Everywhere I go I’ve started to see it. It’s happening at work, it’s happening out at Wal-Mart, it’s happening in the streets. People have suddenly been seized by the insatiable urge to drive backwards into parking spots. And I would have to say, that if I were grading them, they would all be attending remedial classes!
I can’t quite grasp what is inspiring drivers to engage in all this reversing every time they approach a parking spot. You don’t back into a spot to save time, because it definitely takes longer to jockey a few tons of metal into a space that it does to back it out of a space. Even if you do it badly, it takes longer. So, if you are backing in because you think that when you drag your weary body back to your car at five o’clock, you will make a substantially faster getaway, you are only fooling yourself. You already used up that time in the morning, cranking the wheel this way and that, trying to back in.
Maybe backing in is a backlash against perfectionism. I think this is a very real possibility because none of these drivers feel any obligation to back their vehicles into an actual space. Mostly they are skewed way over to one side, helping themselves to a generous slice of the space next door. A few clever drivers are actually capable of lining up the middle of their backed in vehicles with the line that designates the edge of the parking space, ensuring that two full parking spots are nicely occupied. Maybe this is done deliberately so that there is plenty of room to open the doors, as this seems to be a favored by short women who can barely see over the dash of their giant SUVs. They need plenty of room to get a run in order to gain enough height to get back into their vehicles later on. That, and it costs so much to fill the tank with gas that they now feel entitled to spread their vehicle over two parking spaces.
So just what are the reasons for wasting your time by backing into a parking space? Is it so that you can scan the beautiful vista of the parking lot and see the building that is your destination while you are pulling the keys out of your ignition? Is it so that your car can see you coming when you return? Is it because, at the end of the day when you return, your car door is now three feet closer to the building? Or maybe you can’t recognize your car from the back, but the front is easier? It is because you like the thrill of using your rear bumper to scare the paint off the car parked in the next spot? Is it because you like the way it looks when a vehicle is parked at an odd angle, breaking up all that boring symmetry in the parking lot? So many drones following so many rules! Maybe it’s because some other driver who was none too anxious to get in to work backed in, and now you feel pressured to prove that you too are a master of the reverse gear? Is it that you secretly like taking up two spots every day, knowing in your black heart that your participation in this collective madness has now ensured there are 20% fewer places for the vehicles of your co-workers? Are you looking out of the building and cackling neurotically while I endlessly circle the lot where there are no spaces left because everyone backed in and did it badly?
So do me a favour. Line it up in the middle of the space or forget the whole venture. Your vehicle should be between the lines, not over the lines. If it takes more time, that’s okay – everything has a price, even the delicious activity of driving around backwards. Or…drive forward into the space and back out when you leave. It takes less time because there is no need to align your vehicle with anything. You will probably arrive home two seconds ahead of your backed-in co-worker. Now there's satisfaction that money can never buy.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
Don't Be Chicken
I’m not very brave. I am pretty certain that someday shortly after I have passed on, a pathologist standing in a cold room reeking of antiseptic is going to make the nice tidy Y-incision that is the start of my autopsy. And the first thing he is going to pull out is a chicken. And it won’t be because I died of bird flu.
How is it that chickens came to be the poster animal for fear? Well, have you ever looked into the eyes of a chicken? They don’t exactly look scared. And why would they be? They always hang around in gangs – a lone chicken is a completely unknown entity. When was the last time you saw a chicken by itself? Never, that’s right. You are just never going to see a solitary chicken standing at a corner waiting for the traffic light to change. They simply do not go out alone in public. So what do they have to be afraid of? Nothing, absolutely nothing! The idea of the scared chicken is in our heads, not theirs.
Consider the life of the typical chicken. It’s pretty easy, since virtually all chickens are typical. There has never been an exceptional chicken, none has ever won the Nobel Peace Prize, but I think one or two might have been in the running for the Pulitzer. Each chicken revels in being the same as every other chicken; it is the modus operandi of all chickens. It is the finest example of peer pressure, encoded at the level of the DNA.
Chickens the world over do pretty much the same thing every day. There is a lot of hanging around in hen houses, lots of clucking about nothing, a bit of pecking on a neighbor, and of course, the ever-popular egg laying. Apart from the egg-laying thing, it’s not so different from the typical day of the average human being.
There is no sense in debating the lore over which came first – the chicken or the egg – it is the inseparable chicken-egg unit that counts. It is the mission of a chicken to lays eggs, and it is the mission of an egg to produce an egg-laying chicken. How perfect is that? Of course, roosters don’t lay eggs, but they do play some nebulous role that has to do with egg-laying. No one can seem to explain it in plain terms. One person will tell you that it is the mere presence of the rooster that keeps the egg production sailing along; another will tell you that he has a more personal role to play. I think it’s better not to pry into the details. The hens and the roosters have it all sorted out. It’s really none of our business.
I think we blundered when we started to equate being afraid with being chicken. Chickens all live in hen houses, or sunny barnyards, or nasty factories. Foxes and chicken hawks are rare, except in cartoons, and chickens lack the brain power to ponder their fate. If you don’t know you are delicious, you won’t worry about where that might lead. If someone takes your eggs, and you know there are plenty more where that came from, it’s not going to keep you awake at night in anguished worry. If someone sets your food at your feet, and bothers with the task of cleaning up after you, why worry? You are either a chicken or a teenager – either way you’ve got it made.
Since chickens have obviously quit quaking in their boots, we need to find a new symbol for fear. Maybe spiders would do. Have you noticed that they seem pretty fearful? The minute they spot you they run like mad. They are so fear-crazed they can’t even trot off in a straight line. They zigzag and bob in a spittled frenzy on their way to nowhere, adrenaline and legs pumping. Now if that’s not the definition of fear, what is?
How is it that chickens came to be the poster animal for fear? Well, have you ever looked into the eyes of a chicken? They don’t exactly look scared. And why would they be? They always hang around in gangs – a lone chicken is a completely unknown entity. When was the last time you saw a chicken by itself? Never, that’s right. You are just never going to see a solitary chicken standing at a corner waiting for the traffic light to change. They simply do not go out alone in public. So what do they have to be afraid of? Nothing, absolutely nothing! The idea of the scared chicken is in our heads, not theirs.
Consider the life of the typical chicken. It’s pretty easy, since virtually all chickens are typical. There has never been an exceptional chicken, none has ever won the Nobel Peace Prize, but I think one or two might have been in the running for the Pulitzer. Each chicken revels in being the same as every other chicken; it is the modus operandi of all chickens. It is the finest example of peer pressure, encoded at the level of the DNA.
Chickens the world over do pretty much the same thing every day. There is a lot of hanging around in hen houses, lots of clucking about nothing, a bit of pecking on a neighbor, and of course, the ever-popular egg laying. Apart from the egg-laying thing, it’s not so different from the typical day of the average human being.
There is no sense in debating the lore over which came first – the chicken or the egg – it is the inseparable chicken-egg unit that counts. It is the mission of a chicken to lays eggs, and it is the mission of an egg to produce an egg-laying chicken. How perfect is that? Of course, roosters don’t lay eggs, but they do play some nebulous role that has to do with egg-laying. No one can seem to explain it in plain terms. One person will tell you that it is the mere presence of the rooster that keeps the egg production sailing along; another will tell you that he has a more personal role to play. I think it’s better not to pry into the details. The hens and the roosters have it all sorted out. It’s really none of our business.
I think we blundered when we started to equate being afraid with being chicken. Chickens all live in hen houses, or sunny barnyards, or nasty factories. Foxes and chicken hawks are rare, except in cartoons, and chickens lack the brain power to ponder their fate. If you don’t know you are delicious, you won’t worry about where that might lead. If someone takes your eggs, and you know there are plenty more where that came from, it’s not going to keep you awake at night in anguished worry. If someone sets your food at your feet, and bothers with the task of cleaning up after you, why worry? You are either a chicken or a teenager – either way you’ve got it made.
Since chickens have obviously quit quaking in their boots, we need to find a new symbol for fear. Maybe spiders would do. Have you noticed that they seem pretty fearful? The minute they spot you they run like mad. They are so fear-crazed they can’t even trot off in a straight line. They zigzag and bob in a spittled frenzy on their way to nowhere, adrenaline and legs pumping. Now if that’s not the definition of fear, what is?
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Where Have all the Poppies Gone?
Where have all the poppies gone? I’ve calculated that I’ve personally lost over a hundred Remembrance Day poppies during my lifetime. It’s a ritual with me. I buy it, I pin it on, and I lose it. This generally takes less than twenty minutes. It doesn’t matter how carefully I pin it on, or how many times I weave the pin back and forth through my lapel – I still lose it. I don’t think that I’m particularly unique. My husband loses several each year, as do the kids, and pretty much everyone else who’s ever proudly pinned on a poppy. I’m happy to buy a second poppy, but it makes me feel careless to lose them. So here is my question. Where are those lost poppies? In all my years of poppy wearing, I have never once seen one lying on the floor or the ground - so just where is it that they go?
Remembrance Day poppies are hugely important to me. I’ve bought at least one every year since kindergarten, when I was sent to school clutching my dime in my sweaty little fist. Lest you think my mother was a Scrooge, that was back in 1960. Ten cents was a big enough sum to entrust to a five-year-old. By grade four it became a quarter, and I knew enough not to squander it in any of the four candy-laden “corner stores” that I had to pass on my way to school. It was such a temptation! Twenty-five cents would have bought enough gum to unhinge my jaw like a python swallowing a turkey.
There was always a solemn hush at school on Remembrance Day back then. Our artwork featuring red poppies and stark white crosses filled the bulletin boards. Hymns such as Abide With Me had been committed to memory. It still wasn’t that long after WWII had ended, and many of our dads and even a few of our moms were veterans. People still remembered the turmoil and upheaval and sacrifice in a very real way. Those of us who didn't live through WWII could only experience it in a secondary way, through the memories of others. And even though I was born years after the war ended, the ripples of what had taken place still reached out to touch me. The war didn’t play out on TV back then. It had taken place in real time, and all families had been affected by the limitations of living in a wartime country, with its shortages of goods, its worries, and its heart-wrenching losses.
Remembrance Day was, and still is, a time to remember that a shocking number of men and women have died or were wounded fighting for something that was greater than their individual selves. The principles of a country were at stake; the right to live our lives as we choose was threatened. I felt the undeniable importance of what had taken place during those years before I was born, and I felt it in a personal way. Buying a poppy was a small way that I could contribute.
As I sat there at school in my little wooden desk with its scratched and re-varnished surface and its nifty but useless inkwell, I felt that somehow I was contributing to something far beyond any borders I could imagine. The weight of history pressed down on me as I dropped my quarter into the snow white box and received my poppy. I could see that it was not only a beautiful flower, but that is was also a symbol of shed blood, with a black centre where those had made “the ultimate sacrifice” forever lived.
So where do those poppies that leap off our lapels go? Are they simply falling on the ground, or have they gone to join those they represent? Perhaps it is their destiny to leave us as abruptly as the soldiers they signify. But it is also their destiny to help us remember that what we enjoy today came at the expense of others. I feel a duty to my dad to preserve those secondary memories I have of the War, and to observe the solemnity of the occasion, and to think of all those young lives that were ended too soon. Today, there are once again fallen or injured soldiers in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and in many places through-out the world. Remembrance Day is more important than ever. And I wonder, are we re-learning the bitter lessons of our fathers?
Remembrance Day poppies are hugely important to me. I’ve bought at least one every year since kindergarten, when I was sent to school clutching my dime in my sweaty little fist. Lest you think my mother was a Scrooge, that was back in 1960. Ten cents was a big enough sum to entrust to a five-year-old. By grade four it became a quarter, and I knew enough not to squander it in any of the four candy-laden “corner stores” that I had to pass on my way to school. It was such a temptation! Twenty-five cents would have bought enough gum to unhinge my jaw like a python swallowing a turkey.
There was always a solemn hush at school on Remembrance Day back then. Our artwork featuring red poppies and stark white crosses filled the bulletin boards. Hymns such as Abide With Me had been committed to memory. It still wasn’t that long after WWII had ended, and many of our dads and even a few of our moms were veterans. People still remembered the turmoil and upheaval and sacrifice in a very real way. Those of us who didn't live through WWII could only experience it in a secondary way, through the memories of others. And even though I was born years after the war ended, the ripples of what had taken place still reached out to touch me. The war didn’t play out on TV back then. It had taken place in real time, and all families had been affected by the limitations of living in a wartime country, with its shortages of goods, its worries, and its heart-wrenching losses.
Remembrance Day was, and still is, a time to remember that a shocking number of men and women have died or were wounded fighting for something that was greater than their individual selves. The principles of a country were at stake; the right to live our lives as we choose was threatened. I felt the undeniable importance of what had taken place during those years before I was born, and I felt it in a personal way. Buying a poppy was a small way that I could contribute.
As I sat there at school in my little wooden desk with its scratched and re-varnished surface and its nifty but useless inkwell, I felt that somehow I was contributing to something far beyond any borders I could imagine. The weight of history pressed down on me as I dropped my quarter into the snow white box and received my poppy. I could see that it was not only a beautiful flower, but that is was also a symbol of shed blood, with a black centre where those had made “the ultimate sacrifice” forever lived.
So where do those poppies that leap off our lapels go? Are they simply falling on the ground, or have they gone to join those they represent? Perhaps it is their destiny to leave us as abruptly as the soldiers they signify. But it is also their destiny to help us remember that what we enjoy today came at the expense of others. I feel a duty to my dad to preserve those secondary memories I have of the War, and to observe the solemnity of the occasion, and to think of all those young lives that were ended too soon. Today, there are once again fallen or injured soldiers in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and in many places through-out the world. Remembrance Day is more important than ever. And I wonder, are we re-learning the bitter lessons of our fathers?
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