Birds, Bees, Viruses

Sex education was controversial in my small town. Eventually it was decided that we Grade Sixes would receive a single morning of instruction. 

      I awaited that day with breathless anticipation, expecting answers to questions I couldn’t ask, and some pointers so I could, you know, get on with It. Or at least know what It was. 

      I awoke with flu on the morning of the day. But . . . but, I stammered, unable to explain why I couldn’t stay home. When I returned, my classmates were close-mouthed about what they’d learned. Yet everyone seemed so . . . worldly. My life, I knew, was ruined.

Inspired by A Trip Down Memory Lane. Photo by Body Stock.

The Long Car Ride Home

In the silence after the argument—with miles to go before they reached home—Grace death-gripped the steering wheel and stared at the road, illuminated by the headlights, emerging from the darkness inch by inch. Beside her, Annie had retreated into herself, her head against the window, her eyes shut. Grace cursed her thick tongue and its inability to find the right words. Well into her fifth decade, Grace knew better, but still nuance was alien to her. Should Grace try to explain herself again? Or would that make it worse? She bit her tongue and contemplated the road ahead.

Inspired by all the road trip drabbles. Image by Artic Photo.

Ru

My man came into my life a few years ago.
     I first met him in Burlington. It was a long haul there, but I was told he was a “licker”—so enough said.
     He was dark and handsome. He played hard to get, ignoring me and jesting with his comrades. We did the coquetry dance in the sandbox. And I took him back to my place.
     His first move was shy and frisky. He showed me his cojones, with a trill.
     I’ve made a giant mistake (again) I thought. He’ll go in the morning.

     24 hours later, I relented.

Inspired by the Corpses’s latest writings on road trips. Image from the cover for the single Double Entendre, by Greg Spero.

Hail to the Bus Driver

Hail to the bus driver
Bus driver
Bus driver
Hail to bus driver
Bus driver man . . .

. . . who’d put up with us for all of the 280 miles to Ottawa, chauffeured us around the entire week, and only on the long trip home decided to make us a deal: If we could sing full out for the first hour, then we could sing as much as we wanted for the rest of the trip. Otherwise, we’d have to stay quiet.

Oh, it was sad (so sad)
It was sad (so sad)
It was sad in the end; we thought we’d won.


Inspired by the Last Three Trips. AI image from Meta.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

I recently joined a Facebook page dedicated to my grade school. I did a deep dive until I landed on a group picture, circa 1975, of some of my teachers, including the biggest bully to ever ruin math. So, I typed ill of the dead. This led to some private side conversations among fellow classmates. We shared anecdotes of thrown brushes, physical abuse, hiding under desks, and residual mental blocks over the eight times table.

     “He always smelled like cigarettes!” said Sue.

     Yeah, he did have a particular, Tenderflaked stink: A mix of pedological dereliction, low self-esteem, and warm polyester.

Inspired by Anniversary Trip. Image from Amazon.

Anniversary Trip

For my parents’ fiftieth anniversary, we sons banded together to buy them a trip anywhere they wanted to go. They’d already travelled a lot in retirement: Australia, Hawaii, cruises in the Caribbean and through the Panama Canal. Yet there were so many places still unseen: Paris. Vienna, Rome . . . They decided on a coach tour to the Little Bighorn and Nashville, Tennessee.

That’s what they called it: not Nashville, but Nashville, Tennessee. They were unassuming prairie people who enjoyed a good tune. Thinking back, it was not a surprising choice for a couple who’d honeymooned in the Badlands of South Dakota.

Inspired by Freedom of the Road. Image from a post by Keith Case.

Freedom of the Road

On the cusp of adulthood, one Friday in the 1950s, Dad, with his Elvis pompadour, left work and picked up his brother Alan. They drove all night from Montreal to NYC to have Saturday lunch at the Automat and catch a Habs/Rangers game at the Gardens that evening.

On the way home Sunday his second-hand Dodge broke down somewhere in Vermont. “We were late for work on Monday,” he tells me with a grin decades later. At 32, Alan died from cancer. Don’t know what happened to the Dodge.

Inspired by Blink of the Eye. Image of Madison Square Gardens in the 1950s, photographer unknown.

In the Blink of an Eye

George was her first real boyfriend. Desperate to be in love, he happened to come along at the right place and time—a drunken house-party. They were complete opposites. He was a rocker, and she a preppy. She slowly acclimatized and even started to like hanging out in the McDonald’s parking lot blaring Whitesnake from the Camaro.

She retired Ralph Lauren for a white leather fringe jacket. She had hoped he was a poet in-the-making but when, on her birthday, he wrote a card that read Happy Birthday Angle, her spelling elitism got the better of her, and it ended.

Inspired by Cat’s Eye, Photo from CarGurus.

Cat’s Eye

Sometime in 1987, I got it into my head to write some science fiction and, as authors do, decided to consult with an expert, which essentially came down to having an old high-school friend over for dinner—my pal David who was already well on his way to a PhD in theoretical physics. Only later did I learn that his Aunt Peggy was also working on a novel that year—her seventh—and had also been picking his brains. The only difference I can see is that she eventually finished hers . . . and probably ended up winning another Governor General’s Award.

Inspired by He Shoots, He Snores! Photo from House of Marbles.

He Shoots, He Snores!

Apart from Hockey Night in Canada, CKLW news, and the occasional late night soft porn, Gerry didn't watch television, he slept by it. I can still see him stretched out on the couch and wrapped in one of mom’s afghans. His empty tea mug and glass eye resting on the coffee table. And when that long Phentex burrito started snoring, the cat and I would make our respective moves. Slowly reducing the volume, I’d click over to Love American Style. After a few tentative swats, Hobo’d stickhandle dad’s falsie, bouncing it off the broadloom and straight into the heating vent.

Inspired by The Thirty Second Pitch. Image by Meta.

The Thirty Second Network Pitch

“Imagine ten men in a cabin on an island. There’s a blizzard. The power goes out. All they have is duct tape, 48 beers, three cans of beans, a flint, a pocket knife. How long will they last? They start a fire. They fix stuff with duct tape. They drink beer, play cribbage, eat beans. Pull fingers. Tell dad jokes. Who will survive? Who’ll end up dead and eaten? Think Yellowjackets meets Ozzie Nelson. Think Red Green wins Survivor. Think . . . Dad Island!” 

      The producers exchanged glances. It had a demographic. It would be cheap. But could they find a sponsor? 

Inspired by You’re Cheating. Image is a still from the 2020 Netflix series Hollywood.

You’re Cheating!

My favourite card game growing up was Cheat because, duh, you were allowed to cheat. My favourite type of cheat in the game was not the bold straightforward move of putting down two “threes” and calling them two “fours,” but the sly manoeuvre of putting down two “fours” and slipping in a stray “three” at the bottom of your pile.

And then, just to make it more fun, we’d play with five incomplete decks of cards—so none of us knew just how many “fours” we were actually playing with. We’d play for hours on rainy afternoons or snowed-in Sundays.

Inspired by Word Games. Photo by pmmart.

Word Games

I’ve been wasting a huge amount of time playing word games online. One, at least, is simple enough: six letters, and your job’s to find as many words as possible, with extra credit for using all six.

     Which reminded me of Truman Capote’s infamous dismissal of Jack Kerouac’s prose—“That’s not writing, that’s typing.” Still, when I’m slogging through a bout of procrastination and can’t find a damned thing to write, sometimes it is nice to just be typing:

CARETS · CATERS · CASTER · CRATES · REACTS · RECAST · TRACES

Who cares how my story is coming along? I just got 175 bonus points!

Inspired by Scrabble Drabble. Image by Google Gemini.

Cursive

In grade four, Cathy Maxwell got caught chewing gum and told to put her name on the blackboard. She wrote in a fast hand, piqued at being culled from a field of ruminants. What a beautifully scripted x. An r really, but with a perditious 45˚ slash to the upper right corner. With my own wad pancaked like Sunday's Eucharist against the roof of my mouth, I meditated on that perfect signature: The mark of a confident, privileged, sign-up-for-curling-lessons white girl. With no x to cross, I Hilroy'd luxurious Ls, taking up space that wasn’t a poor girl’s to take.

Inspired by Scrabble Drabble. Image based on a photo by Selim Aksan.

Scrabble Drabble

Amid the ooze of kegs, and boomèd vox, it was a nifty act. A sage heart, the quiet niece (she weds anon), drew useless vowels and blessèd X and Z to cover triple-counted squares and pad her score. Oh, woe to others! Wives, uncles, intendeds, did howl with feline malice, queer amid the jab and rag of play. One sob was heard. What wretched luck! Yet t’was not luck at all. I needs must write the truth. There was yin to the game—ya, and much shrewd wordery: who’s ever heard of “hirer,” and just what the hell is “voile?”

Photo, by the author, of the family game board—December 27, 2025. By my count there are 27 words on this board, and this hundred-word drabble uses all of them.

Self-medicating

Shopping to my mother was part medicine and part recreational sport. Many Saturdays she’d drag us to the mall. We’d spend the afternoon getting our steps in while she rummaged through every bargain bin for yet another new summer top, or purse or decorative thing-a-ma-jig. We’d sit on all the new sofas upstairs at Sears. We’d try on a bunch of shoes (the sales attendants must have loved us). This wasn’t about need. This was about dopamine hits, dreams and boredom. Shopping was her opium. Fun at the time; a little sad in retrospect. And I’ve hated malls ever since.

Inspired by The Cop Out. Image by ThatHolisticMom888.

The Cop Out

Most happily, the holidays are over. The days are getting brighter and longer, and the brain-numbing cycle of Christmas music is over. The Mr. Hydes have drunk their tonics and morphed back to the Dr. Jekylls. It was my first time in years I did not shop locally. Too expensive, too woke and too tchotchke. Half of the time the stores do not shovel their walkways. I ended up at Yorkdale Mall in its cosy underground free heated parking, where I could browse in my runners with no jacket, cop out, and buy Aritzia for all. It was mindlessly peaceful.

Inspired by the new year. Photo by Aritzia.