Rules of life #297 (Dec. 7)

DIARY

A husband should never go Christmas shopping with his wife

                        by Robert LaFrance

            On Sunday, Nov. 27, I went Christmas shopping with my wife. On a scale of one to ten, where ten was the worst mistake since the Crusades, this was an eleven, perhaps a 12.

            Let’s go back to the beginning: she wanted to buy a certain item – ONE certain item of clothing she saw on a sales sheet – at Mark’s Work Wearhouse and said she would only be about half an hour. We had other stops in Grand Falls so I went elsewhere to do them. I said I’d be back in 45 minutes. (I know her quite well.)

            When I returned she was, as my brother Lawrence would say, still turning things over and was no closer to buying that one item than if I had dropped her off at the  Timbuktu, Mali, Elks Club.

            So I decided to have a cold bottle of lemonade, non-alcoholic since I was driving, at Kat ‘n’ Dan’s, a nearby restaurant. When I arrived there after a tiring walk of nearly half a minute, I saw two tables around which were seated nine or ten men. I looked closely and I knew most of them. Can you guess who they were?

            Husbands.

            They were in various stages of mental disturbance and I knew why. Their wives were all shopping, and by the way, that verb – ‘to shop’ – is not part of the male vocabulary. We walk in a store, buy what we want, and go home.

            Feinster had glassy eyes because, as he said later, he had been there the longest, something like three hours. His wife Molly was shopping for socks for their nephew. “He must have 26 feet,” said Feinster, “because the last time I looked, her shopping cart was FULL. I’ll have to work overtime until 2018.”

            Blentan, who is from Tilley, kept drumming his fingers on the table and muttering “damn Santa” which was right on the verge of sacrilegious; his eyes were also glazed over and not from the ginger ale he was drinking. “Why didn’t I stay home?” he asked no one in particular. “She said it would take no more than an hour, guaranteed! I came in here just after Feinster. I just checked and she hadn’t bought anything yet.”

            And so it went, all around the table. The pitiful stories of shell-shocked men, tortured beyond endurance by their wives’ shopping. There was a theme that kept going around among them: “If they want to buy something, why don’t they just go, pick it up, pay for it, and go home?”

            Here’s the answer to that question: BECAUSE. Another answer might be that wives (not necessarily women in general) are wired differently from men. ‘Shopping’ is like the Holy Grail. No, it IS the Holy Grail. Husbands are merely the taxi drivers to hell.

            After a while though, there was a happy ending of sorts. Feinster’s wife came in first and took him by the arm as he, slack-jawed and muttering something about Donald Trump, went out to their car, a 1989 Gremlin. At a guess I would have said the total cost of all Molly’s purchases would have allowed them to upgrade to at least a 1997 Lumina, but that’s just me.

            Blentan was next, followed by Ed Sprant, George Williamski, Pierre Dumas and others I didn’t know. For a while I was happy for them, until I realized that I was sitting there alone. And sitting.

            Just about an hour before most of the mall stores closed, my wife appeared and it was clear she had decided to discard me for a younger model. An athletic looking chap, perhaps a soccer player since he seemed fit, was carrying what looked like 226 pounds (in the metric system it would be whatever equals 226 pounds) of purchases, and he even had some on a little trailer of sorts.

            “Well,” she said, “are you ready? I’ve been waiting by the car for almost five minutes. This is Julian, who kindly offered to carry my packages since my husband was in here swilling lemonade.”

            She drove home. I was in no shape to be behind the wheel where other humans, possibly husbands, were on the road. I had had no lemonade, only a bowl of Shreddies  with peanuts, but I had been reduced to a babbling lump of incoherence. (Don’t say it.) As we passed Portage Road, she said: “We should come up here next weekend; there’s a big sale at Wal-Mart.”

               It was then I stood up like a man and put my foot down. “Do we have to?” I whined.
                                        -end-

Introducing 'The Trump Scramble' (Nov. 30)

DIARY

I have a bit of a twinge myself

                        by Robert LaFrance

            I watch quite a few television shows on the B.C. Knowledge Network and I tell ya, them fellers is quite smart.

            Last evening I sat down with a lemonade and got all ready to watch a show called ‘South Pacific’, but to my surprise and consternation it wasn’t the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical we all love, but a show about the 20,000 islands in the south Pacific.

            (Funny how islands tend to be in even numbers like that, like the Thousand Islands of Ontario. Or the salad dressing.)

            Back to the point, I watched about three minutes of the show up until the narrator said about a certain area of that ocean: “The water is clean, clear and pristine…”

            I tell you my friends, that just won’t do. How is it that we humans haven’t polluted that yet? What’s wrong with us? Surely there must be a nickel plant, an oil rig or some raw sewerage we could haul there.

            Flug, just out of hospital and looking over my shoulder as I typed, said: “A little cynical today, are we?”

                                    *********************

            Yes, as a registered journalist, I am cynical. I have been in the newspaper (and radio) game since 1978 and before that I thought all the people in responsible positions had gotten there because of their smarts and their caring for the public, or at least their ‘image’.

            Today the elected officials I know are indeed there because of their efforts and their intelligence, but it wasn’t always so. I remember one MLA (not from this riding) whose speech I covered in Perth-Andover and who handed out – on paper I emphasize – some of the remarks he was going to make ‘off the cuff’ or ‘ad lib’.

            It was a 12-page speech, double-spaced, and (I am not kidding) the last paragraph of the speech that had been given to reporters was this:

            “Those were some of the points I wanted to raise and I’m sorry my talk took longer than expected so that I can’t stay for questions.” That sentence was written into the text of the speech that he had read word for word. He put his papers in his brief case and, followed by his assistant (who had written the speech), left for his own riding.

                                    *************************

            A new dance craze has taken over Canada and the U.S., particularly the U.S., since Donald Trump got elected on November 8^th. I call it ‘The Trump Scamble’.

            It’s amazing how many people now think – or would like us to think – that they had predicted the Trump victory. That’s rather odd really, since as late as the afternoon of November 8^th I didn’t hear anyone except Donald Trump himself make that prediction.

            Indeed, the people on his own election team were implying that he had made a good run for the presidency and they hoped the new administration would take up some of the issues that had made him so wildly popular, like jobs. Trump had taken lying to a whole new level, with a statement one day and a completely opposite one the next day, perhaps in the same city.

            I watched the CBC-TV’s The National last Thursday and Rex Murphy was doing his very best to imply that the reason Trump was elected was that he had said things many people wanted to hear. Shocking.

            Other commentators, especially those in the U.S. on shows like ‘Meet the Press’ (although they’ve never met me) were scrambling to explain why Trump won; it was because he received more votes, right? Wrong. Hillary Clinton received over a million and a half more votes than Trump.

            Of course I predicted the outcome of the election. I predicted it on Nov. 9^th.

                                    **************************

            Flug has been in the hospital this week for what he refers to as brain surgery. In fact he was having a hernia operation.

            When he told me last week that he was going to get this surgery – he had been waiting in line since 1989 – I was astounded. Flug was not a person that one would expect to see lifting a grand piano and I wondered how he had injured himself.

            “Cards,” he explained as he lay there in his hospital bed, a pitiful sight among the flowers his friends had brought in. The flower I had brought in was a small bottle of Captain Morgan’s dark rum.

             “Cards, I tell you. I go to the grocery store and I need two cards, the pharmacy two cards, and every other store in Canada needs a membership card, a special debit card, and card for this and a card for that. I had to build a trailer for my Toyota Yaris so I could take them to town. I ended up having to carry a big bundle of plastic cards all over the place until finally…POP!”

            Although Flug does tend to exaggerate, I believed him. I have a bit of a twinge myself.

                                                    -end-

My glamorous job as a reporter (Nov. 23)

Some questions about the world we live in

                        by Robert LaFrance

            Sorry about this, but my first comment has to be about Donald Trump. Because he is going to be President of the good old U.S. of A. he has to put all his 500 businesses into a ‘blind trust’ so he ostensibly has no control over them. So who is going to be in charge of this trust? His children Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric, that’s who. They will also be on his transition team. Apparently Donald Trump Sr. hasn’t got the faintest idea what a blind trust is. I looked up the definition of ‘psychosis’; why don’t you? Looks interesting for the next four years, eh?

            On the subject of writing for a newspaper, I know most people think it’s a glamorous job with lots of opportunity to meet powerful and beautiful people, but although that is true, there are times when it’s nothing short of brutal. Especially if one is a sports reporter. High school hockey causes me no end of problems because both boys and girls wear the cage type of helmet face mask and to make it even more difficult the girls almost all have pony tails covering up their numbers so I haven’t a clue who they are. At my age, I’m often confused as to who I am.

            The death of poet and singer – well, poet anyway - Leonard Cohen, 82, in early November was covered in all media all over the world. People who wouldn’t have heard of him during his lifetime were suddenly distraught at the news of his death in California and funeral in Montreal. While his song ‘Hallelajuh’ was one of the best ever written, much of his other vocals were a series of mumbles and murmurs accompanied by grimaces. Like Bob Dylan and Aristotle, everybody knew his name but didn’t listen to him much until he died. Of course some say Bob Dylan is still living, the proof being that he was just chosen for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

            I didn’t mention this before Remembrance Day because I wanted the Royal Canadian Legions to raise as much money as possible, but I want to point out that whoever came up with the idea of poppy sales was surely a marketing genius. I bought and lost SEVEN poppies in the two or three weeks leading up to November 11. I spent two dollars for each poppy (and didn’t begrudge the Legion one dime). I would get to a hockey game or the synagogue or macramé class or my hunter’s safety course and find that my poppy was missing, taken on the battlefield of my car’s seat belt. On Nov. 14 I cleaned out the car and found 329 poppies under the seat. And yes, I know about the trick of putting tape on the pin, but that wouldn’t be cricket.

            People who are usually fairly sane and even sceptical in other avenues of their lives will believe anything they see on the Internet. A sure-fire cure for arthritis is touted on Facebook one day and two days later all the pharmacies are scrambling to get more ginseng, ground dogweed, garlic tablets, or Omega 3.1. Here’s an example: “Researchers at the University of North Tilley, Churchland Road campus, has concluded that a compound of arsenic and cyanide will cure everything that ails you. You won’t have an ache or a pain after you take one of these puppies. Guaranteed.”

            I like to keep track of what Flug’s nephew Andrew is up to, and the RCMP is often interested as well. His latest scam…I mean endeavour, involves the selling of RVs, meaning those 40-foot camper trailers (if that’s the right term) that people haul around behind their $60,000 pickup trucks as if they were on vacation. Vacation? Seems to me that if I wanted to go on a vacation I wouldn’t take my house with me. Those things are equipped with everything from full kitchens, bedrooms and living rooms that contain mobile Internet setups (so they can order ginseng etc.), to satellite dishes and all sorts of necessities like that. Some of them even have a well-stocked bar if you can believe that.

            My friend Flug (Richard LaFrance, not his real name) is in trouble again with his wife. No wonder he’s been divorced 17 times. Three weeks ago he acquired or was bequeathed a border collie who is very affectionate and likes to be scratched behind the ears and given some ‘Mutt Bits’ which I believe is made by the pet food company Iams. Flug’s problem arose when he walked into his living room and when his wife, an astrophysicist, made a comment about quantum mechanics or horse racing, something like that. Flug made some stunned comment, then scratched her behind the ears. When he regained consciousness...

                              -end-