Lessons

Arequirementiswhatothersjudgeittobe. A neediswhatIjudgeittobe.

Lesson #01 – You Are Needed

This is the first lesson on my list. Someone, somewhere, needs you and without that compelling knowledge, there is no hope.

I feel like a yo-yo that has come to the fullest length of the throw, spun idly for a while and is about to accelerate in a new direction. Not required. It is a lesson that has taken a very long time to become apparent and runs contrary to everything I’ve been led to believe up until now. But in summing up a lifetime (almost) of experience, it pretty much says it all. You (I, Me, Us, We, the whole lot, but most specifically I) are not required. We are surplus to requirements. Thank you very much, but the world will continue to turn if I don’t do this, or don’t do that ,,,, add your own must-do’s here. But don’t be discouraged. This is a good thing. It’s a very liberating concept and this, more profoundly than the truth, will set you free.

Because you are now free to apply a more careful measure to everything you do. For example, you are now free to learn how to give. Here is the true heart of charity, where giving is a voluntary act, free of demand, necessity, or expectation. You give because you sense a need and you are free to respond with no compulsion. It is a selfless act.

You are also free to learn the more delicate and demanding art of receiving. Whether it is a gift, a greeting or a smack in the head, you are now able to savour, appreciate or to digest what comes your way. Since there is now no obligation to return in kind.

I no longer respond to what & where I am required, but can elect to go and apply myself to what & where I am needed, the difference being the former is what others demand. The latter is what I demand of myself. The former demands a response, the latter a judgment.

A requirement is what others judge it to be. A need is what I judge it to be.

I find myself at a crossroads like no other I’ve faced in my life and seeing no clear path, I am puzzled, vexed and depressed. I feel like a retriever, casting back and forth, searching for a clear scent to lead me to the target.

#01 – You Are Needed

Lesson

Lesson #03 – Invasion Of The Body Snatcher

It was the least significant cut on the least significant digit of my right hand, just one among many acquired in the course of a deck-building weekend. It was scarcely noticed and warranted no special attention. The deck appeared in our yard according to plan and the time had come to sit back, admire our handiwork and accept the praises.

But I had unexpected company that night. Every other cut, nick and scrape attested to the careless abuse our hands are subjected to by such amateur efforts and the rugged strength of the body’s immune system, all but that little nick atop the last arthritic knuckle of my right hand. It was about to cause me a world of grief. I was to be instructed in the multiplying power of the microbe and our body’s occasional inability to halt its spread.

Within 12 hours there were angry red lines radiating from the entry site and the joint was swelling visibly as I watched. The pain was something wicked while I became aware of how much common, everyday pounding and scraping that little digit endures. We use it and abuse it, a lot. Who knew? By the 24-hour mark, it was a flaming yellow and red, pulsating mass of suppurating agony and the pills ordered by a sympathetic doctor at a small walk-in clinic were mere pebbles thrown at a charging elephant. I was under siege and the enemy was storming the gate.

By the time I was ordered to hospital by my somewhat shocked family physician, half my hand was engulfed in an angry swelling that was threatening to charge up my arm. The rampaging infection was finally brought to bay by the skilled attention of a doctor and staff at the local hospital who, after anesthetizing the hand with a needle that, for a brief moment, hurt worse

A Piperguy48 Production than the wound, sliced and diced the infected site like so much sushi. It required 10 days of inhome nursing care and a hi-tech portable pump to administer injections of a powerful antibiotic at regular intervals. In this battle between good and evil, the outcome was a very near thing.

All in all, it was a humbling experience to think that all of evolution’s defenses could so easily be overwhelmed. And like Well’s creatures that fell to the common cold, or the look-alike body snatchers of Santa Mira, we’re just a sneeze away from extinction. But for a twist of fate, or a change in perspective, or even if it’s part of God’s grand plan for us all, we could just as easily be victims as victors.

Lesson #03 – Invasion Of The Body Snatcher

Lesson #04 – Fair Play

Bob Brown was a bully. He was short but powerfully built, like his father, the no-neck sort and where his father’s hair was an iron-gray brush cut, Bob’s was a long sweep of greasy black. He carried his short stature like a dare. The cigarette pack rolled in the sleeve of his white T would likely be crushed if he flexed his bicep. Anyone who thought they might tangle with Bobby Brown was in for some hurt.

He ruled the block with a balanced combination of threat and action. I was one of that swarm of little kids who trembled in awe of the stories and took extraordinary care to stay below his sight.

Occasionally, it took more than reputation to maintain order and one lazy Saturday or Sunday afternoon, Bob Brown was establishing his place in the grand scheme by kicking the daylights out of some hapless pretender, or maybe he had slurred the name of Mr. Brown’s latest girl or placed his greasy hand on the fender of his wheels. Regardless, Bob was vigorously applying his boots to the head and gut of the victim on the ground while everyone else leaned against their cars and casually observed. The scene that afternoon was unfolding in the hydro field that backed on our house. It was common turf used for pickup baseball games, walking the dog, or in this case, a pit stop for amateur mechanics trying to get their wheels to spin a little faster. Low-slung cars with straight pipes, fender skirts and purple sex lights on the dash were the order of the day. You did your own work on these machines and CO2 emissions were not an issue, neither was safety, nor the price of a gallon to make it go. The hoods were up and wrenches were in hand and Bob was hard at work.

I think Bob Brown was starting to inflict some serious damage when my father intervened. It might have been the sight of blood, or the sound of those heavy black boots (you remember the kind, thick soles, chain loop, aka biker boots) landing on the victim’s head, ribs & gut. My father had some rules. “You don’t kick a guy when he’s down!” he shouted, pulling the kicker off who was by this time blind with fury. I guess it was OK to put him down, but once there any further beating was over the top.

But then again, I guess that’s what made Bob Brown a bully. My Dad didn’t stand for that kind of nonsense. It offended his sense of fair play and nobody in his right mind offended my Dad.

Lesson #04 – Fair Play

Lesson #05 – Once A Piper

He saw me looking at a rough woodcarving on the table. It was a work-in-progress, meant to show a piece at an intermediate stage. In time it would be a folk-art carving of a piper, rough in outline but close enough to hint that the artist once held a set under his arm with the drones close on his shoulder.

I was wandering among the vendors and artisans at our local Art-Fest and was wearing my Fergus Highland Games 2002 t-shirt. The gentleman seated in the shade behind the table made a few connections, said something about Fergus, and asked if I played? I replied “Sort of” wanting to make clear that my status was strictly amateur, very amateur. There was something in his eye that brightened and making a few connections of my own, I tossed the question back to him. Briefly he drifted back to some time when his strength was greater and his obvious physical infirmities were less profound. I thought he might enjoy a few reminiscences. I’ve found that there are few things that the elderly, or the infirm, or just plain lonely souls would rather do than simply talk. It doesn’t cost me anything to listen.

Many years ago he had played with the 48th Highlanders Cadet Band out of the old University Armories. His face lit up with the memories of those days. He took up the pipes for some reason and after trading stories about where & when & how, he let on that there was an old family connection to Caledonia, but that’s not reason enough. Something must have brought him to the pipes. For me it was family roots and my dad’s long association with his old regiment. For him, I never did find out.

Piping is a fraternity – you can never leave. If you’ve passed the painful hours around the table with your practice chanter, if you’ve nursed your reeds into some sense of harmony in summer’s heat or winter’s bitter cold, if in your fatigue, your grip has tightened until there are seven perfect circles pressed into aching fingers, then you’ve earned the right to the title “piper”. You can lay them aside for a while and perhaps time catches up with you so they remain there, once upon a time. But when you meet another piper, there are stories to share and good times to re-live. It gets into your blood and bones, even after blood and bones are worn and tired.

I let him talk and tried to prompt more stories from a time that seemed to give him so much pleasure. His eyes were far away. I returned later with my pipes and thrust them into his reluctant hands and you could see in an instant that they were familiar. That’s the first clue that gives away a piper. They know how to hold them. And once you hold them, you can’t let go. His smile did us both a world of good.

Lesson #05 – Once A Piper

Lesson #07 – Quality (The Gary B. Principle)

Gary probably should have known better and if, as he dropped to the floor, he had time to reflect on the error of his ways, I doubt he would have uncovered any startling new truths about what was happening. Gary was a living, breathing (for a short while) coronary about to happen, a time bomb on a short fuse. It was written all around his 50+ inch waistline and all over his florid complexion.

He enjoyed things immensely; beer, chicken wings, all manner of sports (viewed from the comfort of his chair). The only remotely healthy thing I can recall about him was an interest in a slo-pitch baseball league. It was this activity that immediately preceded his sudden demise. Gray B. and Healthy Lifestyle lived at opposite ends of the thesaurus. Both his personality and his appearance could best be described as jolly. He had the features and complexion of a Coca Cola Santa and a ready laugh to match. He nurtured a healthy disrespect for authority and delighted in popping the balloons of the pompous. Add a smiling wife, two adoring children, a little house in a little country town, a secure and relatively undemanding job and you’ll understand why I was just a tad envious of my good friend Gary.

He was about to say goodbye in another sense too. At least this one was planned. He had a job offer and a successful interview was about to allow him to follow another dream. Just days after accepting donations for his farewell gift and organizing a small bash, I was collecting money for his floral arrangement. This was unfair on a grand scale worthy of a Greek Tragedy. So why was it that after I delivered the condolences of my staff (Gary was one of my employees) and attended the small-town funeral, I still eyed Gary B. with a touch of envy?

Some are given a little and some are given a lot. If the short end of that measure is spent well it can balance, or even offset, the greater measure. Gary took great and obvious delight in what he was given. If he had taken less or savoured it less, would he have sampled it longer? Would he have bothered? I had my doubts at the time. This is what I call The Gary B. Principle and I wasn’t aware of its full impact until some years later when I stumbled across Lesson #08.

He opted for quality over quantity.

He ended the game, one out of two.

Lesson #07 – Quality (The Gary B. Principle)

Lesson #08 – Quantity (The Jim C. Principle)

I wish I had known Jim a little better. I might have come to a different conclusion (or not – I’ve been known to be wrong). You may rightly infer that Jim is no longer with us. Nonetheless, I knew enough to draw a lesson from his life and his sudden departure from it.

Jim was a beanpole, tall and thin and guilty of the sin of exercise. His mantra included leafy greens, tennis and pure thoughts. He might even have been addicted to mindless jogging. He never smoked, even when we were promised the dash and dare of Marlborough Country. All things could be approached in moderation and nothing indulged to excess. Life was tasted in small nibbles, not great gulps and his mantra seemed to be moderated quantity over excessive quality. He found the perfect formula even before it was widely embraced.

Regardless, he was felled to the kitchen floor as a small cardiac eruption tore apart the engine that powers life’s journey. “Heart attack” was the diagnosis, genetically programmed to occur at this time and in this place, another time bomb on a short fuse. But this one was not written around his 28 inch waistline, but embedded in the DNA that shaped his heart.

Jim left behind a loving wife and two loving children and a spacious house in the suburbs. Jim had done well, working long hours and investing wisely and his portfolio was as admirable as his house. The future looked good.

At life’s banquet, Jim took small bites in anticipation of enjoying many more. He did everything right except live long enough to enjoy it.

Lesson #09 – Some Things Can’t Be Fixed

Fella was a stupid name for a dog, even a mangy no-breed mongrel like this one. Aside from 4 legs, 2 ears, 1 nose and a tail, there was nothing else to link him to any recognizable pedigree. Mutt was the closest we could pin on him. But he was a good dog. Quiet, gentle with children, kept his business outside and he didn’t smell, not even when rain-soaked. A wet dog can be the most offensive stink on God’s green earth, but not Fella. The name suited him and it stuck.

Heaven knows he was wet when he came to us. Hurricane Hazel had just made an unexpected sweep through the north-eastern United States and slammed into Ontario leaving behind a swath of matchstick houses, grieving families and stray dogs. The post-war boom had pushed the suburbs out into areas that had no recollection of far-away events like hurricanes and so were pathetically unprepared. When Fella wandered into our lives you could still see the diagonal water line across his flanks where he had been swept along by the flood. He came and he stayed and no one ever claimed him.

Our house was on high ground above the Humber River valley. Rain pelted down and the trees shook and we lost power, but next day we were safe and able to stand high above the river watching the debris race toward Lake Ontario. Fella came ashore to stay with us, the first dog of a string, but the only one that was really family. He provided life lessons in the care and feeding of a creature that was mostly dependent on its host for food and shelter. Tending to that need was called “responsibility”. He was also the first lesson in the give-and-take of relationships. You loved your Mom and you loved your Dad. You love your bike and your comic collection. Loving your dog, you took your first step outside the family circle.

Dad pulled in one day after work. Fella was tied to the garden tap by the driveway and went to offer his usual exuberant greeting. He got tangled under the right rear wheel of the family Ford. The vet performed a miracle setting his broken rear leg. It was a comical walking cast that looked like a bent coat hanger wrapped in plaster. He could hobble around, almost good as new to my eyes. There were some other opinions.

“Too old to let the bones set properly.” “Not fair to the poor creature.”

Lessons

“Dumb animal doesn’t understand.” “Quality of life.” “It will be a kindness.”

My Dad asked me if I understood the necessity of what had to be done? I nodded.

Lesson #10 – Going To The X

The Canadian National Exhibition – The CNE – The Grand Old Lady on Lakeshore BoulevardThe X. Going to the X today. Off to the CNE looking for traces of something that may not exist anymore: a piece of architecture, a fading scent, the trace of a skyline or a sense or sound reminiscent of another time. It all means something else today, but it hints at things that were. There are ghosts on the old fairground. Every time I go I’m looking for ghosts.

Maybe that’s just another trick of perspective. Look at a thing where you stood, now look again from where you stand and it’s become something else, a new illusion posing as reality. The shifting point of reference can be distance, angle, or time. But then, all three are one and the same. It’s the parallax lesson.

The CNE was an anachronism when I first met her. The modern sheen of post-war optimism was a thin veil over her agricultural fair heritage. You could still smell the manure in most buildings.

Who really goes to the CNE? More importantly, who should be going? The X is trying to target that narrow band of late teens with money to spend. It’s geared to the short attention span and the digital ethos of instant boredom. That’s an audience that can’t be lured, can’t be bought. Nothing short of a power failure could pry them from their keyboards and plasma screens.

Each new wave of fixers hoping to breathe new life into the Grand Old Lady want to remake her in today’s image, revitalize her, make her relevant when ultimately, her most alluring attraction has always been that she’s irrelevant. Relevancy means you’ve seen it all before, seen it faster, better and likely in 3-D. Turn the X instead into a curiosity.

These days, no one can keep up with the business of looking ahead. By the time you can present something new, it’s already old. Instead, give us something that everyone’s forgotten or maybe remembers dimly from a childhood long past.

Lessons

Present it to us the way it was. Give us the X.

Lesson #10 – Going To The X

Lesson #11 - God Does Not Deduct From Our Allotted Time

That Which Is Spent Fishing

I can’t claim credit for this old saw, but I know it to be true. I’ve heard it used to justify many otherwise frivolous pastimes, but fishing is my frivolity, so there it is. I hope and pray the fish don’t mind, but the worth to my soul and the value to my spirit give the endeavour a sanctity that can only be described as religious. If the ultimate cost is a few fish, then so be it.

There is a world of difference between fishing and catching fish. It's like love and sex: love, the fishing part, is spiritual. Catching fish is merely the physical act.

My mother taught me to fish. She, in turn, was instructed by her father.

Lesson #11 - God Does Not Deduct From Our Allotted Time That Which Is Spent Fishing

Lesson #12 – The Power To Say No

This has nothing to do the war on drugs or born-again pledges of abstinence. This is about real power, that moment when you taste that sheer exhilaration of saying “No! Enough!” It’s delivered with conviction or determination. You’ve been pushed and you dig in your heels and discover some unmovable core that lets you say “No” with authority. And Damn, it feels good.

The affairs of the Lambton Golf & Country Club were ruled by the proper, austere and very Teutonic hand of General Manager Mr. William Ritter. The dining room was handled in a similar fashion by his very blonde, very authoritarian wife, Velma. My first job was bussing tables under her watchful eye. I had grown up nearby the club and, while I could never aspire to be a member, I could easily aspire to clear dirty dishes for minimum wage. The Lambton G&CC was host to an assortment of odd and obnoxious characters that only tremendous wealth can inspire. There was the occasional lady & gentleman, but for the most part the membership was a circus. It was an enlightening education.

The dishwasher claimed to have a certificate declaring him fully rehabilitated and now legally sane. I wasn’t going to argue with that one, although I had good reason.

The chef was a psychopath who had no such certificate. I wasn’t about to argue with him either. That dining room was where I progressed from timid busboy to jacketed waiter, able to balance enormous trays and deliver the most elegant entrees. I served to bank presidents and sports celebrities. It was a time that opened my eyes to the world of labour on one hand and the world of wealth and privilege on the other.

Things changed with the addition of a new maitre’d. Continuing the Teutonic theme, Mr. Gartner carried himself with Imperial swagger, perhaps more Prussian than Austrian. He was suspicious of where loyalties lay and mine still leaned towards Mrs. Ritter and the old order. One weekend, after a full shift of catering to a very large outdoor party, I got proper permission (not from the imperious Mr. Gartner) to dash home, freshen up, change my shirt and return for a second shift.

He caught me on my return with an upbraiding and a dire warning never to try that sort of thing again. It wasn’t so much what he said. It was how he said it.

I went home again, changed into jeans and T-shirt, told my parents what I planned to do, then returned to the Lambton Golf and Country Club for the last time.

I tendered my resignation directly to the general manager, Mr. William Ritter.

Lesson #12 – The Power To Say No

Lesson #14 – On The Instructional Qualities Of Pain

What does it teach?

What does it reveal?

My body has become the victim of a misunderstanding by my immune system which, until recently (the first 40 years or so), has done an adequate job of mending hurts, fending off invading bacteria and keeping other unwanted intruders at bay. This system now believes that the natural action of joint movement in fingers, hands, feet, knees, hips, shoulders and neck vertebrae are in fact unnatural, perhaps even injuries, and need to be immobilized by layers of inflamed cartilage.

Welcome to rheumatoid arthritis.

Pain has taught me a degree of humility and a fresh insight into the different degrees and quality of pain. “Damn!!! I just hammered my thumb instead of that nail!!!” is substantially different from “Damn! I can’t get the lid off that pill container!” Aside from noting the number of exclamation points that differentiate the two, I know that the former, while intense, will soon go away. The latter is likely to stay with me forever, an unwelcome companion, perhaps gaining more exclamation points as the years pass. The sharp bright pain of the slam, cut or bang impacts the quality of the moment. The low deep-seated thrum of arthritic pain colours the quality of life. Having tasted both and given a choice, I would say, “Where’s the hammer?”

Pain humbles. Getting pummeled by a bully is a humbling experience. It hurts your pride and perhaps your face. But a pain that invades every moment, that reminds you constantly of its presence every time you turn, reach or bend, or even clouds the very decision to turn, reach or bend, is a reminder that your not quite up to that sort of thing any more. It isn’t something so mundane as not being as young as you once were because even the young are susceptible to RA, but you’re being denied something you once took for granted. You’re getting blindsided by genetics and while it happens all the time, it’s still not fair. It brings you down. Even worse is the puzzled expression of those around you who misinterpret the hesitation for other less noble, less justifiable reasons. What used to be easy now requires some forethought and a careful weighing of costs and benefits.

Pain can reveal strength to endure or weakness to succumb. If Old Nick should present me with a contract that offered relief, I might seriously start thinking about terms and conditions, then start looking for a modern-day Daniel Webster.

Lesson #14 – On The Instructional Qualities Of Pain

Lesson #15 – How Can I Make You Understand?

The rotator cuff of my left shoulder feels like some dangerous kitchen device, all blades and teeth. The protest of my neck’s C4 and C5 will not be silenced by any amount of forced relaxation exercises, pain re-focusing techniques or Zen. It descends by degrees through elbow to wrist, sliding from pain to ache to finally, dull pulsing throb in the final joints of four out of five fingers (How did my index finger escape?).

The idea of ripping my left arm out at the shoulder is starting to gain some appeal. Sure, it might hurt a bit at first, but I’d get over that and then I’d be done with it. There would still be one good arm to work with. I would ever more have a valid excuse for not taking the trash to the curb and then there’s all that sympathy.

But there’s that first nagging hint of discomfort in the right shoulder, almost a pain, and as one thing is sure to lead to another, I’d soon be without a finger to pick my nose. And even if it never led to that extreme, even parting with one, there’s still that issue of “phantom pain “. Is there really such a thing?

Lesson #15 – How Can I Make You Understand?

Lesson #16 – There’s Going To Be Some Crying

Granddad was going about the business of “passing on” and it was turning out to be a painful, unpleasant experience. His foot had gone gangrenous and the decay was starting to work its inexorable way up his leg. At some point, I stopped being carted along to the cavernous ward at Toronto General Hospital. Until that time I was a comforting reminder that life carried on and the generations were secure. I gawked at the empty space where his right leg once propped the sheets, now just a flattened ghost, but the disease marched on. It was generally agreed that his screams were becoming too traumatizing for my tender years and so I stayed behind, alone or in the care of my sister.

Arterial sclerosis was not a common phrase at that time. Hardening –of-the-arteries was what took Granddad down. The debt he accumulated in his early years inhaling the black mine dust far beneath the bleak hills of Fife and his lifelong penchant for coarse, home-rolled cigarettes was finally being called in. It all came due at once and it was fearsome. I didn’t fear tobacco then, hardly anyone did, but over time it squeezed the blood from his extremities and left them cold to rot.

I was a newly minted-15-year old with little experience in the fact of death or the complicated process of dying. All the accoutrements of life’s end were about to be revealed and they proved to be no big deal. Familiarity breeds ,,, well, familiarity.

The great revelation was seeing tears well up in my mother’s eyes at odd times. I had never seen her helpless before. I had seen her mad. I had seen her sad. And happy as a schoolgirl. But

never helpless. That’s when the tears appeared. I asked her the day of the funeral if she was going to be OK? She told me that there was going to be some crying, but it would be all right.

Ultimately the whole show was mystifying and satisfying. The great mystery lay in the transition from animate to inanimate, somebody to just plain old body. That’s a hard one to grasp the first few times you stumble over it. Satisfaction lay in the forms and rituals. Knowing that there was going to be some crying and that it was going to be all right was the most valuable lesson, the one I remember best.

Lesson #16 – There’s Going To Be Some Crying

Rock And Lesson #18 – A Hard Place

Perch are such pretty fish, clean and lean, transitioning from dark green through yellow to fiery orange bellies and accented with wide black stripes. They hit your bait with a fighter’s punch. Sunfish are plentiful and they can turn their stiff wide bodies against the reel’s drag or water’s current to offer a fight that belies their size. Those pinched little mouths rarely take a hook so deep as to be a problem. Catfish usually don’t offer much of anything except a bit of sluggish action from a muddy pond or creek and even when they’ve gulped the hook deep, their ugliness makes cutting the line and tossing them ashore a matter of little concern. Bass of the sport variety slam the bait and run. In most cases, you’ve set the hook before they pause to swallow it.

Rock bass are a special case. They’re all muscle, greed and gluttony. The bigger ones can fight like their more prized cousins and those blazing red eyes testify to their hellish fury. They may dart by and touch the bait, but when they’re ready, whatever is on the end of that hook is usually destined for their gut. They’ll go for spinner baits like most sport fish, but when you’re 10 and out fishing with your Dad, its hook line and sinker time and the bait is always worms.

There is no fish that can cause more heartache or remorse than rock bass. Their shape and colouration, their habits and their heart all combine to declare that they belong there among the weeds or lurking beneath the dock. Few fish so fit their environment, have given pleasure to generations of young anglers or filled the bellies of so many larger sport fish. Yet they can be so damn greedy.

Even the knot that secured the hook is barely visible in the depth of that maw.

Parents tell their kids that the brain is too small, the nervous system too primitive for the creature to feel pain. Then why does it fight so? Why does the eye stare like that? Every youngster who’s hooked one of these has tried to remove the hook, turned and twisted from every direction, hoping that something will break free without too much damage, too much blood.

My Dad taught that you have to deal with the disasters you create and the best way to deal with them is quickly. When you make a mess, you’re obliged to clean it up. A swift blow is usually the best way to end it. For both the fish and the fisherman, a rock and a hard place will serve to symbolize and to end the ordeal.

Lesson #18 – A Rock And A Hard Place

Lesson #19 – Discretion And Valour

My alarm is set to 5:30 am with a view to walking out the door as the living room clock chimes 6:30. When we slipped back from that blessed extra hour of summer’s daylight to the short bleak sun of standard time, I almost missed my bus. The driver saw me running and commented as I boarded that it happens a lot at the change-over. That evening I nudged the minute hand forward three notches. This routine has proven adequate to allow one or two stabs at the snooze button and a brief return to possibly finish a dream that was left incomplete, and still reach my stop two short blocks away. If I forego the snooze button, there’s still time for a brief shower or a bite of breakfast, wherever the need or the urge is greater.

One morning last summer, one of the very few where my head was lowered and my shoulders hunched beneath an umbrella as a steady rain pressed down. I splashed along the sidewalk concentrating on avoiding the deeper puddles and noticed a small movement on the grass off to my left, a small black and white movement. I was sharing course and heading with a skunk, a fellow traveler heading for the corner of Highview and Montclair. Our tracks were not quite parallel, likely to converge before the corner and the bus stop. Disaster loomed.

We noticed each other at the same instant and both, recognizing the relationship between discretion and valour, practicality and foolishness, paused, then slowly, and cautiously altered our paths keeping wary eye contact all the while until a more comfortable distance separated us.

Now suppose for one moment that either of us had been less conscious or sensitive to the disposition of the other. If the skunk, being startled from his reverie, suddenly recalled some past encounter with this two-legged predator or his four-legged accomplice and reacted as skunks are wont to do, or if I reacted with a start and brandished briefcase and umbrella to ward off what I supposed to be an inevitable consequence of our meeting, what a very bad day we both might have had. In the very worst case my striped companion might have foreseen himself simmering

Lessons A Piperguy48 Production in a pot or, after being skinned and tanned, sitting upon my head, tail swinging at my neck. Or I might be sealing my clothes in air-tight bags for the trash after standing beneath the shower for an eternity in a vain attempt to remove the evidence of my foolishness.

The skunk went his mysterious way and, after boarding my bus, I went mine. We met and we parted, never really discerning each other’s the intention.

Lesson #20 – The Green Steamer Trunk In The Basement

Like many veterans, my father was reluctant to publicly share his experiences of those days. He kept his wartime memories in a battered green steamer trunk in the basement. It smelled of mothballs and long-ago events that perhaps didn’t bear examining too closely. It wasn’t locked or anything but we (my sister and I) were never encouraged to examine too closely the stories chronicled inside. His hodden gray kilt & sporran, glengarry & balmoral were there, feeding generations of moths despite efforts to keep them at bay. There were his medals and yellowing, brittle letters and documents and photos. He didn’t talk much about that time but it was still with him in ways I couldn’t understand, but I sensed. I could see it was with him in the ramrod straight way he carried himself. It was there in his commitment to duty, honour and public service he followed throughout his life. He carried it in his insistence that all honours and respect be paid on Remembrance Day. And there was always a quiet reverence for the things that I dragged out of that trunk of memories in the basement. These are the brief stories that he told to me and the things that I have since learned.

Today when I’m in my kilt, I wear his sporran and carry, woven into the cords of my pipes, a length of camouflage parachute silk. The story, as he told it, was that there was a great deal of this material lying around. The young fellows thought they would look dashing in silk scarves and so found a treadle sewing machine in the basement of a burned-out Dutch farmhouse. Cutting the silk into scarf-sized strips and crudely hemming them on the sewing machine, I’m sure they all thought they resembled Lord Lovat striding ashore on Sword Beach with his piper.

On finally arriving home at Toronto’s Union Station, a Toronto newspaper photographer was on hand. He took a photo of Don Black holding his 4-year-old daughter Helen in his arms. On his left was his wife Nancy and on his right was his sister Margaret Jean Ferguson. There is a handwritten date on the back: October 28, 1945. The day he came home.

Lesson #21 – Depression Is A Thief

Like all talented thieves, you don’t see this one coming and you’re not aware its gone until you start looking for whatever has been taken. Then, it’s generally too late. Depression is like that, sneaky and stealthy. I have witnessed it in the first, second and third persons. To know it in the first person is to taste ashes. It is a robber of souls taking, not that which is most valuable, but that which is most vital.

In the second person, watching it steal the heart of one you love, it is an act of cold brutality. It cuts slowly and relentlessly, without compassion. It wicks away at their light, grinning at you standing by in dream-like paralysis. It is a capering demon.

In the third person, depression infects communities, devouring the bonds that once joined them. They remain together, but as vulnerable targets, the glue that once gave them strength, dissolved by depression’s thievery.

Depression is a thief.

Lesson #21 – Depression Is A Thief

Lesson #23 – I hate Stuart McLean

I hate Stuart McLean. I hate him in an envious way. I keep discovering that he’s written about people, places, things that I could have covered and now, if I tried, it would feel like plagiarism. He’s a thief.

Take Enid Blyton for instance. He wrote a short piece about children’s adventures, the kind where a smart and self-reliant group of per-pubescent kids sails off to foil the evil schemes of some nasty, bumbling adults intent on fairly straight-forward crimes like robbery, kidnapping, or spying or such. The other adults who populate the background are benign figures there to drive the vehicles, fly the planes and provide just enough authority to justify the children’s actions. But McLean staked out the territory in a piece called “The Island of No Adults”.

How can I write about that collection of Blyton Adventure Books that I’ve treasured since childhood? How can I rehash something that meant so much to me then, and begs to be revisited now that I have a perspective of 50 years, without paraphrasing his article?

Perhaps I need to abandon the Vinyl Café and look for a more foreign country to explore.

Lesson #23 – I hate Stuart McLean

Lesson #24 – Small Kindnesses

Every morning the bus driver on my route does me a small kindness each time he stops. A while ago he noticed me pause and wince as I took that first step to board his bus. You see, I have short legs and find myself increasingly hampered by arthritis, an unfortunate combination for any transit rider. I’ve lived with short legs all my life and grown accustomed to being placed at the very end, left or right, of any photo line-up to maintain the symmetry. It means that the shortest leg length for any off-the-rack pair of pants is too long by one or two inches and I’ve grown selfconscious about people staring down at the widening bald spot on the top of my head. But I can live with that. The arthritis has crept up on me slowly but is starting to make its presence known and that I find a little harder to live with. Our local transit buses are equipped with hydraulic devices that allow the vehicles to kneel about twelve inches to assist boarding. As near as I can recall, I’m the only passenger for whom he regularly offers this convenience.

I’ve been taking the bus for a little over eight months, through the late spring mornings, during those bright summer sunrises and on into fall’s darkness and winter’s bitter cold. One day early last fall he saw me struggle with that first step onto his bus and since then he has offered me the small kindness of lowering his vehicle for me, the only passenger for whom he regularly accords this honour.

My life is made slightly easier in this, but it is not for the boarding of a bus that I write this simple piece. It is that he remembers each day and affords me the simple kindness that I am touched. I am reminded every day that someone cares and offers a hand to help me. As well, I think this act affords him some pleasure too as I note the smile it generates on his face each day as we both acknowledge the ritual, as if goodness offers a mirror to both parties, reflecting and magnifying the goodwill. Kindness begets kindness. It has a way of growing.

I watch the bus come trundling down the street and I wait for the doors to open.

It’s a good way to start the day.

Lesson #27 – Good Times Are Fragile

Ever notice how fast the sky turns black when summer storms of particular fury rise up over the horizon? A thick and roiling sheet gets flung overhead and day transitions to fearsome dusk in a blink. Regardless of the irony, it’s unnatural.

One fine Saturday morning Mother was escorting me to my weekly music lesson. I was about five or six and gentle, old Mr. Willis was trying to fulfill my mother’s wish to turn me into a choir-grade boy soprano. His wife sat at the piano while Mr. Willis conducted from his parlour chair, baton circling gently, his mouth encouraging pear-shaped tones from mine. Consensus held that the potential was there.

We had recently moved and now lived some distance away, far enough to require the TTC and several transfers from one route to another. I had none of the usual youngster’s objections to music lessons. I was scrawny and even at that age, knew that rugged sports was never going to be my calling. Intellectual and artistic pursuits were more in my future. I’m not certain how that sat with my father, but it suited mother just fine. She had aspirations for me. It suited me too.

So this particular Saturday morning found me in tow, en-route to my weekly lesson with Mr. Willis. I distinctly remember with the clarity of post-disaster recall, that it was brilliantly sunny and hot. Even the dust hadn’t the energy to stir. I was trailing my mother as we strolled along the sidewalk. The weekend beckoned and it was still just Saturday morning. Life was very, very good.

In one of those “it seemed like a good idea at the time” moments, I fell a bit behind, picked up a rock from the sidewalk’s edge, not too big, not too small, cocked my arm and flung it into the traffic that was streaming by. I didn’t single out any particular car and I can’t recall any evil

intent. I was just caught by an impulse and driven by the exuberance of the moment. Not a single pause was given over to consequences.

I was five or six and the complexities of “If – Then - Else” logic had never been explained to me. They were now about to be explained in detail.

The rock caromed off the windshield of a passing car, scaring the bejesus out of the driver. Tires screeched. The door wrenched open and a stream of blue rage flew from his reddening face. Oh, my poor mother. Mortified. Storm clouds gathered and swept over my carefree Saturday. It’s a blessed wonder my arm stayed in its socket. Days later I’m certain her hand-print was still there on my bottom. I don’t recall if it was administered to the flesh or through the denim of my pants, but to this day 55 years on, I know the mark was there.

Lesson #27 – Good Times Are Fragile

Lesson #30 – Remembrance

Mr. Sinclair was the first male teacher I had in grade school. He was tall, arrow straight, sharp and trim as a new razor blade. His shoulders squared and his hair was a flattop buzz that hinted of military. I don’t know what brought him to the teaching profession in charge of our grade 5 class, but he was good at it. He taught. We learned. Discipline was generally not a problem.

Every class had its clown and we had a winner. Wayne had been at the peak of his form during the Remembrance Day Assembly in the school auditorium that day. Noises, wisecracks, shuffling chairs, he ran out his entire repertoire. Back in class and seated at our desks, Wayne decided that an encore was in order. Mister Sinclair thought otherwise. This was 1958 and Korea was still fresh in the minds and hearts of a lot of folks. I believe Mister Sinclair mentioned that he lost some friends during his own tour south of the Yalu River. So when the antics resumed in class, Wayne was sent from the room. Propelled is a more accurate description, by the scruff of his collar and seat of his pants, toes lightly dancing over the floor. Now that left an impression on me.

Years later there were bleak November services of Remembrance at venerable Knox Presbyterian Church, standing by my father’s side. The Toronto Scottish Regiment formed up and the pipes and drums marched them to Spadina Avenue and the church where past Colours were laid up. This had been my father’s regiment and there was no doubting the solemnity of this occasion. Taps, The Lament, Reveille, always the sound of the pipes sending them off or bringing them home. He had lost friends too, friends for whom he had been responsible, his boys.

A very wise and educated gentleman once commented that he could not bring himself to celebrate Remembrance Day the way we Canadians did. I replied that we didn’t celebrate it, we commemorated it. We remembered together so that we did not forget. What they did and how they could bring themselves to do it are issues that we all need to explore. There were inconceivable follies, unconscionable waste, brutality that beggars description. There was courage and sacrifice and acts in which “greater love hath no man”. How did they do it? Why did they do it? What led them to the point where they were willing to do it? I still don’t understand. Remembrance Day is about asking these questions again and again, looking for some kind of answer.

I’m certain my father believed his greatest achievement was that I never had to ask those same questions of myself.

Lesson #30 – Remembrance

Lesson #33

(a) – There’s An Audience Out There

(b) – It Doesn’t Matter

(c) – Yes, It Does

#33 (a) - I may have mentioned that at one time in my life, I sang. My mother had ambitions for me and so I took lessons. I practiced. I competed and I performed. At first, it was OK. Any 5, 6, 7-year-old just wants to please and it seemed to justify the fact that sports were not my cup of tea. I think I was good. There are still a few tarnished medals and trophies gathering dust in the basement. Boy sopranos with soaring voices were a hot item for church choirs. It kept me busy and out of more serious trouble. At some point, the thought occurred to me that there was a sea of critics out there, an audience hanging on every note and my certainty grew that they were all focused with malicious intent on me. Stage fright gripped me like a deep, sick toothache and lasted for as many years as I could still be dragged on stage. The audience became my bane, my greatest fear. Mother thought I would grow out of it. I knew better. I just wanted to survive it.

#33 (b) – Twenty years later on, the thought occurred to me that the opinions of others really had no significance. What they thought of what I did carried no real importance. If I stood up and acted the fool or played the hero, the rest of the world could go to hell. Temerity gave way to arrogance and, while I was no longer singing, I was free of the audience.

#33 (c) – Another twenty years later on, the thought occurred to me that perhaps I had something to say and that there might be some who would do me the honour of listening. Being able to fashion something, or craft a piece, or polish a phrase or even put notes together that might be pleasing became an opportunity to engage an audience. It’s a form of giving and sharing that makes the performance worth the price of admission and it’s pleasing delivery the price of all that practice. If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing well and if an audience is willing to listen, all the more reason to put some heart and soul into it. After all these years, it’s good to have an audience out there.

Lesson #33 (a) – There’s An Audience Out There

Lesson #33 (b) – It Doesn’t Matter

Lesson #33 (c) – Yes, It Does

Lesson #40 – As You Sow, So Shall You Reap (Maybe)

Maybe. But it’s that little qualifier hanging off the end that distinguishes “The Golden Rule (you know, that “do unto others”, etc. stuff) from a self-serving trade-off where one prays like a Pharisee at the Temple in the certainty of winning a seat in heaven. Even the Golden Rule should come with a caveat. It offers no guarantee of a return.

The best intentions in the world, if embraced with the thought of return on investment, degenerates into cynicism in pretty short order.

The trick is to give with no certainty of receiving in kind. That is the heart and soul of charity.

Why is the obvious logic of this lesson so very difficult for so many to understand?

Lesson #40 – You Reap What You Sow

Lesson #50 – I’m A DORK

Technically I’m a DORKS but that doesn’t sound right. We are DORKS is true in a grammatical and literal sense (since we number 5), but this concerns the lessons learned of one person, me. So, I’m a DORK. Q.E.D.

The Distinguished Order of Royal Kindred Spirits (DORKS) officially celebrates its 20th anniversary this Fall of 2009. Our Patron Saint is Jerome Lester Horwitz and our motto is “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, et Bière!” If this leaves you puzzled then read no further. You will never understand. This association began long before being formalized with a name, but with that naming came recognition that here was something to be nourished and preserved. Thus, our charter declares:

So we come together twice yearly to relive the past, renew the present and rededicate the future. We are stronger for having known each other all these years. We sincerely believe that there is no greater compliment

Than to be called

DORKS

We were friends in high school and we remain friends as we approach retirement. We were there at the beginning and we will be there until the end. We are no longer young and we no longer have all our hair but we retain the comradeship that first brought us together. We celebrate and commiserate. We laugh and we cry. We fall down and (most times) we get back up. We are free to be startlingly brilliant or pathetically dumb in each other’s presence. All things are possible. All things are good.

These are my friends and I am one of them.

I will be eternally grateful for the privilege of being a DORK.

Lesson #50 – I’m A DORK

Lesson #53 – The Devil’s Own Handiwork

Five sticks, a bag and several assorted pieces and slivers of cane: the Devil’s own handiwork. The result is generally hated or loved, but rarely ignored. No one I know is indifferent to the Great Highland Bagpipe (GHB). Even those who play it bear the instrument some resentment.

I’ve lived with it now for about thirty years, so I’m entitled to an opinion at the very least, perhaps even learned a lesson or two. I’ve yet to decide if I love it or hate it, but I am not indifferent. Ambivalent is more the word. Passionate, but undecided.

The sound is a complicated blend of tones and overtones, simple lines and fractal-like complexities. There are just nine notes to work with, but its practitioners, its artists, have devised a thousand variations and combinations that defy common understanding and elude perfect mastery.

Lesson #53 – The Devil’s Own Handiwork

Lesson #64 – Dignity

I was 10 (-ish). I was walking with my father, tracing the banks of the Humber River in midsummer. It was hot and we had been at the chore for a while. We were well south of the Dundas Bridge on the east shore of the river. We had made our way through Lambton Park, down the hill to the riverbank, and then followed its course towards the Old Mill.

At that time, in that place, walking was not a means to any obvious end. It had nothing to do with point A or point B. It was a means to something else entirely. Walking was part ritual, part healthy life style. “Going for a walk” filled the space between Sunday morning church and Sunday evening dinner. It was simply what we did, often and with pleasure. My father was quick to point out that he had “Walked half way across Europe in ‘44 and it had done him no harm at all.” (if you discount the small detail that it got him shot. As an officer, I suspect a good part of that European trek was in the right-hand seat of a jeep – but better not to point that out.)

The park was host to the usual assortment: couples, kids, seniors on benches, nothing remarkable. A single figure meandered into view on what seemed to be an intercept course. He wasn’t quite disreputable; more what you might call down-on-his-luck. He was a bit grizzled, collar and cuffs frayed and he had items for sale; pencils, a few bandages and gauze that he offered as a first-aid kit. I don’t know what prompted my father to pause, take a deep breath, then meet his gaze rather than pass on. There may have been something about his eyes or in his manner. It could have been a badge or a ribbon on his breast pocket. It was a long time ago and I’m not certain. This was 1958 (-ish) and the world was still teeming with walking wounded. Some bore crutches and others, wounds less obvious. You couldn’t fool my father on this particular matter. This gentleman had seen service. Regimental affiliations were exchanged, a few words about common places or shared experiences and a few nods to the change in fortunes between then and now.

The stranger drifted away with a few of my Father’s dollars while we continued our walk. Dad accepted a pencil to maintain the dignity of the exchange, but I believe that’s all he kept. The lesson lay in what he gave and it wasn’t the cash.

Going for a walk is more than starting here and ending there. It’s where we teach our children.

Lesson #71 – Dances With Stones

Diet be damned! Lifestyle be damned! Environment be damned! Kidney stones are genetic so suck it up and learn to live with it. My father had stones, my mother too, albeit hers were of the gall bladder variety, and I just listened to my sister recount her latest adventures in pain and her growing fondness for Demerol.

Lesson #71 – Dances With Stones

Lesson #80 – Piping For Fun & Profit

There is precious little fun and no profit that I’ve yet discovered. It is hard, hard work and if you’re looking for return on investment, after 30-ish years I don’t think I’ve reached break-even yet. I’m not complaining, I’m just making an observation. If I had any sense, I would give it all up, hang my pipes on the wall as a conversation piece and lie to the world about how great I once was. Reputations can only grow with the passing or retirement of the performer.

But in truth, I’ll probably stay at it. “Pardon me, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, Practice, Practice.” In my case progress is in increments so small they cannot be measured. Indeed, after a spell of neglect the effort to claw my way back to even a comparable level can be an overwhelming challenge.

But there always seems to be that telephone call from a friend of a friend who needs a tune or two to help celebrate or mourn some special occasion. How can I say “No”? In general, the audience is not so critical of the performance as the performer, but I want to give the event its due. If I drag out the same old tired tunes, they’re reasonably fresh to the listeners and they’re usually preoccupied with who’s walking down the aisle or being planted in the ground. I’m cursed with a modicum of ethics that demands some fair measure for the honorarium I may (or may not) be charging. My general rule is that performances for relatives and close friends are gratis. For all the rest, it’s whatever the market will bear without seeming greedy and factoring in my limited talents. So, if you’re inviting me to the affair, I’m a pretty cheap date.

Lesson #80 – Piping For Fun & Profit

Lesson #99 – Teachers Teach

It appears obvious, but it’s not. I’ve had teachers who have educated, teachers who have administered. Some have delivered an agenda while others have followed a course outline. However, I can count on the fingers of one hand, and still have a digit or two left over, the teachers who have actually taught me something. So here I would like to have a stab at identifying what they gave me and why I consider it important enough to be a “Lesson”.

Miss Velma Sanguin was the ideal teacher for grades one and two. She followed our group of wide-eyed innocents from first to second grade and taught us in her gentle and caring way that school and learning were nothing to fear. In the hot early summer months, she would send a couple of the more responsible kids to the corner store for a case of popsicles to cool us off. She once invited Laurel Moffat & I to her spinsterish home for dinner with her mother, tea and lace doilies and dainty cakes for dessert. It was a gentler time and she taught me to love school and that learning was nothing to fear.

Grade three was a dark horror, presided over by a disciplinarian with a sharp tongue and a mistrust of all youngsters. There was a lesson here too, but it was not a love of learning.

Grade four redeemed my faith. Miss Pat Stewart was young and alive and gifted with a disposition that shone like a spring day. She loved this work she did. School sparkled and learning was a joy. Forty years later on at a school reunion where we wandered about those ghostly halls, now with children of our own in hand, a voice called out “David Black”. She still recognized me, and by God, I still saw the twinkle in her eye.

High school English has the power to sound a death knell for any appreciation of the language. I’ve seen it. I’ve experienced it at the hands of teachers with little regard for words or the way they are put together. And they had even less regard for the faces before them. Rollie Detcher was the exception. He dared me to explore the meaning of words and challenged me to step beyond the approved curriculum. He was old enough to be venerable when I first met him and

Production his status only increased as I came to know him. Indiscreet smoke would curl from beneath the door of the English Teachers lounge from his pipe that was not supposed to be lit. Rollie Detcher had little regard for conventions, either social or literary, and he passed on a love of exploration and curiosity to anyone willing to be taught.

Lesson #100 – You Are Not Required

This is the final lesson in my list. It may seem an odd topic on which to end, but of course it’s not an ending. I feel like a yo-yo that has come to the fullest length of the throw, spun idly for a while and is about to accelerate in a new direction. Not required. It is a lesson that has taken a very long time to become apparent and runs contrary to everything I’ve been lead to believe up until now. But in summing up a lifetime (almost) of experience, it pretty much says it all. You (I, Me, Us ,We, the whole lot, but most specifically I) are not required. We are surplus to requirements. Thank you very much, but the world will continue to turn if you don’t do this and you don’t do that ,,,, add your own “don’t do” here. But don’t be discouraged. This is a good thing. It’s a very liberating concept and this, more profoundly than the truth, will set you free.

Because you are now free to apply a more careful measure to everything you do. For example, you are now free to learn how to give. Here is the true heart of charity, where giving is a voluntary act, free of demand, necessity, or expectation. You give because you sense a need and you are free to respond with no compulsion. It is a selfless act.

You are also free to learn the more delicate and demanding art of receiving. Whether it is a gift, a greeting or a smack in the head, you are now able to savour, appreciate or to digest what comes your way. Since there is now no obligation to return in kind.

I no longer respond to what & where I am required, but can elect to go and apply myself to what & where I am needed, the difference being the former is what others demand. The latter is what I demand of myself. The former demands a response, the latter a judgment.

A requirement is what others judge it to be.

A need is what I judge it to be.

I find myself at a crossroads like no other I’ve faced in my life and seeing no clear path, I am puzzled, vexed and depressed. I feel like a retriever, casting back and forth, searching for a clear scent to lead me to the target.

Fin