Dealing with a Calgary Chinook
by Robert LaFrance
I was half
dozing in my living room easy chair, so that may account for my brain freeze
when the CBC reporter referred to a UNB teacher as a “Visiting Professor”.
That seemed
logical enough: a professor was visiting from somewhere. But then the reporter
reported that this VP had been there two and a half years.
I tell you
what: If I had a house guest who stayed two and a half years one of us would
have to go. There’s an old Finnish expression: “After ten days, fish and guests
stink” and I think that would apply in the UNB case. Wearing out his welcome
was something he had done quite a long time ago.
No more
than two hours later my wife’s friend Zelda phoned and said she had ‘an
occasional chair’ for sale and did we want it? Luckily it was I who had
answered the phone, so I put the ki-bosh on that before the chair ended up in
our living room. I refused the kind offer and couldn’t help remarking: “If it’s
only occasionally a chair, what is it the rest of the time?” English is an odd
language.
Other
observations over the past two weeks:
We hear all
kinds of statistics about all kinds of things. Besides the political polls and
their percentages, most of the other statistics we see have to do with the
economy. Now retired, I contribute to the economy by staying out of it and
spending every dime I can on things I don’t need. Because so many other people
are doing the same thing, the economy is humming and I will tell you how I
know. No shopping carts. On Monday I went into a local grocery store and found
that every one of the grocery carts was in use. So when someone refers
to an arcane study of Gross National Product and things like that, just point
them toward the room where the grocery carts are kept. If the room full of
carts, it’s Recession time.
I know some
people who don’t have enough to do and who spend their time criticizing young
people, teenagers, who in my opinion comprise just about the politest (most
polite) generation ever. They are criticized for not learning ‘cursive writing’
when in fact it’s not taught any more, and criticized for not learning ‘the
times table’ although it’s not taught in that form any more. In THE GOOD OLD DAYS
we had to memorize that times table if it killed us, and it nearly did.
Teenagers are criticized for spending so much time on their mobile devices,
time spent texting and communicating like that. My neighbour the Perfessor
often has a few choice words for those who say uncomplimentary things about
teenagers: “They’re a sharp bunch, much smarter than old fogies like me who
have a hard job using an electric toaster.”
I keep
(sometimes literally) bringing up the subject of how times have changed since
those GOOD OLD DAYS and here are two more examples: The other day, my friend
Tim took his 2017 Hyundai in for a safety check and the garage guy said: “Just
leave the keys in the ashtray.” Not only did the car not have an ashtray, but
it didn’t even have a key. To start the vehicle you had to be a Maugerville
lawyer…unless you were a teenager. Then the car would have been started in a
trice, as they used to say when they couldn’t think of the word ‘jig-time’. On
the other hand, the Perfessor’s 1978 Gremlin (the last one ever made in North
America) has lots and lots of ashtrays so that neither he nor the garage guy
would get confused. During a recent visit to him, I was also confused when
Greta, the Perfessor’s wife, asked her spouse to get her ‘the yawning board’ which
of course was the ironing board. Very few people have those now.
I must
always include a reference to Donald Trump in this column: Something – one of
many somethings – that he said the other day struck me as a trifle weird and
then I thought about this: perhaps his behaviour can be explained by the
presence of some hallucinogen like magic mushroom or peyote, not that I, having
grown up in the Sixties, would know
anything about that. “That guy is really weird,” I thought to myself, which is
my favourite way. Then I thought some more, again to myself, and realized that
the word ‘weird’ and the word ‘wired’ use the same letters. Like Donald Trump,
they are simply mixed up.
My friend
Boondag (not her real name) started worrying about her niece in Calgary after
that niece, whose given name is Castalia (I’m not kidding) emailed that she had
been ‘injured by Chinook’. I quickly put Boondag’s mind at ease by explaining
that a Chinook is a weather phenomenon that causes Calgary’s outdoor
temperature to go from wicked freezing – that’s the scientific term – to warm
as two pieces of toast. All the snow melts in a matter of hours. Since I used
to be in the weather service, I was able to explain that those several days of
warm weather are caused by an air mass tumbling down the nearby Rocky
Mountains. I felt quite proud of myself until Boondag said that Chinook was
Castalia’s horse......END
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