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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1997-11-19, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19,1997. PAGE 5. \ « Arthur Black A bum topic I have before me a letter from a correspondent in Ottawa who signs him/herself Disgusted Reader: "Dear Sir: We live in a nation that is poised on the abyss of dissolution. The rainforests are being decimated by chainsaws, the ozone layer is dwindling away, large portions of our planet are riddled with land mines, the Royal Family is in crisis — and what do you write about? You write about birdwatching. About bad restaurant food. About your dog and your car and your fallen arches. Sir, I implore you to raise the level of your weekly offerings and address the serious issues that rightfully concern us all!" Well, Disgusted, you're absolutely right. For too long now the tone and tenor of this newspaper column has been hopelessly jejune and sophomoric. Not to mention superficial and irrelevant. That's changing as of now! From here on, I dedicate myself to a policy of solemn and profound issue-oriented commentary. Accordingly, I introduce this week's topic: the bum. Also known as the Behind, Posterior, Fundament, Rear, Rump and Caboose. The more genteel among us refer to the derriere. (Mom always called it 'your seat'). In Yiddish, it's tush. In Spanish, la luna. Poles speak of the dupa. To Germans it is der hintere. International Scene Those darned gypsies You have probably been reading about the efforts of Czech gypsies to immigrate to Canada, spurred on by some wonderful publicity as to how easy it is to get into the country as a political refugee and that there are high paying jobs waiting for them when they arrive. Quite by coincidence I happen to be living in the same area of the Czech Republic where these gypsies are located. For all I know I may be the only Canadian in this area. Any Canadian here would agree with me, however, that these gypsies are very much a reality that doesn’t seem to go away. I am not sure how the rumour got started about Canada but the real damage seems to have been done by an independent Czech. TV company which decided to take a look at the situation. Far from restoring some order of sanity to the whole affair, they did exactly the opposite. When the film aired on Czech TV, the gypsies had all the ammunition they needed. Spurred on by the alleged confirmation in the film that getting into Canada was a cinch if you were a political refugee and that high- paying jobs were indeed waiting for all of them, they descended on the Canadian Embassy in Prague in droves. Some even solid everything they had, bought a plane ticket from Prague to Toronto and were on Yes, Disgusted, there are ruder terms, but we needn't go into that. Actually, there's a reasonably good way to tell Americans from Canadians in the backside business. Simply put: north of the 49th, it's 'bum'. The Yanks prefer 'butt'. The British, typically, are even more circumspect. They speak (when they must) of "the bottom". And sometimes they must — speak of such things I mean. There is a story concerning Queen Victoria who once invited an Admiral Foley to lunch at the palace. The Admiral was in charge of a frigate which had sunk off Portsmouth and was in the process of being salvaged. The Queen wished to know how much progress had been made on the project. After they talked about the frigate for a while, Queen Victoria asked about her good friend, who happened to be the Admiral's sister. Alas, the Admiral was a trifle hard of hearing. He thought they were still talking about the salvaged frigate. "Well, your majesty," he thundered, "I am going to have her turned over, take a good look at her bottom and have it well scraped." They say the Queen carefully put down her knife and fork, gathered her napkin over her face, and laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks. British bottoms aren't always a source of humour however — ask Sir Roger Penrose. Sir Roger is a mathematician, famous (among mathematicians, anyway) for discovering mathematical patterns known as Penrose Tilings. These are non-repeating designs that apparently turned the scientific world upside down because they exhibit By Raymond Canon their way. The situation was not helped by the gypsies’ claim that they were, in act, being persecuted or treated as second-class citizens here. How much of this is true is hard to determine but it is a very true fact that they are not liked one little bit by the Czech people who claim that they are, among other things, lazy, prone to larceny and far too ready to stay on welfare instead of working. Everybody I have talked to here believes these accusations and the situation was not helped by the mayor of one nearby city who publicly announced that the city would pay the majority of the travel expenses of any gypsy who wanted to go to Canada. Such an offer was too much even for the government in Prague which, whatever it thought privately, ordered the mayor to rescind the order. The damage, however, was already done and just added to the stream of gypsies heading for the Canadian Embassy. The fact that some gypsies have either been sent home from Canada or have returned of their own volition helped slow things down a bit. The Canadian Embassy does admit that the numbers appearing at their doors has diminished somewhat but there should, in all honesty, not be any at all. The problem revolves around the whole question of what constitutes a political refugee. When I was working in Vienna in 1956 with the thousands of Hungarian refugees streaming across the border into Austria, there was no doubt that these were refugees in the truest sense of the word. something that is not supposed to exist in nature: namely, five-fold symmetry. You can imagine Sir Roger's nonplussedness then, when his wife came home from the supermarket with a paper bag full of Kleenex Quilted toilet paper, each three-ply square of which was embossed with Penrose Tiling patterns. Sir Roger hit the roof. He called his solicitor. He is currently suing Kimberley- Clark for copyright infringement. Huffs Sir Roger: "When it comes to the population of Britain being invited by a multi-national to wipe their bottoms on the work of a Knight of the Realm, then a last stand must be made." Which reminds me of the story of Britain's first musical toilet, owned by a certain Lady Evanston. Naturally, after its installation Lady E was anxious to show it off. She invited her closest friends to tea for that very purpose. One by one, they excused themselves to try the plumbing phenomenon. The first woman came back with a look of absolute bliss. "Oh, my dears" she sighed, "When I sat down it played Beethoven's Moonlight So natal" The second woman returned similarly aglow. "It was divine! I sat down and got Pachelbel's Canonl" The third luncheon guest felt the call and excused herself. After 15 minutes she still hadn't returned from the bathroom. Lady Evanston knocked, then opened the bathroom door to find her friend mopping the floor. "Just my luck," grumbled the guest. "When I sat down it played God Save the Queen." Furthermore the Canadian government at the time had a stated policy of taking so many thousand of these refugees. The gypsies do not fall in the same category at all. There is no revolution, purge or anything similar taking place here and the gypsies have not been singled out. They receive exactly the same welfare benefits as do the Czechs, which may be one of the problems. The Czechs don’t think that the gypsies should gel all the benefits and thus tend to take out their frustrations on the gypsies who are easy to spot and, who see in this another example of “political oppression.” Maybe the same Czech TV company which did the blatantly misleading program on life in Canada should do another one which paints a realistic picture. However, that is unlikely to be the case. About all you can do is tell the truth to the gypsies as they show up at the Embassy. As a Canadian citizen living, if only temporarily, in the Czech Republic, I have to register at the Canadian Embassy in Prague. It must have been a pleasant change for the harried consular officials to handle my data rather than face a flock of would-be, if misguided, immigrants to Canada under the guise of political refugees. A Final Thought The human brain is like a freight car — guaranteed to have a certain capacity, but often running empty The Not so cool now Bell-bottomed and tie-dyed she sat cross- legged on a mattress on the floor. Inhaling deeply she sucked the sweet smelling smoke into her lungs, then held it as she passed the joint to her friend. It was the 60s. Tina was cool, she was hip, she was in control. Yeah, right. What she really was, was a naive, confused child, who had just taken one more step into a dangerous world, where she conversely had absolutely no control. I knew Tina. She was a shy, frightened kid, who told me stories of indifferent parents and sexual abuse by a close family friend. Like the majority when the free- thinking 60s hit, she dabbled, experimented. But it was, I believe, a desparate need for attention, her self-loathing, that pushed her too far. A better than average student, who enjoyed sports, she eventually dropped out of school. You could find her most times of the day, or night, hanging out downtown, with the similarity misguided. This insouciant disregard for her young healthy body began as a pre-teen when she smoked her first cigarette (Export, non-filter, if you please). Her first drunken stupor was at the age of 15, followed shortly thereafter by a brief experimental bit of sniffing nail polish remover. She smoked her first joint a year later. Hallucinogenics highlighted her journey through the end of Grade 11 and onto amphetamines. A scare over hepatitis woke her up sometime before she had completely destroyed her body, mind and a chance for a decent future. Kids will be kids. They can't be protected against everything. They will spontaneously, and foolishly put themselves in danger. But, for Tina, and the too many others who were like her, the potential risk was something of which she was unaware. She realty had no idea of the damage that was happening and could happen. No one had told her what the poisons could do to her and how easily they could destroy her. No one told her that they could reach far into the future and affect her as yet unborn children. No one told her that the drug-induced haze she wandered through at school could determine her chances for a solid social standing when she finally grew up. No one told her she would lose the respect and trust of people important to her. And no one told her that when she finally pul herself back in order, it would be harder than anything she had ever done in her young life. Today is a different story. This is Drug Awareness Week, just part of the modem world's strategy that education can be the best prevention. Young people are forewarned of the hazards. Yet there are the adventurous, the rebellious, the tragic, and the just plain stupid, who will inevitably scoff at the realities. Tina was lucky. She walked blindly through a mine field and came out relatively unscathed. When I see young people today heading the same direction, eyes, apparently open, I wish there was some way to reach them, to make them understand that they have to live (and hopefully they do) with the decisions they make. Talk to Tina today and you hear a voice ashamed of a past that seemed so cool back then.