The Citizen, 2015-09-17, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2015. PAGE 5.
“Men forget everything; women remember
everything. That’s why men need instant
replays in sports. They’ve already forgotten
what happened.”
– Rita Rudner
So here’s what happened. I’m sitting at
my desk when the phone rings. It’s a call
from a neighbour who says she’s found
my notebook sitting on a bag of Kennel Ration
at the grocery store.
Cripes! My notebook! That’s where I keep
my telephone numbers, appointments, grocery
lists, column ideas – everything I need to keep
track of my life! And this is a real notebook,
you understand – actual paper with lines on the
pages, not one of those Android/Samsung/
iPad/Blackberry units which I would
misplace/sit on/drop in the bathtub seconds
after I paid a king’s ransom for it.
I remember how the notebook wound up
sitting on a bag of dog food at the store too. I
took it out to tear off a page and scribble a note
to remind the store staff they were out of my
mutt’s favourite doggie treat. I dashed off the
reminder, but I left the notebook behind.
The irony of this scenario is not lost on me:
I had ‘forgotten’ the very device the purpose of
which was to help me remember things.
I thank my neighbour profusely, hang up the
phone, and decide to show my appreciation by
giving her a copy of my latest book Paint the
Town Black, (Douglas and McIntyre, better
bookstores everywhere.)
I pop over to see her, retrieve the notebook
and with a flourish I give her my book.
Naturally, I will autograph it as well. I open to
the title page, click my ball point into
readiness, write “To” and...
I can’t remember her name.
This is embarrassing. I have known her for at
least 10 years. Her husband... Bob – yeah,
that’s it, Bob – fixes my computer when it dies.
Stupidly, I scribble “...my neighbour, with
thanks!” and sign it.
Senior Moments. Some of us handle them
ham-handedly; others handle them like, well,
Alfred Edward Matthews, a British character
actor. He was still acting well into his 80s, but
experiencing memory problems from time to
time.
Such as the time, deep in the sunset
of his career when he made a cameo
appearance in a West End play. His role
required him to cross the stage, pick up a
telephone and have a short, one-sided
conversation that would advance the plot. The
phone rang on cue. Mister Matthews strode
majestically across the stage, picked up the
receiver, held it to his ear....And Alfred Edward
Matthews completely forgot who he was
supposed to be talking to...and what he was
supposed to say.
Mister Matthews may have suffered from
absent-mindedness, but his talent for
improvisation was still well-oiled. Holding out
the telephone receiver to the only other actor
on the stage, Matthews thundered “IT’S FOR
YOU!”
I love that story. So much so I read it to my
partner before I sent this column out.
Suppressing a yawn she said. “Uh Huh. You
used that anecdote in one of your essays in
Paint The Town Black”.
That woman! She never forgets anything.
That’s the trouble with...whatshername.
Arthur
Black
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Everyone has to have their own personal
sign for the fact that summer is coming
to a close and the dreaded w-word is
right around the corner, right?
In case you’re wondering why I said w-
word, it’s because certain people claim I’m not
allowed to say the w-word (you know, that
fourth season that isn’t spring, summer or fall)
or the s-word (the stuff that falls during the w-
word and closes highways and cancels school)
because apparently it’s bad luck (for everyone
except my wife who loves both the w-word
and the s-word almost as much as she loves
me).
And before anyone gets too excited, I’m not
talking about astrological signs. You know
what my astrological sign tells me every day?
That the stars have no bearing on what my day
holds and that the only people who benefit
from horoscopes are the people paid to write
them.
Anyway, back to signs of the w-word.
For some lucky retirees, I would imagine it’s
purchasing plane tickets to head south for the
winter. For others, it’s probably something far
less appetizing.
I know that [the w-word] is upon us when I
decide it’s time to put on my [s-word] tires,
however I know that summer is coming to an
end the first time I step outside of my house
and I’m aware of the fact that I have nose-
hairs.
Usually, that waits until mid-to-late October,
however, as I’ve recently started taking early
(6-7 a.m.) morning walks, I stumbled onto it
early Monday morning.
It’s nothing bad, per se, it’s just breathing in
and having your nose hairs kind of freeze
because of the temperature difference in your
home and outside (or, on those really, really
cold w-word days, all the time, everywhere).
As soon as I step outside my door and
feel that happen, I know it’s time to start
preparing to store the things on the deck, move
the s-word shovels to a more accessible spot
and pull out the w-word boots, coats, scarves
and hats.
For younger people, the end of summer is an
easily observed and definable event: they have
to return to school.
Whether they are in elementary school, high
school or pursuing a post-secondary
education, early September is the time
to gear up to go back to school which puts an
end to the mind-set of summer, if not the actual
season.
Seven years ago I got to the point that I
couldn’t use going back to school as the end of
summer.
It would be simple enough to say, “Oh the
children are back at school, I guess summer is
coming to a close,” but, seven years ago, the
first year I didn’t go back to school, I realized
that summer doesn’t really end the weekend of
Labour Day.
Sure, if you want to get into semantics,
summer doesn’t end until just before the fall
equinox, but sometimes we’ve got the s-word
falling by then.
However, it was then that I realized that,
since I was doing the same thing every
weekday (and most weekends), there really
wasn’t a difference between the first weekend
of September and the last weekend of August
or the second weekend of September. I could
party just as hard regardless of what day it was
(I was younger then, now it’s more about
having a little more time to clean the eaves I
guess).
Now, given how early I’ve been getting
up for the past few months, I’m aware that I
may be jumping the gun here a bit, so I’ve
already promised myself that I won’t act on the
hair-freezing adventure that morning walks
can be until at least October. Despite my
changing schedule, however the fact remains
that even today (Monday), even with the sun
shining bright, there is still a brisk breeze out
there.
That said, if I’m going to continue being
up and walking around the Village of Blyth
before the sun is up, I guess I need a new
sign to look for when it comes to the end of
summer.
Maybe it could be the changing colours of
the leaves or winter wheat being planted
(although that’s supposedly late September
according to the Ontario Ministry of
Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs) or
maybe it could be the first day I had to wear a
jacket.
Wait, can’t be that, I wore a jacket on
Sunday at the annual reunion of the
Huron Pioneer Thresher and Hobby
Association, so that would push it even
further back.
Another thing I need to take into account is
that Blyth is a little further north of where I
grew up (a very little bit). Despite the short
distance, however, it’s almost a biome all its
own with more feral cats per capita and more
s-word falling in a couple weeks than I
remember ever seeing anywhere else I lived.
Maybe summer weather does end a little
sooner here.
Regardless of what it is, I need something to
look for to indicate that summer is over and I
hope that someone can give me something that
happens later than my nose hair test.
So send in your suggestions!
Take a picture of what you look for to
denote the end of summer. Maybe it’s a
mournful sight that drags a groan out of you
or, maybe you’re like my wife and look
forward to start of the colder seasons and
your sign is a welcome sight. Whatever it
is, grab your camera or your phone and snap
a quick shot of it and share it with the
community through North Huron Publishing’s
Photo of the Day.
We’ll turn it into a contest. I’ll buy the
winner a coffee (or anything hot that isn’t
pumpkin spice-flavoured) and we can either
bemoan the loss of summer or look forward to
the start of the w-word season.
Send your submissions to
reporter@northhuron.on.ca and, please, no
pictures of nose hair.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
The truth hurts
In so many ways, we’re always trying to
soften the blow for each other. There are a
million (and rising, these days) ways that
we can annoy, offend or embarrass one another
and many of them are directly associated with
telling the truth.
For this week’s issue of The Citizen, I spent
an afternoon with Julie Sawchuk, the Blyth-
area cyclist who is now paralyzed after being
hit by a car. One of the first things I asked her
was what it felt like to be so honest and open
about her life and her situation, whether it be
with me in our interview or first-hand in her
blog, where she has been brutally honest.
At first, her answer was simple. She said that
everything is on the table at the Parkwood
Institute. If you go into any room, at any hour,
you’ll hear free-flowing talk of catheters,
bowel control, etc. By this point, she said, it’s
nothing out of the ordinary for her.
However, when we dug deeper into the
question, she said that the reason she accepted
my request to spend some time with her so I
could observe her physical therapy was
because she didn’t want to sugarcoat things.
She mentioned her Share the Road initiative
and she said, and I’m paraphrasing, that she
didn’t want to scale down what happens when
you don’t share the road for general
consumption. She wanted the truth to be told
and for people to understand the cost when
they don’t respect each other, whether it be
through not giving one another space on the
same piece of asphalt, or in different ways.
This was a point I found to be particularly
interesting. How much information should we
withhold to preserve comfort levels? The
statement “the truth hurts” is very accurate and
it covers a lot of ground.
It can be as benign as sharing a meal with
someone. If your dining mate has something
on their face or in their teeth, we shutter at the
thought of saying something, lest we
embarrass him.
The same can be said when someone calls
for you and you’re in the washroom. All of a
sudden you’re not “in the washroom” you
become “unable to come to the phone right
now.” Everyone goes to the bathroom, but if
someone calls on the phone, don’t you dare tell
that person that’s where you are.
Just recently, there has been an example of
brutal reality in the media affecting change the
right way – the way Julie wants her story to be
told – raw and unfiltered.
While the Syrian refugee crisis is nothing
new, countries are now snapping to it,
accepting refugees in the wake of a horrifying
photo of a dead three-year-old boy, face down
on the shores of a beach.
The photograph is brutal, but it’s the truth.
It’s reality for those trying to flee a desperate
situation. And that photo is what it took for
people to take the situation seriously.
Members of the public began reacting,
urging their leaders to take a stand and help
those in need and many nations have done so.
So, Julie is right when she talks about the
need to show the realism of the situation. In
this over-saturated media market people die
every day – whether it be by way of car
accidents, murder, cancer, you name it. It
becomes easy to let all of those stories, all of
those names, bleed into one sad story.
But when the true cost is shown and caution
(as far as worrying about who might be
offended) is thrown to the wind, sometimes
positive things can come out of a negative
situation.
While it’s true that sometimes the truth
hurts, sometimes it simply has to.
Other Views
Never forget those senior moments
What’s your sign? Mine’s nose hair
“Happiness is like a butterfly: the more
you chase it, the more it will elude you, but
if you turn your attention to other things, it
will come and sit softly on your shoulder.”
– Henry David Thoreau
Final Thought