The Vinyl Café Notebooks (30 page)

You’ll get in the spirit of this once you decide on the store. Just, as they say, do it.

Then pay for the socks. Take them home. Put them in your sock drawer without, and this is important, removing any of the packaging or labelling.

Now every morning when you get dressed, you are going to open a new pair of socks. And you are going to do that, day after day for as long as it takes. Only the very rich can afford to do something like that.

12 May 2002

ON BEAUTY

I noted with chagrin last week that the Miss Manitoba Pageant will have a blind man as part of the judging panel, part of a promise issued by Shirley Janzen, the Winkler, Manitoba–based organizer of the contest, to rate contestants on brains and not beauty.

“I’m not a supporter of beauty pageants,” says Ms. Janzen.

“Neither am I,” I said at lunch to the beautiful woman who brought this to my attention. “That’s exactly what I think. Those contests are demeaning to women.”

That’s what I said, and that’s what I meant, or that’s what I thought I meant, until later that night when I visited a dark and private corner of my conscience, a corner I hadn’t visited for a while, and I discovered that that is not what I meant at all.

I found that I am, in fact, 100 percent behind beauty, that I love beautiful things, like moonlight shimmering on the water, and ravioli pasta stuffed with sharp cheese and fresh herbs floating in a pool of virgin olive oil, and poetry (when I can understand it) and, yes, the vision of a young woman, with smooth tan skin, wearing a summer dress and a set of roller blades, weaving by on the sidewalk, her dress flapping in the wind. Truth be known, if you put a gun to my head and said I
have to choose, I have to choose right now, its
brains
or
beauty
, I would say, put down the gun, I know that one, I choose
beauty
every time. Though not for my dentist, of course, or for that matter my investment dealer. Then I thought of my investment dealer, who happens to be bald and a little overweight, and who has a defective heart, and I realized that I certainly wasn’t thinking of beauty when I chose him, and look where that’s got me. No one would look at my portfolio these days and say
it’s
a thing of beauty. In fact, my overweight broker has done nothing but deliver me capital losses for longer than I can remember. And I thought how much more palatable those losses would have been if they had been handed to me by, say, Miss Manitoba, especially if Miss Manitoba did it by moonlight, over a plate of that pasta, and she was wearing one of those little sundresses I favour, and I was looking my best too, in that grey suit I paid too much for but love nevertheless.

And you know, I bet Miss Manitoba, no matter how brainy she is or isn’t, or was or will be, could have done just as well on the market these last few years as my investment dealer. All she would have needed were a few darts and that smile.

6 June 2004

THE WALL CLOCK

Recently I bought a large, round wall clock. It looked like something that might have hung on the wall of a railroad station back in the days when you needed to know the times the trains were running. I didn’t need it and hadn’t set off to buy one like it. I had driven a friend to a store, and was content in my role as chauffeur, until I saw the round clock and was smitten. I turned to my friend and said, “I like that clock.”

“So buy it,” said my friend unhelpfully.

When I got the clock home, I was overcome by the need to get it on the wall right away. The clock was ticking. Time was suddenly of the essence.

I went to the basement and fetched a ladder. I got a hammer from my toolbox. I found a little gold hook, the kind you use to hang paintings.

As I stood beside the ladder, the clock propped against the wall at my feet, I thought,
This hook is not strong enough to hold that clock
. But there were no other hooks. If I didn’t use the one I had, I wouldn’t be able to hang the clock until the hardware store opened the next day. I didn’t have time for that.

I climbed the ladder, hammered the little gold hook into the wall, came down the ladder and picked up the clock. I hung the clock on the hook.

I had about twenty seconds to climb down the ladder, stand in the hall and admire what I had done, to see how good this clock looked on the wall, before the little hook snapped. The clock fell like a final curtain onto the tile floor and smashed at my feet. Or, more accurately, its glass face smashed at my feet. The clock kept running.

It took me about twenty minutes to pick up the last shard of glass.

The glassless clock is lying on the bed in the spare bedroom this morning, where it will, no doubt, lie until I have overnight guests and I have to face it again. It is still telling time. It has, through all this, continued to tick away, measuring out the minutes of my life and reminding me, every time I catch it out of the corner of my eye, how time inevitably defeats you, especially those times you try to hurry it along.

22 May 2005

PARKING LOT BLUES

I recently found myself standing on a street corner downtown wrestling with the growing awareness that I wasn’t about to remember anytime soon where exactly I had parked my car. I’m not talking about whether I had left it on P1 or P2. It was P1; I remembered that part. The part I couldn’t remember was where the parking lot was. That is when my friend Natalie arrived, right out of the blue, on her bicycle. I tried to look inconspicuous. Who, after all, wants witnesses at a moment like that? But Natalie spotted me, pulled over and said, “Hey! What are you doing?”

“Hey, Nat,” I said glumly. “I can’t find my car. I left it in a parking lot. Somewhere.”

“That’s a parking lot!” said Natalie brightly, pointing down the street. And lo and behold she was right. Not only was it a parking lot. It was
the
parking lot.

Natalie biked off, and I crossed the street, not unhappily but preoccupied by the notion that it took someone who knew absolutely nothing about where I had parked my car to find it.

It is not the first time something like this has happened. I seem to be locked in a lifelong struggle with parking lots and cars.

Most famously there was the
Episode at the Airport
. Years ago I parked my car at the Park’N Fly and I flew somewhere. I can’t remember where, and that isn’t important to this story. The important part is that I parked and I flew somewhere, and when I came back the folks at the Park’N Fly couldn’t find my car. It was gone. They were very apologetic about this, and the way I remember it is they provided me with taxi money to get home, and when my car eventually showed up, as we all knew it would, they called me. I went and got it, and they presented me with a voucher for a couple of days free parking to make up for the inconvenience.

In fairness, it is possible that I didn’t have to take a taxi at all. They might have found the car before it came to that. I might have just waited an inordinate amount of time for them to do that. The thing is, the car was missing for a while, and I left the Park’N Fly with a coupon, which I held on to for years.

When I moved, I moved the coupon with me. In truth, I did a better job keeping track of the coupon than I often do with my car. It occurred to me, however, that I was pushing my luck. It occurred to me that I should hurry up and use the coupon before I lost it. It was, after all, worth more than $100 of parking, and using it would save me about $120 in taxi fees.

As luck would have it, I was scheduled to fly to Calgary— just an overnight trip, a quick luncheon speech at a convention and then immediately home. I decided instead of taking a taxi to the airport as I usually do, I would drive, park at the Park’N Fly and use up my coupon.

I left Toronto at six o’clock on Sunday evening, arrived in Calgary around eight, had dinner in my hotel room and went right to bed. The next morning I woke early, worked out in
the hotel gym, did some rewrites on a book I was working on, took a taxi to the Stampede Grounds, gave my speech, hung around and chatted with people and then hustled out to the airport. It was about three in the afternoon when I arrived.

I wasn’t due to fly home until six o’clock, and I was heading to the lounge to do some more work on the book when it occurred to me I might be able to get on an earlier flight. I checked the departure board and it turned out there was one leaving in twenty-five minutes. If I could get it, I would get home at eight o’clock rather than midnight. I wasn’t going to have to check luggage, so when I got home, I could jump right into a taxi without waiting for my suitcase to appear. That meant I would be home almost in time for supper. So away I went. And I made it to the gate on time, and the flight left on time, and we were actually early arriving in Toronto.

I strode through the airport feeling like the king of the world. I jumped into a taxi, and it was only when I burst through my front door that I remembered that I had driven to the airport and my car was back at the Park’N Fly.

I stood there for a moment while the enormity of this settled on me. Then I spun around and ran back into the street. I was thinking that my taxi was probably deadheading it back to the airport. I was thinking maybe if I told him my sorry story he would take me with him—maybe even for free. But all that was left of my taxi were its tail lights. Which meant I had to call another taxi and go back to the airport in
it
. The two taxis cost me the $120 I saved using the Park’N Fly coupon. And the extra trip ate up the time I saved by taking the earlier flight.

I don’t want to imply this sort of thing happens to me all the time. But this sort of thing has happened before. I have driven to places, let’s say to work, places that I normally walk to, and then eight hours later left work the way I am used to leaving, on foot, not remembering until the next time I need the car that the reason I can’t find it is that I left it at the parking lot, ohmygoodness, that was days ago.

Once, I left a car in a parking lot and
never
returned for it. Ever. But that was mindfully. It was the first car I ever bought. A little Datsun. I paid $125 for it, and I drove it into the ground over a summer or two. It was the car I drove from Montreal to Toronto when I came, in 1976, to seek my fame and fortune. And in 1977, when I returned to Montreal having found neither, I just abandoned it.

I left it in the parking lot beside my apartment. When I came back four months later, it was gone. I figured that was better for both of us.

I have wondered recently if the parking lot woes I seem to suffer might be traced back to that moment. That there is a karmic balance being worked through—that in that first act of abandonment, I shifted the cycle of cause and effect and that I am doomed for the rest of my earthly time to wander around parking lots, stumbling, in my better moments, from P1 to P2, clicking on my key vainly, and in my darker moments, around the city, like a character from a novel by Pirandello, back and forth from parking lot to parking lot, trying to collect a car that was left behind years ago.

28 June 2009

THE NATIONAL

UMBRELLA

COLLECTIVE

I added umbrella manufacturers to my alphabetized list of cynics the other morning. The first
U
on my list. It comes right after tobacco tycoons and just before vivisectionists—the only entry for the Vs.

I did this after purchasing a swell blue umbrella with a stylish wood handle—a leap above the telescoping, plastichandled jobs I have always sprung for.

The clerk at the store where I purchased my umbrella gave me a knowing smile when I presented it at the cash.

“Good choice,” said the clerk. And then, as if he would hardly have to mention this to someone of my good taste, “You know, of course, that this umbrella comes with a lifetime guarantee.”

“If anything ever goes wrong,” he continued with a little wave, which I took to mean that nothing of course
could
ever go wrong with such a fine umbrella, “just bring it in and we’ll replace it.”

I should mention that to get an umbrella like this you have to pay more than you, or in this case, more than I, have ever dreamed of paying for an umbrella. More, probably, than I have paid for all those folding plastic-handled jobs combined.

The impulse behind this rainy day indulgence seemed like a solid one. My idea was simple—if one bought a
good
umbrella, a stylish,
expensive
umbrella, one could expect oneself to remain moderately mindful of it and, consequently, less likely to leave it in a taxi, or slung over a chair in a café, park bench, subway—go ahead, take your pick.

One
might
think that.

Until one inevitably does forget it somewhere on, I will add here, risking a descent into yet unplumbed depths of self-loathing, the very first day one takes it to work; and that is when one, oh let’s be honest here, that’s when
I
was struck by this notion that the whole business of guaranteeing an umbrella against mechanical defects is, as I mentioned a moment ago, a cynical business. I can’t think of anyone I know who has held on to an umbrella long enough for any sort of mechanical defect to present itself, let alone long enough to use it for, sigh, a rainy day.

I should mention that I have, over the years, not been entirely unlucky in the umbrella game. One
assumes
it should be a zero sum game; one
assumes
there must be some force or being at work in the cosmos, some sort of umbrella fairy whose job it is to ensure that the balance of umbrellas lost and umbrellas found works out more or less evenly. And I
have
found the odd umbrella these past fifty-odd years.

But not nearly as many, it seems to me, as I have left behind me for
others
to find; and when I asked around the other day, I found that everyone I asked feels that way too.

So unless there is someone out there, or a group of someones out there, who is, or are, unusually lucky in this business, I have to assume most of us lose more umbrellas
than we find, a subject worthy of wondering about, which I will leave for others to ponder.