutes for throwing

 This is perhaps the most important rule in sock-ball hockey and one my brothers broke every time, it's called proper sock-ball puck handling. The sock-ball must be scooped, and it must not be thrown. Hands are to be cupped only.  The game is played with four players. Each team has a goalie and a forward. If a thrown puck results in a goal, the goal is disallowed, and the other team is awarded a penalty shot. There was no penalty box, and if there was, we would have all been in the sin bin for fighting. We didn’t have the luxury of a replay, so we had to rely on honesty. I never heard anyone ever say “okay, I’m sorry I threw it.”

 The Canine Zamboni

 The length of game play consisted of a predetermined goal tally, or the interference of a canine sent in to quiet us down. The upstairs rink was used on this occasion, or if company came over. But that dog, always searching for a reward, could be heard barking at the base of the stairs. Like I said before she was a bitch. No fun allowed was her motto.

 Hockey Night In Canada

 We would eventually succumb to our self-inflicted wounds and stop playing to treat slivers and rug burns. I’ll never forget hockey night in Canada, Buckingham style, watching our favorite teams on T.V. and during intermission playing hand hockey. The tradition continues, somewhere, I hope.