Category Archives: Based on true events

Who’s there?

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It’s funny what sticks to your mind from reading books. What we remember from a book may be just a throwaway line – if there ever are such things – the author may have thought was slightly amusing, or a description of a character who’s not key to the plot. (Then again, if you remember that, maybe she was).

Anyway, this is once again a way to make a short story long to say that I once read a book and the only thing that’s stuck with me through the decades is not its name (so I can’t tell you which one it was or anything else that seems important) but instead, I remember a character description. In the book there was someone who “liked to give nicknames to people”.

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The Coral Island revisited

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Just like Son and Daughter, I, too, had a lot of books when I was a kid. When I moved out, the books got to stay on the shelves for a while for the first few summers I returned home, and then they were taken to storage, and then, with a few exceptions, they were gone.

Among the exceptions, there are a few hockey books – biographies of Tretiak, Kharlamov, and Gretzky – the collected fairytales of H.C. Andersen, The Story of Robin Hood by John Finnemore, and The Coral Island by Robert M. Ballantyne.

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Dad jokes dadsplained

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About 53 percent of searches Americans make for jokes are for light or corny jokes — searches like “fun jokes,” “kids jokes” or “dad jokes.’”
— New York Times, May 14, 2016

Hey kids,

Dad jokes are the best, don’tcha think? You know that nothing makes me laugh like dad jokes, because they’re always funny, because dads rock – oh yeah! – and because they’re mine.

But you already know dad jokes are the best, that’s why you spend so much time on Google, searching for dad jokes, and I can only assume that you do it to “snap” them to your buddies. But while Google is fine for basic research, it’s got its limitations so for true understanding of dad jokes you need to get it from dad. And here I am.

How do you come up with your dad jokes, you ask? How can dad always be so funny? What is a great dad joke? Glad you asked. Let me me dadsplain them to you.

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Summer in the city

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One June morning in the 1970s, when I was on my way back from the park where I had gone to get some government sponsored soup, I spotted a familiar character walking towards me. I was glad that I noticed her first, because I was a little afraid of her. She walked around our neighbourhood almost every day, but it was much more fun to watch her from our kitchen window.

Every time Mom saw her, she let me know.

“Mrs. Sunshine’s out,” she’d yell, and I ran to the window to see what she was wearing that day.

Although, I wasn’t her clothes, really, that was the big deal. It was the fact that she was wearing so much makeup that it looked like she had painted two red balls on her cheeks. She also seemed to be wearing two wigs on top of each other. Anyway, seeing her made Mom happy so, in a way she was Mrs. Sunshine, even if the nickname probably wasn’t all praise to begin with.

ogeli

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The beat of the future

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I have to say the kid was good-looking. He looked goofy, sure, in his bleached jeans and a yellow ski jacket, and he looked a little confused, absolutely, but most of all he looked real nice. I had forgotten how good the kid looked, it’d been ages since I had last seen him. Well, decades, and three decades to be exact.

I recognized him right away. He just appeared in front of me as I was riding my bike to the mall the other day.

“Hey, kid,” I said. “Wait up.”

timecircuits

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Trust someone

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“Caps, T-shirts, and sneakers, that’s what we need,” Wife told me the other day. I was a little surprised because that’s basically the contents of my entire wardrobe, but happy, because if you ask me, everybody needs caps, T-shirts, and sneakers.

Turned out that she wasn’t looking to add more caps, T-shirts, and sneakers into my wardrobe, but to take some out of there so she could send them to the refugees on Lesbos, Greece. Her office works with an organization that delivers clothes and other items to Greece to help the people who have nothing.

Like so many others, we wanted to help, simply because we want to help. Also, I’d like to see our kids become better people than I am and I’d like to see them become human beings who feel empathy, and sympathy, and who act. No, I’m not a sociopath, of course I feel empathy, and sympathy. It’s the last part that’s my weakness, which is why Wife is my hero. She’s a doer.

Anyway, we wanted to show Son and Daughter that everybody can do something.

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Scent of a man

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I became a self-taught shaver one summer’s day at the tender age of fifteen when I took a disposable yellow Bic razor and shaved the hair on my upper lip. It had grown to the point where it was no longer cool. Oddly enough, I don’t remember how often I actually shaved going through high school, but I do remember the cool summer breeze hitting my lip when I rode my bike downtown later that day.

I didn’t use any shaving cream, or foam, or gel – I’m fairly confident gel didn’t even exist then – or even soap, and neither did I use any aftershave.

Not even Dad’s Old Spice.

pigpen

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A show of hands, please

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I’m a simple man with simple dreams. I don’t generally think the universe owes me much, and I have no demands to make. And because I think my wishes are small, there’s no need for them to not come true. I’m the kind of guy who’s happy to have just enough milk in the carton for his cappuccino, just enough sunshine to ride my bike into town (and then sit outside for a while), and a decent WiFi connection.

Oh, and the hand.

I do want to see the hand.

You know the hand, it’s the one you see in the car in front you when they’ve passed you on a highway, and the hand you see in your rearview mirror when you’ve passed another car on a highway. The hand that waves at you when you meet a car on a narrow dirt road in the bush, and you let the other car pass first.

That hand.

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Summer nights (and my radio)

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He parked his small white car by the side of the road right outside the front door. Or at least as close to the door as it was possible, so close to the two old barrels that now were flowerbeds that he couldn’t have opened the passenger’s door of his small car. But he didn’t have to, because he was alone in the car, and was just going to make a quick stop at Grandma’s to say hello.

And bye.

It was one of those perfect summer nights. You know the kind. It’s the time of the year when the nights are still warm and it’s the time of the day when you’re not sure if the sun has gone down yet, or if you can still sort of see it in the horizon.

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