kbrown.ca

As a rule of thumb

90 percent of what I say

people should cheerfully disregard.

The other ten per cent

they will happily ignore.

Hey friend, how’s your day?  We’ve had snow around here again today.  And the temperature’s been warm enough that the storm came and the roads turned into ice.  So it was a good day to stay inside.  Of course that wasn’t an option, so I got to wander around while everyone remembered how to drive in these sorts of conditions.  Some figured it out quicker than others.  At least most of the traffic was going in slow motion, so I didn’t see a lot of real ugliness in my travels.  And wonder of wonders people seemed to be behaving courteously to other drivers.

You’ve heard me say it before, I can’t count the number of times visitors have told me that they think we have some of the rudest drivers in these parts.  So it looks to me like it takes nasty weather to actually bring out the kindness that we think we exhibit all the time.  That would explain the doofus honking impatiently at me the other day because I had the nerve to pause for a moment and let that poor soul make that left turn.  Apparently the weather was too nice.

We Canadians can be such a funny people, eh?  Save our kindness for bad weather.  And think of ourselves as polite.  Save our helpfulness for charity.  And think of ourselves as compassionate.  Save our careful language for when we think people are listening.  And think of ourselves as enlightened.  Save our good moves for people we like.  And think of ourselves as loving.

You wouldn’t know it from all of the official cheerleading going on, but we’ve slipped badly, friend.  We used to be a country that ranked highly in every official measure of decency you could imagine.  And one by one those measures have dropped.  But as those positive realities disappear we lean harder and harder into the lies we tell ourselves.

And now I am embarrassed when I hear someone suggest we live in a truly caring society.

Ah friend, how did we come to believe such a pack of lies about ourselves?  How did we ever come to think that a few good moves decades ago meant the task of creating a truly civil society was completed?  And who on earth decided that it was more important to think highly of ourselves than to sit down and really figure out how to help one another.

No, in many important ways we no longer measure up to our image of ourselves.

And that is truly sad.

But no one’s interested in hearing me say we have work to do.  That would be un-Canadian.  So I don’t bother.  Guess I’ll go finish clearing the snow.  At least there I can be doing something useful.  And celebrate that I can do it at all, even if it is in shifts.  So there too is something positive.  Meanwhile thanks for the excuse to sit for a while.  Always nice to spend a few minutes with you.  Write when you can.  And know that I’m thinking of you.

Be well.

I’ll say it one more time, slowly and clearly.

I am not a teacher.

I am a signpost.

People argue with teachers.

Only the truly foolish argue with a signpost.

Oh I get it.  We’re back to where it all started

Half the loaf goes in the freezer

Sometimes simple thoughts can be most helpful

And easiest to forget.

I have an odd relationship with sleep.  I’ve always admired someone who can read until they fall asleep.  If I go to bed and pick up a book there is a very good chance that I’ll look up and hear that the birds are singing the morning awake.  It’s not necessarily a good skill to have, being able to pull an all-nighter, maybe even a couple in a row if need be.  Sure it can be useful, but much like certainty it’s important that I be able to distinguish between a tool and a friend.

Ah tools.  I used to get a laugh whenever I would be in a situation where I wanted someone to understand that I didn’t mind helping them over this tough spot, and that maybe I had a relevant skill to apply right there on their behalf.  I would say ‘I’m a tool, use me’.  First they’d giggle, then they’d understand, then they’d consider.  Absolutely their choice whether to take the offer, but it was important to me that they knew it was indeed a real offer.

Why on earth we should have such trouble accepting that someone else doesn’t mind being the hands for a while is beyond me.  That’d be hands, not brains.  I don’t need to be in charge, don’t particularly want to be, probably don’t have enough smarts for the gig anyway.  But for this specific part of the job…  For years I explained it was a like a big ship that would take on a pilot for a section of narrows, or a harbour, or a set of locks.  The captain is still in charge, you bet and don’t you forget it, but she’s a fool if she doesn’t allow the pilot to walk things through for the brief duration of this specific challenge.  So she does.

Of course being a fool is not a bad thing, it’s one of my favourite positions.  But no, being able to stay focused on something all night is a tool, not a friend.  It’s a skill, not a part of my being.  And it’s certainly not a thing I practice, because I will get very, very good at it.  And that way leads to misguided attempts at significant philosophical insights and hamsters and similar disasters.

Don’t ask me how I know.

It is funny what odd insights you can collect moving through this life.  Sometimes you’re not even aware that you’ve learned something until you find yourself repeating a pattern of behaviour.  If it’s a behaviour that’s useful I try and remember it.  And so I collect what I consider my rules of the road.

That was how I discovered the rule of liver.  You see when I was on the road and stopped into a restaurant, if I was considering having it I noticed that I would ask the person taking my order whether they liked liver themselves.  If they shuddered and said no then I wrote it off as a bad gamble.  However if they said yes I would ask them whether they would eat the liver as it was cooked here.  It was amazing how often I was warned off.  And just as amazing was that if they said it was good I was never disappointed.  Nope, not once.  And so was born one of my rules of the road.  The one about liver.

Of course for some people liver has a different rule.

Lips that touch liver shall never touch mine.

I always pause over the word to think about spelling

I always remember that the rule is ‘i before e except after c’

and I always think this one is the exception

but it isn’t.