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I found myself today on one of those crash course collisions with another human. You know the one—you make eye contact from afar, do the dosey doe but invariably end up sidestepping to the same side, as if you were a mirror image of each other.

It can go on for seconds until you stop, laugh (or are annoyed) and continue around. I genuinely laughed today. I wondered if we were magnetically drawn to each other by our atoms and why. What do we share together as two strangers that only the universe knows, prompting us to discover.

Inspired by What the…‽ Image by Etienne Boulanger.

Harold Edwin Doughty

It was a hot summer day in 1910, when Mrs. Eva Doughty caught her stepson, Harold, scratching his name into the bricks of their brand new house on Garden Avenue—egged on, no doubt, by the bad influence that lived next door. And so, the next morning, she walked up to Mrs. Mary Prescott’s stationery shop at 357 Roncesvalles and paid the twenty-four cents for a single insertion of the following classified advertisement in the Personals column of the Toronto Daily Star: 

WANTED—A good home in the country for the summer, where boy of 13 can make himself useful.”

The farm was but a short walk from the station in Emery, but not a long trip at all from Parkdale. John Watson, a widower, lived there with his daughter, Jennie. He was 88 when they responded to the ad, and Jennie—who had never married—was 53. Not a particularly exciting prospect for a teenage boy up from the city, but they promised his mother there was a boy his age—Mary Devins’s son, David—living on a farm nearby. History doesn’t record how Harold got on, but the 1911 census does show he went back the next summer.

Inspired by Mrs. Eva Doughty. Photo by the author.

Tainted Love

Perhaps it would be a stretch to call it a modern reiteration of Gift of the Magi, but a few Christmases ago, Jim bought Leslie a TUSHY. Unbeknownst, Leslie bought one for her beloved, causing an embarrassment of selfless exchange and bidet attachments. When it came to installation, Jim, handy but procrastinating, didn’t get around to it. Until last week.

     The next day over coffee he recounted in discrete detail his tactile and hygienic awakenings, his metamorphic revelation of mysteries exotic yet familiar.

     He may not have gazed upon the face of Agamemnon, but it was still a moving experience.

Inspired by Potentially Useful Stuff. Photo of Agamemnon from Wikipedia, modifications by ChatCPT.

Potentially Useful Stuff

Henry would never move, because he’d have to get rid of things: furniture, personal effects, his salvage trove. His wife belittled the latter as junk. 

      This rankled him. There was virtue in thrift. When something broke, he fixed it—yes, perhaps imperfectly, but it worked (sort of). Before discarding anything, he stripped it of parts and fasteners that might prove useful, storing them in bins in the basement. “Why buy a hundred screws,” he told Margaret, “when a single repurposed bolt works fine?”

      She called him a hoarder. 

      “No,” he rejoined stubbornly. “I am the custodian of potentially useful stuff.”

Inspired by My True Nemesis. Image by cheetahlip on Reddit

My True Nemesis

I hate packing, so I’m never moving again. My kids will have to pack up all my stuff when I’m gone. So I’ve said countless times. But that was before the meniscus tear on my left knee and the onset of arthritis in both. Now I know my true nemesis—the one that might make me go back on my word—the stairs. It’s an Edwardian workers’ house, so they’re steep, narrow and worn. I am frantically exercising to strengthen the muscles around my knees—wondering if I’ve left it too late. While every day, my nemesis creaks with laughter.

Inspired by Existential Home Improvement. Image of her stairs by Nancy

In which a Nerd Confronts his own Mortality

Turns out there are only fourteen different calendar configurations: one for each day at the start of a regular year; another seven for leap years. Had I known sooner, I could’ve bought enough calendars to last my entire life.

Still, by 1995, I had managed to collect half of them, and so pulled out a chart I’d found, and for each wrote down every year for which it would again be valid. Pushing into the 2040s, I began to wonder just how much longer I might be valid, and ended up scuttling the project for fear of tempting the fates.

Inspired by Existential Home Improvement. Image by Meta.

Existential Home Improvement

Bee sat on my couch, looked up at our staircase and said, “Ah, geez, when you replacing that carpet?”
     I thought I just did, but that was 25 years ago. It owes us nothing, having survived five cats, three dogs and their pals, countless sploshed coffees and kid effluvia. It’s professionally cleaned twice a year, but there’s just so much you can do. So, we’re going to replace it. And much like our planned new water heater and furnace, once it’s done, we probably won’t have to do it again.

     Because we’ll be dead.

     Best to go with a neutral.

Inspired by Proof of Life. Photo by Laurie of the carpet that owes us nothing, soon to be replaced by the Stairway to Heaven.