A variety of spring observations
by
Robert LaFrance
It is said that the late Irish
playwright Brendan Behan was not a writer with a drinking problem, but a
drinker with a writing problem. I am not sure if it were he or Oscar Wilde who
said: ‘Work is the curse of the drinking classes’. I am also not sure why I
started this column with a paragraph on alcoholism, but other than JFK, Hitler
and bestiality, what catches the eye better?
A headline in my daily newspaper
referred to an attack outside a bar in Saint John as a ‘vicious stabbing’. I
thought about that for a while, as I tend to do, but I was unable to come up
with a scenario in which a stabbing wasn’t vicious. Think of this headline: ‘Bar fight results in gentle, kindly
stabbing’.
Note the symbolism that after a
group of young Cree folks snow-shoed and walked 1600 km from James Bay to
Ottawa in support of the Idle No More movement, and the Prime Minister wasn’t
there to greet them. He was in Toronto welcoming two giant pandas from China
where Canada hopes to sell a lot of trade goods. To be fair, this was part of a
diplomatic exchange with China, but perhaps a diplomatic exchange should also
be set up between Canada and the aboriginal people. After all, they were the
FIRST nation here.
I was recently in Fredericton and
walking up Prospect Street when a police car turned on its siren – actually the
officer did – and pulled over a lady who had been talking on her cellphone
while driving her Austin Mini. I slowed my pace as I neared this scene and
could hear him sassing her about ‘hands-free’ devices and how she was
endangering people’s lives by her thoughtless action. Meanwhile, I couldn’t
help but notice two tractor-trailers going by, their drivers holding CB radio
mikes in their hands and having a lively conversation, possibly with each
other. When you’re
big, you pretty much run things. A good lesson for our youth who probably are
taught a lot of guff about ‘fairness’.
My neighbours Flora and Ben have two
teenage kids – and yes, I know they have your deepest sympathy. What I was
going to mention was something that sounds like a Sherlock Holmes mystery. “The
phenomenon of the toilet paper and the juice container”. Flora said that the
kids will not put on a new roll of toilet paper, even if they have to go three
days without using the flush. “They’d be constipated before they’d change that
blasted roll,” she complained. “Same with the orange juice container.
"They
would leave a quarter inch of juice in it for a week rather than fill it.”
Being very wise, I told her something I had read a few years ago: “Children
today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and
tyrannize their teachers.” She said that sounded like her neighbour Glenna, who
finished high school. I said no, it was the philosopher and teacher Socrates,
about 2500 years ago. “He’s not around now,” she pointed out quite correctly, “or I would say:
‘Right on dude!’”
On the subject of national spy
organizations, I have been impressed by the motto of various ones like CSIS,
the CIA, MI5, the KGB, et al, but I think my favourite is the one used by MI6,
Britain’s external spy agency. Through the wonders of the Internet I saw
recently in the Manchester Guardian newspaper this recruiting ad: “Join MI6 and
put some spies in your life!”
My friend Flug, who considers
himself an expert on architecture ever since he built a shed for the Johnsons,
had a few comments to make about the houses in this community. “Why are so many
houses white here?” he asked, as if I would know or care. As everyone knows, I
have no style or class, except fourth.
Flug said: “I counted 16 white houses out of 18 on
our road. Do people never think about other colours?” I told him I never did,
except if I saw an orange house I might retch.
So I asked him: “What if I went
right wild and painted my house beige? Would that stop your complaining?” It
took two Molson lemonades and a pickled egg to stop his laughing.
-end-
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