Posted on May 6, 2013 under Storytelling with 11 comments

Getting a haircut these days is a lesson in humility.  As well, from a purely financial view, it is one of the worst “value for money” propositions I can think of … for me, that is.  You see, in my youth, I had ample hair but the afro pic has long been retired.  Hair brush manufacturers have one less customer.  However, a monthly trip to the barbershop is a staple which I am not apt to give up anytime soon even if I end up just going for a shine.  You see, a barber shop or hair salon happens to be the news hub of most small towns.

Privacy, secrecy and confidentiality are the hallmarks of most businesses.  The recent papal conclave epitomized discretion.  I am not here to suggest that barbers or hair stylists are any less professional than anyone else, but you won’t have to wait for white smoke at the barber shop to find out about the most recent scandal.

I am a long distance runner and over the past eight years I have spent thousands of hours pounding the pavement with my long-suffering running partner, Charlene.  When you spend that much time with one person, the stories come out.  Growing up, our two large Catholic families totalled 26 bodies.  It didn’t take us too many runs to figure out that not only were our families odd and dysfunctional but that this was the norm for most, if not all, families.  We trust each other with many secrets and our mantra has become “what goes on on the road, stays on the road”.

Normally, I get my trim early in the morning.  I am usually the only customer in the barbershop at this time of the day so the banter is free and easy.  But as the day wears on and the pace picks up, it is not unusual to see all four chairs going at once and the waiting area full.  It is at these times that the owner should post a hazard sign: “Speak at your own peril”.

As we all know, you hear lots of gossip in a barber shop or hair salon.  If you want to keep something private, this would probably be the last place on earth that you would utter anything that was meant to be kept in confidence.  This is not to be taken as a slight to barbers and hair dressers.  They just happen to be in the line of fire.  With clippers buzzing and hairdryers humming, you need to speak loudly to be heard.  This means that your story becomes everyone’s story.

At one point or another in our lives, we have said something that we regretted.  For some couples it starts with “I do”.  We have sent an e-mail and the moment we hit the send button, we sorely wished we hadn’t.  It is just human nature.  These things usually happen in the heat of battle and you just have to live with the consequences.  But it is a whole different matter when you have said nothing and find yourself in a compromising position.

In our part of the world, the bag limit for deer is one.  Last fall, during the height of the deer season, a hunter was having his haircut.  He was accompanied to the barber shop by his verbose eight year old son who sat impatiently in a packed barber shop.  The barber, an avid hunter himself, innocently asked his customer’s son if his father had gotten a deer yet.  “Oh yes”, came the quick reply. “He got two so far”.

Every head in the shop swivelled in the direction of the little boy, for seated beside him was the game warden.

Instinctively, all four barbers revved up the clippers, hair dryers – anything to cut the tension and fill in the dead air permeating the room.  This was followed by rather large grins and the odd guffaw.  Out of the mouths of babes…..

What goes on in the barber shop … does not stay in the barber shop.

Posted on May 5, 2013 under Storytelling with no comments yet

Sometimes, words just aren’t enough. A few things caught my attention yesterday as I worked through my Saturday chores. For the first time this spring, I was able to hang out laundry on the clothes line. Is there anything more delightful than the smell of sheets and pillow cases that have been blowing in the wind?

Or is there anything more tasty than the first bite of a piece of fresh key lime pie?

How about the smell of a bag of freshly ground coffee? Sometimes I think the smell of the coffee is better than the taste but it’s very hard to describe that smell in words. And speaking of smell, I can still remember the smell of my grandfather’s pipe tobacco. It was called Amphora and it came in a bag. I didn’t care much when he lit it up, but when he opened the bag, the smell was….Words don’t do justice.

And many years ago, we had a young woman from France come to spend a summer with us, ostensibly to get some experience working with children. Now there is a story unto itself! But I vividly, to this day, remember one evening when we went to visit a friend of mine who had a summer home in South Side Harbor. She loved to take pictures and on this particular evening, there was a spectacular sunset. She had her camera at the ready but chose not to take a picture. She said it was too beautiful for a camera to adequately capture the image.

As much as we like to write and describe things, there are lots of sensory things that defy description.

I have several new stories ready to go so you can expect something new on Monday. We are expecting a magnificent, warm sunny day in Antigonish today. If you are well, count your blessings.

Posted on May 3, 2013 under Storytelling with one comment

It must be spring. The birds are singing before sunrise, the peepers are peeping before sunset and you can smell the earth coming to life.  Flowers are emerging from hibernation.  And the sure sign of spring in a university town: moving vans.  Another university year has concluded and thousands of students are on the move.

The other morning I stepped out onto my front porch and noticed more than the usual level of activity in our neighbor’s yard.  A discrete inquiry rendered the following information: our neighbor was taking a day off work to move his son’s girlfriend to a university two hours up the road.  His son will follow her there, temporarily, before he relocates to China.  Sounds like business as usual for today’s parents.

A few generations ago, life was so simple.  Your grandparents bought a house that they lived in forever.  They got permanent full time jobs and in most cases, worked for the same employer their entire careers.  Their children grew up, got educated and left home … and didn’t return.  Ever.

Is it just me or have I spent my entire adult life moving somebody somewhere?  Before I got married, I moved several times.  And over my lifetime, I have helped countless other people move.  But the moving phenomenon really took hold when I got married and my children became teenagers.

If you don’t live in a university town you might not really appreciate the term “sublet”.  You can go and check the word in Webster’s Dictionary.  The standard definition is easy to comprehend.  When your sullen and often aggravating children, still in high school, approach you in the spring and inquire about subletting an apartment in town, several emotions run through your body at once.  You don’t know who is happier at this prospect: you or your child.  You know the upside.  You will have a modicum of peace in the household for a few months. However the term “sublet” for a high school student really translates as follows: “Mom and dad, I want to party like crazy”.

Against your better judgment you agree, and besides the damage deposit, which you know you will never see again, you help your son or daughter move their meager possessions. This is their first move but as experience tells us, it will certainly not be the last.  Little do you know that this fascination with moving will become a lifelong passion, maybe even a career, for one or more of your children.

When the summer ends and you have forfeited the damage deposit, the apartment now resembles the clubhouse for the Hells Angels after a raid.  You also now have have the opportunity, not a once in a lifetime opportunity, I am quick to add, to clean the aforementioned hell hole, as your offspring has to get ready to go back to school.  Is there anything more soul destroying than cleaning a mess (code for disaster area) created by a band of barbarians?  Yes there is.  It is doing this for another child in another apartment, again and again and again.  Think Bill Murray in “Ground Hog Day”.

There are six universities in Halifax, our provincial capital, home to the navy and 25,000 party animals who attend these institutions of “higher learning”.  Do you have any concept of what moving day is like in a place like this?  We do.  One of our children was attending university and in early September, Halifax looks like an advertisement for U-Haul. The city is crawling with moving vans of every description.  Many of the accommodations on and off campus are in high rises.

We are very organized people.  Months earlier we had dutifully booked a cube van from a reputable moving company. We knew that only the slothful procrastinators of this world would get their comeuppance when the end of summer rolled around and they would realize that finding a moving van would be akin to discovering the Higgs Boson particle.  We had also reserved the elevator at the high rise, at a specific time of day, which is the usual custom.

On a crisp September morning, fuelled with appropriate amounts of caffeine for the task at hand, I approached the front counter of the van rental agency.  A young man with the energy of a slug, nonchalantly  informed me that they did not have my van.  They had “overbooked”.  It was as if he was telling me that they had run out of paper clips or toothpicks.  Until this point in my life, I had never considered inflicting bodily harm on a member of the human species.  The Halifax Explosion of 1917 was about to appear like a fender bender compared to what I was about to unleash on this troglodyte.  A carefully worded message to his manager on the phone resolved the impasse.

And when it comes to fun factor, try moving one of your children who has been cohabiting with a friend, when the relationship goes sour.  I remember renting a van and moving both of the aggrieved parties to their new lairs.  And yes, once I rented a van and moved one of my children from Halifax to home and then reloaded the van with treasures from another child and moved them from home to Halifax.

Not including safe passage on a passenger vessel, I figure that it will take my neighbor about 37 days to drive to China.  We will do almost anything to get our progeny settled once and for all.