HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2015-03-19, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 2015. PAGE 5.
Consider for a moment the breathtaking
wonder of those fleshy clamshells
attached to both sides of your head.
Yes, I’m talking about your ears. They bring
you audio news from the outside world.
Without them we’d never experience the
whisper of a lover, the punch line of a joke or
that goofy giggle Joni Mitchell emits at the end
of “Big Yellow Taxi”.
Without ears – no hummingbird thrum. No
frog chorus at sunset. No Beethoven’s Ninth.
And how do we celebrate these wondrous
appendages? We stick pencils behind them, we
hang sunglasses off them, we punch holes in
them to facilitate the dangling of glass and
metal baubles. We even dig into them with
pinkie fingers and Q tips.
And worse. There’s a barista in a coffee shop
I frequent who has ‘modified’ his ears. He’s
punched holes in the lower lobes and, over
several months, inserted progressively larger
‘plugs’ to make the holes bigger.
The effect is…how to put this
delicately…puke-inducing. As he moves
around the café he looks like he’s got two pink
Gumby dolls doing a soft-shoe on his
shoulders.
But maybe I’m just hopelessly square. I
know that in the U.K., ‘earholing’ is the
fastest-growing fashion procedure around.
And right behind it, is the ‘un-earholing’
procedure. That’s where plastic surgeons, for
customers disenchanted with their earholes
and for fees starting at about $3,000, try to fill
in the holes by coaxing the skin to fuse back
together.
What perplexes me is the realization that
there is among my species, a certain sub-set
that considers floppy earlobes to be a sexual
turn-on.
Which may help to explain the X-rated
barbershop I came across in Ho Chi Minh City
a couple of years back.
Why X-rated? Because aside from
the usual hot-shave, short/back/and/sides, this
barbershop featured a young maiden in a
skimpy frock who, for a fee would happily…
Clean your ears for you.
But erotically. With tiny, tickly brushes and
probes. My barber explained that ‘ray tai’ as
it’s called, can stimulate a client to the point of,
well, eargasm.
Performed improperly it can cause
infections and aural traumas up to and
including perforated eardrums. None of which,
on the day I was in for a beard trim, deterred a
half-dozen dirty old men lined up to be ray tai-
ed.
This dirty old man passed. My ear canals lie
way too close to my brain for me to feel
comfortable allowing strangers to poke
around. Besides, I remembered the advice of
old Doc Reznick. He told me never to stick
anything in my ear that was smaller than my
elbow.
As ear advice goes, that sounds good to me.
Arthur
Black
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
For years I’ve been pushing an idea I had
in my much younger days to see parents
and coaches as educated about the rules
of soccer as possible.
When I was younger, I often felt, as an
official of the game, like I was sitting at a table
discussing a movie and I was the only person
who actually saw it.
A lot of people will say that the rules of
soccer are complicated, but the simple fact is,
they really aren’t. They just seem complicated
compared to the other sports that are prevalent
in Canada.
Once someone wraps their head around
the idea that the off-side line moves
with the players and there is a huge difference
between incidental contact and intentional
contact, the rest of the rules follow common
sense.
Anyway, I’ve always said that sessions could
be held to teach parents and referees about
soccer and that, prior to being allowed
anywhere near the field, they should all have to
take it.
At the time, I didn’t realize what a huge
request it was and, as I got older, I decided that
it probably wasn’t reasonable.
That all ended a few years ago when I took
on the responsibility of managing the referees
in Blyth for the North Huron Minor Soccer
League. After that, I decided it was more
necessary than ever.
That first year, I flexed some social muscle
and brought in every referee I could find. I
asked everyone and had people signing up and
things went great (or at least I thought they
did).
Unfortunately, after moving, I was unable to
continue with the position.
Upon returning to the village, hopefully a bit
more permanently this time, I’ve gladly
adopted the mantle of the head referee again
and I’m looking for new recruits.
Why am I looking for new recruits? Well,
there are the usual stories of people moving
away for school or finding summer jobs that
keep them busy at night but then there’s that
other usual story.
There’s that usual story that involves people
being scared away from being a referee and
that frustrates me.
Being a soccer referee is really unlike
officiating many other games.
Unlike hockey and baseball, there are
no barricades between referees and
coaches and parents. Unlike basketball, body
contact isn’t just allowed in certain
circumstances but actually expected (after all,
two people can’t run for the same ball without
eventually rubbing up against each other).
Heck, the only sports where referees might
feel the same thing are football, lacrosse and
rugby.
The lack of barricades, the inclusion of body
contact and the energy that brings and the
simple fact that a lot of people don’t
necessarily know the rules, makes for a more
tense environment.
That tense environment leads to all sorts of
incidents.
I faced some of those incidents when I was a
young referee. Parents walking on to the field
and yelling at me, threatening me or even
suggesting that I need to find some kind of
carnal release (which was a really odd thing to
shout at a 14-year-old referee officiating a U10
game).
For me, they weren’t scary situations.
Sure, at the time, the adrenaline was
pumping and my brain was definitely trying to
convince me to run away from the adults
walking on to the field, but I stood my ground
(not because I was tough or strong or anything,
but because I’m stubborn, really, really
stubborn). Those situations were galvanizing
moments.
It was then I knew that, whether or not
I was the greatest referee in the world,
I would likely be a referee for a very long
time.
Maybe I could chalk it up to kids being
more in touch with their emotions or some
other new-agey discussion, but those
moments seem to be driving more and more
referees out of soccer and making it tougher
and tougher for me to fill a roster with enough
referees to keep my time on the field minimal.
Let me be clear by saying that no one should
ever have to face those kinds of things.
It doesn’t matter if a referee is 14 or 44, no
parent should ever walk on to a field with the
intent of yelling at, intimidating or insulting
him or her.
Maybe we’ve got a mentality that, because
of the glass in hockey and the fence in
baseball, that’s all right, but the simple fact is,
it’s not.
Officials of any sport have enough to worry
about. They have to try and call a fair game, try
and keep the players safe, deal with the
players’ complaints and deal with the
complaints from coaches. That should be
where their responsibilities end.
I remember, when I was young, how
spectators at hockey games would often shun
the one parent who was yelling and screaming.
They would try and sit away from that parent,
try and make it seem like they weren’t
connected.
While there may not be more of those yellers
and screamers (although my experience would
lean to the contrary), there are certainly a lot
more people who sit there and let it happen and
do not try to distance themselves.
The problem, as far as I can tell, is that a lot
of these people see a game being played and
want to apply the rules they know, the rules
with which they are comfortable.
They want to think that soccer is the summer
analogue for hockey. They want the rules to be
the same. Fortunately for me (as I’ve tried to
be a hockey referee and there are way too
many rules to remember), they aren’t the same.
Soccer is a simple game governed by 17
laws (well, 18 in my mind, with the 18th being
common sense). Those 17 laws aren’t rules,
they are simple guidelines, each covering a
specific part of the game, to be applied as
necessary to make the game safe and fun for
the players.
It’s a simple sport to learn and the laws never
change (though their interpretations do change
ever-so-slightly year to year) and it’s one that
everyone can learn.
When I say everyone can learn, I don’t mean
it in any unspecific way. I’m talking about a
chance to learn the laws and become a referee
and maybe pick up some paid exercise on the
way.
If you want to referee this season, get in
touch with me. I’ll be more than happy to
explain what it entails and tell you how you too
can learn the game and even help you sign-up
for a training program held in Wingham, just a
short drive away.
Drop me a line.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Ain’t no sunshine
Just like snow melting and birds starting to
chirp once again, an annual spring
tradition here at The Citizen, and most
media outlets, no doubt, is the review of the
province’s Sunshine List.
This year, and in recent years past, there has
been a lot of commentary regarding the list –
and really, criticism of what it is, what it does
and what it doesn’t do.
With the rapid rate of inflation and
mandatory raises at many public levels, the
argument has been present for years that the
Sunshine List threshold needs to be raised.
One hundred thousand dollars, some have said,
simply doesn’t go as far as it used to.
While what those people are saying is true,
to suggest that annual earnings of over
$100,000 is “chump change” as some have,
simply shows the growing gap between the
haves and the have-nots.
Many people knew this day has been coming
for a long time. There were many public
employees who had been hovering around the
$100,000 mark for a while, and between
mandatory increases and inflation, it was only
a matter of time until these employees found
their name on the list.
While the complete list has not yet been
released, some agencies are releasing their
own list. Last week, for example, Huron
County presented its list and the 22 names it
contains. On Monday, the Toronto Police
Department released its list.
A review has immediately been issued for
Toronto Police, as this year’s disclosure shows
that over half of the department’s police
officers are on the list. Chief Bill Blair has
been ordered to further investigate officers’
compensation.
Another growing sector is teachers. Daniel
Cohn, an associate professor at York
University projects that soon, if not this year,
25 per cent of Ontario’s high school teachers
will be on the list.
Locally, Huron County’s list contained 22
names, compared to 14 last year. The big
change this year is that a large (comparatively
speaking to the size of the county’s list) group
of Emergency Medical Services (EMS)
employees have made their way onto the list.
Ten of the 22 names belong to EMS, while six
(over a quarter of the names on the list) are
simply primary care paramedics.
It should also be noted that there was no
Medical Officer of Health on the county’s
2014 list, a position that in 2013 commanded
nearly $350,000 – nearly three times what the
county’s second-highest-paid employee made.
So while the argument that the list isn’t just
pointing the finger at the fat cats in their ivory
towers – the ones lighting cigars with $100
bills and watching poor people fight to the
death for fun – anymore is valid, that doesn’t
mean it’s insignificant either.
In the same story, a representative of the
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
pointed to 2011 figures showing that more than
half of Canadians reported an income of less
than $35,000 that year – although that figure
does include students, seniors and those on
government support.
So, while the Sunshine List has moved out of
the gated communities and onto the average
streets of Everytown, Ontario, public sector
employees, on the list or not, should not lose
sight of the fact that not everyone on their
street is on the list. Far from it, in fact.
As the list inevitably continues to grow year
after year, debate will rage on and maybe I’m
out of touch, but $100,000 still sounds like a
good chunk of change to me.
Other Views
A chance to really learn the rules
Luxury ear cleaning now available