The Vinyl Café Notebooks (12 page)

“What’s going on?” I asked the man on the bike beside me.

“They are trying to set a record for the longest kiss in the world,” said the man.

Well, not so fast then. I had just stumbled on an event sanctioned by the
Guinness Book of World Records
. First time
for that. And never having been present for a world record of
any
kind, Guinness or other, I decided I would stick around for a while.

The
first
thing I learned was that if I was going to be present for the record-setting moment, I might need more endurance than I was able to give.

It turns out the record for the longest kiss in the world, or the longest kiss Guinness has recognized anyway, was set by an English couple. But before I tell you how long
they
kissed, I should tell you the rules.

To qualify as the record-breaker, the kissers in the Mexx window would have to kiss continuously, which meant their lips couldn’t part, not for even the briefest moment (you might want to check out your personal claustrophobia index here),
and
they would have to stay awake
and
vertical (they weren’t allowed to lean on anything). If they needed to go to the bathroom, they
could
go, but only under a nurse’s supervision (there was a nurse standing by). Even in the bathroom, however, their lips couldn’t part. If their lips parted, they would be disqualified.

So using those rules, what do you think the record is for the longest kiss in the world? Or the one Guinness knows about anyway?

Who guessed ... thirty-one hours, thirty minutes and thirty seconds?

“How long have they been going?” I asked the guy on the bike beside me.

The guy pointed to the clock on the sidewalk. “Twenty minutes,” he said.

I decided to hang around. Before long I had made friends
with a clerk at the store who told me he and the other clerks had a pool going.

“I have totally lost,” he said. “I predicted the first couple would drop out after five or ten minutes.”

The first couple didn’t go down until the two-hour mark— disqualified when the boy was caught leaning on a railing.

The second couple went around supper. They quit because the girl had to leave to pick up her sixteen-year-old sister from work.

And that left five couples in the running, and they had been running, or, more to the point, swaying back and forth, massaging each other’s shoulders and backs, and wiping each other’s chins with Kleenex, for about six hours. Which is when things started getting serious.

Before the contest began, they had agreed on a series of hand signals that they could use if they needed attention. Pointing at their mouths meant they were thirsty. (They were allowed to drink through straws as long as they kept lip contact.) Waving their fingers in the air above their heads meant they wanted to change positions, say to get out of the sun and into the shade. And pointing at the vicinity of their hips meant they needed to go the bathroom.

Marie-Claude and her husband, Jean, were the third couple to drop out. They had arrived believing they were a shoo-in for the $10,000 prize. Marie-Claude had misread the rules. She thought the world record was a thirty-
minute
kiss, not thirty hours. She and Jean figured they would have the prize in their pockets in a not unpleasant forty-five minutes.

“When we got to the eight-hour mark,” said Marie- Claude, “we decided we would give it another two hours.
We decided if we hadn’t won by then, we would call it a day.”

And that brought us to ten o’clock on that Friday night. At ten, there were four couples left.

My favourite was the youngest: Matt and Taralyn, a couple in their early twenties who were both unbearably cute and who had been holding on to each other for dear life all day, sometimes with their eyes shut, and sometimes with their eyes wide open. They looked like a pair of little animals who could have happily cuddled up for an entire winter.

They were facing stiff competition. David Lindsay and his wife, Lin, for instance—they gave me the feeling they had done this before. They arrived with a supply of protein drinks, a notepad that they were using to write notes back and forth, and a newspaper that David was occasionally reading over Lin’s shoulder.

I watched them for most of the afternoon, and then I took a break. I went back after supper for a spell and then again around midnight. By midnight, the guys, who had all arrived cleanly shaven that morning, were beginning to sprout stubble on their faces, which was presenting a problem. If you are a girl, and you have your face smashed up against a boy’s face, and have had it there for twelve hours, stubble begins to hurt. In fact, it can feel, I am told, like you are being poked by a sharp stick. More than one stick, apparently.

So at midnight, when I called it a day, things were getting intense. The store had the feel of one of those Depression-era dance marathons; the couples kept shifting their feet, stretching, fidgeting, swaying, massaging and, of course, kissing. They were uncomfortable, no doubt about it. But they
all seemed determined. Me too. Determined to get some sleep. I went home to bed.

I swung by early the next morning on my way to the market to find the crowds gone and, sadly, the contestants too. The only people in the store were a couple of tired sales staff sweeping up.

None of the couples beat the world record. Somewhere in the middle of the night, while I was sleeping, after fifteen hours and thirty-one minutes of kissing, a little over halfway to the record, a note circulated between the four couples, and they negotiated an end with a certain collective dignity. In a quintessentially Canadian way, they agreed to stop kissing together, combine first and second prize, and split the $12,000 worth of merchandise four ways.

That was around four in the morning.

Later in the week, the Guinness people announced they would include the Canadian couples in this year’s record book for longest kiss in a storefront window.

We all know, of course, that people will do just about anything for fame and fortune. And people will stop and stare at the most awful things. At accidents, and fires, and fights. And it pleases me to remember that sweet afternoon this summer when I stumbled on the window of boys and girls who were trying to kiss their way into the limelight. I like to think that Taralyn and Matt are kissing now, snuggled up together, safe and sound, their eyes shut tight, the rest of the world, with all its sadness and sorrow, far away.

9 September 2007

SMALL DECISIONS

I have a friend, a woman who I don’t see nearly enough. She lives in another city. I am always delighted when we collide. She is someone I have admired for years, for her sense of humour, and her joie de vivre, but also for the serious side of her. She is a busy woman, a professional, a person who
gets things done
, at work and, well, just about everywhere else too. She makes time to exercise every day, entertain at night and dress smartly. Her house is cleaner, and neater, and more organized than, well, than my house for sure.

She is the type of woman who writes thank-you notes. In fact, she is maddeningly perfect. Your life, or my life anyway, is hopelessly disorganized measured against hers. And I guess that’s why I like her, because we are opposites, my friend and I, and you know what they say about that.

My friend has a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder in her. That is not meant as a criticism. It doesn’t get in the way of her life one little bit. If anything, it adds to it. She lives in the details, and that is why she gets so much done.

When faced with a big decision, or even a small one, my friend is likely to make a list of
pros
and
cons
. She thinks
everything through as carefully as she can and considers
all
the possible implications and complications.

I ran into her recently and I could see that something was bothering her. I asked what it was, and pretty soon she was pouring out her heart. It turns out my friend went to a dinner party a few years ago and met a man who has recently become her fiancé. She realizes that this was the biggest thing that has happened to her in the last—well, probably in the last decade—and what has been bothering her is that she hadn’t planned it out. Not one little bit. She just went to dinner, no list, no thought, no pros, no cons, no hemming and hawing, and
wham-o
! she is going to get married. Something she had never planned on or expected.

I know someone else who recently moved from the city to the country, radically changing his life. I asked him how things were going, and he said he wasn’t sure.

“I changed
everything
when I moved,” he said. “I used to live in the heart of downtown. I went out every night. Now that I live in the country, I stay home all the time. I have to
drive
to go to town. And when I get there, there is nothing around, except a corner store. In the city I
walked
everywhere. Now I have to get in my car to get my mail. I have changed
everything
, yet I feel like I haven’t changed a thing.”

He shook his head and looked at me. “Everything has changed, but it all feels the same. I didn’t think it would be like this.”

Those two conversations got me thinking. It is rarely the big decisions that affect us. It is, more often than not, the little ones.

We sit there sweating over the list of pros and cons, about
whether we should live in the country or the city, buy the Apple or the PC, take
this
job or
that
one. We fret, and agonize, and come to terms with what we think, and then fret some more, and change our minds, and then, finally, we take a big deep breath and come downstairs one morning and announce what we are going to do. And we think it is so big, and important, and monumental, and earth-shattering. And it isn’t. Not one little bit.
Everything
changes and then—
nothing
changes.

It is never the move to the country or the decision to have kids that changes everything. It is the dinner parties. The little things that you didn’t think twice about. It is the girl you sit beside on the bus without even noticing—the bus ride you took on a whim.

The big things, it turns out, are in the small things—the ones you can neither prepare for nor plan.

And what should we do about that? Nothing, it seems. Mostly, I think, it means we should relax and go with the flow or, better, with our hearts. Our hearts know the way, and the trick, it seems, is to follow our hearts. Because if we do, everything will work out all right in the end. And if doesn’t? Well, you know the answer to that. That just means it’s not the end.

15 February 2009

SILENCE

I was asked by a kindergarten teacher if I would read to the boys in her classroom.

“The entire class is boys this year,” she said, then added, “Don’t ask me to explain the probability of that.”

She said she was having a problem with her all-boy kindergarten. “It’s hard getting them interested in reading,” she said. “I am trying to find role models.”

“How about the fathers?” I suggested.

“I have asked the fathers,” she said. “Only one agreed to come in.”

So it was that I found myself sitting on a miniature chair, about to introduce myself to fifteen little boys. The boys were sitting on the floor around me. As I was about to begin, I took a measure of their attention spans and thought,
I better involve them in this or I am going to lose them fast
.

I put my book down.

I said, “I want you to stand up, one after another, and look me in the eye and tell me your name.”

It was the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment.

And so the boys began. One after the other they struggled up and looked me in the eye.

“I’m Charles.”

“I’m Peter.”

“I’m Duncan.”

Until a little boy in a blue sweatshirt stood up, stared at me and didn’t say a word.

“Would you like to whisper your name?” I asked.

The boy in the blue sweatshirt came and stood beside me. But he didn’t open his mouth. He didn’t say a word. His buddies came to his rescue.

“He’s shy,” said several of the boys at once.

“His name is Toby,” added a couple of others.

“Why don’t you put your mouth beside my ear and think your name,” I said to the boy.

The boy put his mouth beside my ear. He still didn’t say anything.

“Thank you,” I said. “That was very good.”

He went back to his place and sat down.

I was in that class for maybe half an hour before I said goodbye. I never actually read one of my stories. I told them an abridged version of one, and then I read them something by the children’s author Robert Munsch.

During the half an hour I asked them a lot of questions. I did my best to involve them. Mostly I was trying my best to get the kid in the blue sweatshirt to say something. To tell the truth, getting Toby to say something became my entire focus. However, whenever I had him in my sights, one of the other boys came to his rescue.

“I really wanted Toby to say something,” I said to the teacher as we were saying goodbye.

She shook her head. “Toby hasn’t talked to me all year,” she said. “He talks to the other boys, but he doesn’t talk to adults. Toby is a selective mute.”

Then she said, “He wouldn’t even look at me at the beginning of the year. But he looks right at me now. I can tell he wants to talk. Sometimes I ask him to point at something and his arm will start to shake and he has to hold it to stop himself.”

I had never heard of such a thing before.

What amazes me about Toby is this: he has elected to turn his back on the people most children rely on. He has decided not to talk to adults. To the children around him, this must seem like a magical defiance. Yet it has also made them insiders in a world where everyone else is out. Toby has given his classmates great power, for only they have the honour of his confidence, only they can speak to and for him. His world is the world of children. The rest of the children know that and apparently love him for it.