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.

Pasquale Fuoco

In 1972, Pat was renting a chair at Charles and Yonge. We had just moved to Toronto, and Promenade Men’s Hair Stylists was simply the closest barber, and his was the first empty seat.

     Still, in 1983, when Pat started his own shop, I followed him there on the 45-minute trip up to Steeles, with no guarantee he’d even be working that day.

     And I’d probably be going there still, were it not for the fire that gutted the entire plaza. I didn’t have Pat’s phone number and—after sixteen years of haircuts—I didn’t even know his real name.

Inspired by Oh Claude. Image by Barbicide.

Judge Not

Sure, I hadn’t shaved for days; and maybe I hadn’t had a haircut in months. And yes, I’d most definitely fallen into the habit of wearing my jeans till the knees wore through—though in my defense, it was sort of the fashion at the time. Still, I was my own boss, making good money—and so, who really was I trying to impress?

Turns out it was the social worker outside the Metropolitan United Church downtown, who met my eyes with such a bald expression of Christian love that I knew in that instant he thought I was homeless.

Inspired by Devastation. Image cropped from an ASOS fashion shoot.

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.

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.

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.

Toronto’s Seventh-Oldest Paperboy

In 2017, I started delivering the West End Phoenix . . . because at 56, all I really wanted was the simplicity again of being nothing more than a paperboy. Eight years later, I’m still at it. In fact, just last Saturday, I collected a pile of 2026 calendars from the office; but I’ve been sitting on them, because I think it’ll be a lot more fun to present my forty-six subscribers with brand-new calendars tomorrow, on New Year’s Day.

     Today, however, I’m supposed to be writing about some eccentric I’ve encountered in the neighbourhood, but damned if I can think of one.

Inspired by Subway Encounter and Microneedled. Photo by the author.

Saturdays, Sundays, and Holidays

On July 28, 1972, you might’ve seen a full-page ad in the paper that read, “Tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. the Royal Bank will open and never close again.” That particular tomorrow was a Saturday, way back when most banks closed at 3:00 p.m. (maybe 5:00 on a Friday) and were most certainly locked up tight on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays. Twenty-four-hour push-button banking had come to Toronto, and that summer at the CNE, if you didn’t mind waiting in line, you might even have tried it for free at the Better Living Centre, maybe even won a five-dollar coupon!

Now, this was supposed to be the story of an 11-year-old boy—brand-new to the big city—who one Sunday afternoon that September, just happened across the Bankette they’d installed at the east end of the Colonnade on the south side of Bloor. I don’t know how long he stood there watching one person after another just doing their push-button banking, but I do remember he did not want to leave. It was like watching an episode of Star Trek—a glimpse of a future where you could get all the money you ever wanted just by pushing some buttons.

But then, after all that time I’d spent checking the Might’s Directory to verify the exact location of that particular machine, digging through the Toronto Star archives to confirm the date, then searching for images of what those ATMs actually looked like back then, and of course rebuilding the Bankette logo from the small fuzzy photo someone had posted online, I began to feel badly for that weird scrawny kid, who wouldn’t realize just how weird he has been all his life, didn’t realize it until more than 50 years later when he came here to write it all down.

Inspired by Saturday Afternoon and Sunday Morning. Bankette logo based on a photo from this page. Keypad photo by Alina Kushnarenko. Money slot based on a photo by Andrzej Rostek.

Close Enough

By the time I decided to shave off my first real beard, I’d pretty much forgotten how—mostly because I’d started growing it not long after I started shaving at all, and years after my father had left, taking with him any benefit I might’ve gained from his example of proper technique.

Without that, I attacked my face with an ignorance fed mostly by advertising that emphasized the importance of closeness, shaving this way and that, until all trace of stubble was gone, leaving me with a painful appreciation of how some things are better when they’re just close enough.

Inspired by Leda and the Pelican. Image by Gemini, proving that the AI doesn't know how human males shave any better than I did back then.

Midsommar

How lucky was she to have a boyfriend so cool and so confident that he didn’t care what the dullards around him might think, who had such a body that looked good in whatever he wore, and who wasn’t afraid to show it off now and then?

So, to hell with Shakespeare in the Park, and to hell with everyone staring as he picked his way down the crowded hillside. But most of all, to hell with her having to explain all the time why her boyfriend was wearing a skirt.
     “It’s not a skirt,” she sneered. “It’s a sarong.”

Inspired by Lifelong Pals. Image by Bing.

Because it Might be his Nickname.

If you’ve even heard of Nelson Algren, it’s likely because of his Three Rules of Life: “Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom’s. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.”

I can certainly understand—if not relate to—One and Three, but I’d like everyone to know that Mom’s Restaurant in Midland was one of the high points of my last visit to cottage country.
     Still, having invalidated Rule Two, allow me to humbly offer a replacement: “Never sit for a shave from a barber named Nick.”

Inspired by Pricks and Stones. Photo by the author.

Sibilance

Grade 8 music, 1974, and Miss Matthews has just introduced us to Roberta Flack. We are hers for the next 40 minutes, and she’s determined to teach this captive choir to sing Killing Me Softly with His Song. She plays our first attempt back at us from a big reel-to-reel she’s hooked up to the music room’s sound system, so that we can hear for ourselves how harsh all the s-words sound. The trick she tells us it to sing them as if they start with the letter Z, and so by the second take we’re already zinging with ztyle.

Inspired by Wrapped Up Like a Douche. Image by Atlantic Records.

Jerry Maybe

There’s a hole in my memory the size and shape of a ten-year-old boy. No idea who he was or what he looked like, just the memory of that time he blocked our toilet with a mess that would’ve kept me home from school, and the afternoon he convinced me to play by the tracks and how, sliding down the embankment, he somehow caught the branch of a prickle bush in his butt and made me look to see if he was bleeding. 

     Bad things happened to him . . . little things, sure, but just enough to warn me off. 

     Sorry, man.

Inspired by In search of Sheryl Hickory, 1961-1993. Illustration by the author, with a big leg up from Google Gemini.

Rosehill and Dale

On the cycle to school, there’s a hill you will want to avoid. But don’t worry, I know a secret route that lets you attack the slope on calmer streets, in smaller steps, and at just the right angle to lessen the pain.

     Andrew discovered it; then shared it with me halfway through Grade 9. But he hasn’t lived here for decades, and I don’t think I’ve shown it to two (maybe three) other people . . . still—and I just looked it up—goddammit if Google hasn’t somehow figured out every single turn, and is now telling the whole fucking city!

Inspired by This One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Image by Gemini.

When I’m Sixty-Four

In a few days, I’ll be the same age my mother was when I gave her a copy of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, but only because 27-year-old me found it amusing that Side 2 offered up the perfect age-appropriate birthday song. 

Turns out, on its release, John Lennon was 26½. Paul McCartney would turn 25 in a few weeks. Ringo would be 27 in a month or so. And George had only just celebrated his 24th.

And yet those four cheeky pups had the gall to think that they’d have something to tell me today about growing old.

Inspired by To the Bitter End. Photos by Michael Cooper.

One Foot In

I spent the winter working with a bunch of old men on either side of 80, pounding in election signs and pulling them up—hard manual work, especially in the cold. They’ve had heart scares and cancer. One once almost died from a stomach bleed—twice!

And yet they ran circles round me, the whinging 63½-year-old who in just the last week, lost a filling in my back tooth, burned my arm on the oven rack, and banged up my foot so badly it couldn’t have hurt more had I stubbed my poor pinky toe on my very own grave.

Inspired by Man Door Hand Hook Car Door. Image by the Meta AI.

Muse

I finally caught my muse–in her office, downtown. Quite lucky, really, because I hadn’t made an appointment, and she doesn’t do Zoom.

Still, I had to wait for her to get off the phone (because she is always on the phone) dispensing what she has taken to calling customer support and what—with the rise of AI—is apparently all that most writers are needing these days.

     Not me.

     “I miss your little stories in my inbox each morning,” she said. “They'd make my day just a little less dim.”

     “I’ve been having some trouble getting started,” I said.

Inspired by my customary procrastination. Image by Meta’s AI.

From a Letter to Ray in Japan

The last time you wrote, you were about to move into your own place, and you asked me for any tips I might have about bachelorhood. I have none. But I would be interested in hearing about anything you’ve discovered. If you have nothing particularly interesting to share, then tell me something about Japan, since my knowledge is essentially limited to what I’ve learned from Ian Fleming’s books and Saturday morning cartoons.
     I also read somewhere that the Japanese find pubic hair particularly offensive, so I shan’t enclose any with this letter in case it is opened by the authorities.

Inspired by Doxymoron. Excerpted from a letter dated August 24, 1986. Image by the author with assistance from Google Translate, Image Creator, and a font by Norio Kanisawa.

Mad Bra!

Maddy worked in Tech Support, but if you were new, and she was in a cheeky mood, she might’ve introduced herself as Mad Bra—her nerdy joke on the way addressing in R-Mail worked, where you could type just a few letters to get to the person you wanted.

     So, Mad Bra gave you Madeline Bradley.

     Rub Sin was Ruby Sinclair. Dam Fog, Damien Fogerty.

     And maybe it’s commonplace now, but back then it seemed nothing short of miraculous, especially if you worked a lot with Glad Jim, better known to her family and friends as Gladys Amalia Jiménez Cárdenas.

Inspired a bit by Instructions, but mostly by a long week of data entry, where I got to dust off this sweet little trick that I learned in the ’90s. Illustration by ChatGPT.

Quarter-Pound Foolish

The subway home from high school would drop me off on the southside of Bloor, out the rear entrance, and across the parking lot to the Uptown Nut House, which although it was much better known for its fresh-roasted cashews, was my go-to for loose candy.

Thirty-five cents for a quarter pound of jubes, forty-five for the licorice babies, or—if I was feeling particularly fancy—a whole dollar’s worth of their wine gums. Sure, it was bad for me, but what did I care? I certainly needed the calories, and my teeth were still on my mother’s dental plan.

Inspired by Blue Hawaii. Photo by the Great Lakes Refill Co.