Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2016-05-05, Page 5Other Views Polly drives us crackers Brighton, Ontario. A quiet little burg of 11,000 souls, give or take, nestled in the bosom of Ontario a couple of hours east of Toronto. Peaceful. Sleepy, even. A town adorned with that abiding virtue of small towns everywhere: nothing terribly alarming ever seems to happen there. Until the night of Tuesday, April 29, 2016. That's when the switchboard at the Brighton detachment of the Northumberland Ontario Provincial Police lit up like the CN Tower. Reports of a `domestic in progress' from a residential neighbourhood. Shouting, screeching. It sounded bad. A squad car was dispatched. Worried neighbours clustered on verandas and front lawns as police officers arrived on the scene. The police canvassed the neighbours to find out anything they could about the people inside. Motorcycle headquarters? Druggies? A meth house, maybe? No, nothing like that. A quiet couple lived there — although one neighbour reported that she'd heard that the woman had "gone away for a few days". Whatever the situation, it wasn't getting better. They could hear angry cursing and what sounded like furniture being thrown around. Arthur Black Then came the moment every police officer dreads: direct confrontation with a person or persons in distress, possibly armed, perhaps homicidal. Two constables in bullet-proof vests cautiously crept toward the front door, prepared for the worst. "We could hear yelling," said Constable Steve Bates, "and someone yelling "I HOPE YOU DIE". The lead constable knocked on the door. It was answered by an unarmed man with bloodshot eyes and an apologetic mien. Was he in distress? Um, no, not really. Who else was in the house? The wife was away; there was nobody else in the house. Well...except for the parrot. All that yelling and screaming? The death threats? The man blushed. The parrot, he explained, had been `beaking off' at him. When he couldn't take it anymore the THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2016. PAGE 5. man... beaked back. The police noted that, surprise, surprise, alcohol was involved. Hey, I'm not surprised. I once had a parrot that could drive anyone to drink, if not the brink of suicide. Mine was a Blue Fronted Amazon named Sydney. Should have been called Satan. Sydney was the pet from hell. I eventually paid the guy I bought him from to take Sydney back. Reminds me of the story about a retired reverend who buys a parrot at a pet store, unaware that it formerly belonged to a sea captain with a decidedly un -reverential vocabulary. "Polly want a cracker?" asked the clergyman. "GO TO HELL!" squawked the parrot. The clergyman, outraged, grabs the parrot by the neck, stomps over to the freezer and plops the bird inside "And you can stay in there until you cool off!" After a few minutes the clergyman relents, opens the freezer and lifts the parrot out. The vicar says "That's what you get for swearing, do you understand?" The bird nods meekly. Then, after a few seconds the parrot says softly, "May I ask what the turkey did?" Practising my parental vocabulary Recently I've come to discover that using a pet as a way to teach responsibility is a great idea, regardless of age. After spending a cold, wet night outside a few days back after my dog Mikayla decided to go dog -o a skunk -o, I came to the realization that she is something like a child (from what I remember when my decade -younger brother and sister were growing up). Sitting there, choking on the acrid fumes of skunk spray at 11 p.m. at night, freezing to the bone because at least as much water was soaking me as was actually getting to the dog, I found myself repeating the mantras that my parents had through my life when I was dealing with the repercussions of my actions — "This hurts me more than it hurts you,", "Now you know not to do that any more,", and, my favourite (which my father uttered the night a far younger version of myself discovered the problems with stuffing ones self with black forest cake), "It's only going to get worse, but hopefully you learn something from this,", fell from my mouth before my brain even comprehended what was happening: I was becoming my parents. Soon I was remembering telling her to drop what she was picking up off the ground, not putting that in her mouth and leaving that dead animal alone and realized it was worse than I thought. I spent a sleepless night after that event. That could have been caused by the horrible stench that was wafting through the house despite bowls of vinegar, gallons of odour - banishing sprays of every kind and an hour or so of candles burning before Ashleigh and I retired. Unfortunately, by my math, my sleeplessness was only half due to that cloying stench burning my nose and throat and half to do with the realization that, with my own child due in a few months, I really had to start thinking about the words I was saying. First of all, I had to remember that I didn't want to be my parents. That sounds harsh, but isn't that the goal? To always try and do better and provide better than our parents so my child has a better life than I do? My parents did a good job by me, I think. I mean, I'm not a super villain or a politician, so they must have managed to do most things right. So yeah, those thoughts kept me up all night, all thanks to the fact that I had never felt like a caregiver before. I love my pets, don't get me wrong, but I always see them as companions (and when people refer to them as their `babies', it turns my stomach and inspires unvoiced vitriol the likes of which you've probably never heard). I've never sat there knowing that something I did was in their best interest (and my own, trust me, the smell of skunk is something we're still fighting to get out of the house) despite their protestations. Even things I do for them, I usually end up attributing to myself. I walk Mikayla twice a day but that's because of the exercise and the fact that I don't want to clean up the mess that would result from not walking her. I clean up after the cats (because apparently emptying a litter box is something a pregnant woman shouldn't do) and never think it's because they need it clean but because I can't stand the smell when it isn't done regularly. I do these things and the why of them getting done is usually something for me. A friend of mine, when I explained the whole skunk situation, asked me why I didn't just chain the dog up outside over night so I could handle the problem in the daylight. I suppose I could have told a white lie and said I was worried about the dog having round two with Pepe Le Pew before daybreak but the honest fact is it never occurred to me to leave Mikayla outside. She isn't an outside dog. She is part of the family and she has as much right to her bed as I have to mine, even if it means bathing her in vinegar beforehand. I had to care for her because she couldn't do it herself and I guess that's a part of what being a parent is going to be about. I'm not saying I've figured out parenting. I know for a fact that I haven't even scratched the plastic container that holds the surface of parenting, however I did experience, in that cold night, when drenched in water through three layers, and trying my best not start hacking, coughing or cursing my poor dog, a paradigm shift. It's nothing as absurd as saying I didn't realize that you occasionally have to be cruel to be kind. It was more something that I realized about myself. I don't think I would be out of line to say that very few people are ready to be a first-time parent, or, if I am out of line, the experience of my friends leads me to believe that it's not something you can prepare for. You can't stockpile sleep or patience for those days you need them and you can't imagine how a child is going to change everything. Those facts have scared me since I found out I was going to be a dad. I won't lie. The idea of being responsible for a child scares me worse than the first bill I got for my student loans. Honestly, pretty much every bit of news I get, every realization I have and every thing I'm told about being a parent makes me worried about how I'll fare. However, sitting there, calming myself and reminding myself that blame wouldn't magically make the skunk smell go away, I had a thought: despite the smell, the cold and the wet, and despite the long night ahead of me, I realized I could handle it. Sure, I might need an extra cup (pot) of coffee to get through work the next day, but I could manage this. Not long after that, I realized my nights might start resembling that one very soon; I'll be dealing with smells, cleaning up someone I'm responsible for and getting a lot less sleep and I thought to myself, for the first time in awhile, that I might be able to handle that too. Sure, there's a big difference between a soiled diaper and skunk spray and there's a big difference between a one-night event and every night, but I'm looking for hope where I can find it. Speaking of hope, I hope I can remember this lesson: to keep calm and not let my temper get the best of me. Oh, and that future paradigm shifts smell a little better. Shawn ,271 1.27iiiih Loughlin Shawn's Sense Erasing history History is one of those things that shouldn't change. It does — all the time. But, it shouldn't. The scrubbing or reshaping of history happens all the time and for a variety of reasons — but lately it seems like the main reason is because people have been behaving badly. One recent example has been Hulk Hogan. If you ask your average person on the street about the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), which is now called something else, it's Hogan who comes to mind — likely the organization's most prolific star for decades. He has been scrubbed from anything to do with the organization — including its books, website and products after he was recently outed as making racist remarks. Hogan is all over the history of the WWF. He has participated in some of the organization's most notable matches, but as far as the history books are concerned, he never existed. On the topic of racist remarks, it was Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn that was at the centre of controversy a few years ago for a different type of history cleansing. New editions of the book, it was announced, would replace racial slurs with slightly less offensive references. The literary community was up in arms about the whole thing, suggesting this was an effort to rewrite history, which, in some ways, it was. Sports have been struggling with the same issue for a number of years since performance - enhancing drugs arrived on the scene. Whether it's a baseball player using banned substances, a college basketball coach using illegal recruiting tactics or an Olympian having to hand back a gold medal due to steroid use, the record books simply erase that name. The latest example was on television over the course of the weekend when a documentary aired on U.S. sports network ESPN. The movie tells the story of the historic comeback orchestrated by the Boston Red Sox in 2004 over their rival New York Yankees. At the very heart of that story is a game pitched by Curt Schilling of the Red Sox. It would be known as the bloody sock game. It was game six of the series, and Schilling had torn a tendon sheath in his ankle. Red Sox doctors surgically repaired Schilling's ankle hours ahead of the game. While they were unsure if Schilling would be able to walk without pain, he went out and pitched one of the best games of his life and certainly one of the most memorable and gutsy performances in baseball playoff history. I watched those games as they happened and I have seen the documentary in question — that game is as important to that story as anything is to any story. However, in an airing of the documentary over the weekend, there was no mention of the game, which is featured prominently in the original cut of the movie. The reason: Schilling was fired from his commentator position earlier this year after a number of questionable posts on his Facebook page. One compared Muslims to Nazis and the other was perceived to be anti-transgender. While it's tough to argue that Schilling deserves a place at ESPN after repeatedly violating the company's code of conduct, his place in history is beyond debate. And unless viewers are being led to believe that game six in 2004 suddenly didn't happen, they deserve the whole story, whether or not Schilling turned out to be a bad guy down the road.