Monthly Archives: June 2021

About Manners

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[It’s fun to look back on my column from twenty-some years ago. Now my boys are sporting their own piercings and, as always, question anything that doesn’t seem relevant. And our town is refreshingly UN-ethnocentric now.]

This morning as we were having breakfast, the sound of a cement mixer interrupted the conversation I was having with my husband. Upon closer examination (although the resemblance with mouth open was astonishing), we realized that it was our middle son Tim, accompanying the chewing of his toast with a very audible, if fluctuating, hum. Rick promptly directed him not to open his mouth when eating. Tim, always obedient if it can be made into a joke, looked directly at his Dad and with a smirk, kept his lips pursed and tried to shove his toast into his mouth. Flushing away all of Dad’s effort at teaching Tim some manners, I nearly choked on my toast as I snickered uncontrollably.

It occurred to me later in the day that in the whole business of teaching our three sons some manners, it’s probably going to get a lot worse before it gets better. The situation is even more serious if they can succeed in making Mom and Dad laugh when we’re supposed to be stern. The trouble with etiquette is that a lot of it doesn’t make sense to a child. If spaghetti is served, why can’t it be thoroughly enjoyed with all aspects of the face and hands, as well? Why do you have to say “excuse me” when your body performs an uncontrollable function? Why do you have to say “thank you” for a gift you don’t like? Why can’t you stare at the person with multiple body piercings in apparently awkward places? Wasn’t that the whole point? So that people will notice?

Then there’s the whole realm of political correctness. In our primarily ethno-centric community, it’s always a point of fascination for my kids to see someone different than them. Although television helps, real life is no contest. It’s hard to tell a small child that they shouldn’t bring up a person’s color or nationality to them, not to mention size, disability, length of hair or choice of clothing, because the person might find it offensive. In a child’s reasoning, the obvious question is: “Why?” If that’s what the person is, what’s the big deal talking about it?

If kids were always perfect, polite and politically correct, “Kids Say the Darndest Things” wouldn’t have gone past the pilot episode. And lots of magazines will pay good money for you to repeat the very thing about your child that at one moment exasperated you and made you laugh the next. As one mother related when trying to get her demanding daughter to ask nicely for a book, the little girl blurted out impatiently, “Please, excuse me, thank you and God bless!”

Fortunately, most people happily excuse a child’s curiosity and their fumbled attempts at politeness. But just in case, it might not be a bad idea to teach them a blanket statement like that one!

About Accidents

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Photo by Matt Hudson on Unsplash

A recent Instagram post about taking personal responsibility after life deals you a crappy hand reminded me of something I read a few years ago in a book about achieving Your Personal Potential: you can prevent pretty much any bad thing that happens to you. You got struck by lightning? What were you doing out in that storm wielding a key tied to a kite, Mr. Franklin? You got passed over for a promotion? Well, at least you kept up your social media accounts – albeit during work hours (oops). You almost peed your pants on the 2-hour trip from Vermilion to Edmonton? Maybe you shouldn’t have had that extra cup of coffee before you left home or you should have stopped in half-way Vegreville. Mmmhmm?

You see where I’m going with this? Poop happens (again, another kind of accident), but mostly it’s preventable if we just take the time to Play the Movie in our heads of What Could Happen Next. Or as my husband likes to say: “Be a Boy(Girl/Person) Scout!”

I am reminded every time I go in my garden shed to retrieve my pail and my dandelion digger of The Time I Got Locked In the Garden Shed. Even though this is a different shed, the memory – and what I learned – still reverberates. The shed door had a vertical bolt lock, the kind that’s often installed horizontally. You pulled it up and opened the door but sometimes the bolt part stayed in the pulled-up state. On more than one occasion, on a windy day, I witnessed the door slam shut and the bolt fall into place. But on all those times, I was outside the shed.

Until I wasn’t. One day, I went into the shed to quickly pick up my pail when the door quickly shut behind me. This is where I argue The Case For Carrying Your Cell Phone With You At All Times. I phoned whomever was in the house and was subsequently rescued, with only the minute-est amount of snickering or consideration of leaving me in the shed for awhile (Because: Boys) – mostly because all those people in the house knew who was making them supper that night and for most nights after that. But in the 45 seconds between the phone call and the rescue I frantically made a survival plan of sleeping wrapped up in a tarp with a bag of lawn seed for a pillow, that is until I had eaten all the grass seed, the only organic edible that was in the shed. And I also berated myself for not propping open the door to prevent such an accident. [I also commanded myself NOT TO THINK ABOUT THE SPIDERS.]

Since I didn’t prevent “the accident”, I needed to do the optimistic thing and Look For The Lesson. I am now highly suspicious of all garden sheds, which is why you will see me painstakingly prop open the door of my now-tiny little shed with two or three of the tires that reside within. And why I store some Clif bars and an old sleeping bag in there as well. (JK. But a Person Scout probably would give me a merit badge if I did do that.)

But then, sometimes there are such things as Happy Accidents. There was another scene involving this same shed when I was on the other side of the yard, perhaps even in the same summer that I got locked inside. The rule was that whoever cut the grass was supposed to take the rolling garbage can full of grass clippings and empty it into the green bin on our block, no matter how many times you had to do it and no matter how tired you were after cutting our half-acre of grass. But on this particular occasion, one of the grass-cutters in the family had failed to do that and had wheeled the bucket full of grass into the shed and left it there. For a few days. Or maybe a week.

Until Tim and Simon opened the door to get a basketball to shoot some hoops. And after getting accosted with the smell of rotting grass, they were then overwhelmed by hundreds of little white butterflies streaming out of the shed, out of that bin of smelly grass. The three of us witnessed a real-life Planet Earth moment, but no cameras were rolling because we never expected such a magical thing to happen. We stood there and watched as the butterflies slowly dispersed and drifted off into the sky like so many helium balloons, all looking to reach Their Own Personal Potential. But the cameras of our minds were rolling and we still talk about it some ten years later.

There are some accidents we certainly wish we could prevent, but then they (hopefully) teach us a valuable lesson to Be More Careful. And then there are some accidents we know yield some crazy Butterfly Effect that made us happy that we weren’t.

About 10,000 Steps

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Photo Credit: Greg Rosenke on Unsplash

Sometime last year, I bought myself a Fitbit. My motivation was mostly to keep myself honest about how much movement I was engaging in each day, especially since most of my work has me sitting at my desk and not moving my feet except to readjust them on my foot cushion. I downloaded the Fitbit app to my iPhone and fiddled around with it a little, but I did not change the default suggestion to try and meet the goal of 10,000 steps each day.

Guess what I found out? It’s kinda hard to get 10,000 steps every single day. Unless you’re a waitress or dog walker or a construction worker or elementary school teacher. But for me, meeting this goal is a decision I need to make very consciously. Even one turn around my beloved pond racks up only about 1000 steps. Maybe I need to take smaller strides?

Walking is kind of non-negotiable, though, isn’t it? It’s something that nearly everyone can do, the low-tide mark of basic movement and fitness. My denturist husband sees a number of older patients and whenever he meets someone who is still strong and spry after all their years, he casually interviews them: How do you stay so healthy? What’s your secret? And inevitably they report back to him that they walk. They are literally a ambling advertisement for good health.

So what’s the magic of 10,000? That number roughly equals 4 miles and the daily equivalent of meeting that can help you lose weight or at least maintain the status quo (as long as you’re not walking to the Ice Cream and Beer Store). And it can help regulate your blood pressure and blood sugar. All really good things.

So, every day I need to walk at least 10,000 steps and a couple times of week I also need to add in some strength training – because, hello? we lose muscle mass every second over 50. But 10,000 steps at one shot – for me – takes somewhere around 60 to 90 minutes. I don’t always have that kind of time.

Or do I? The alternative is…what, exactly? To spend more time watching television or scrolling through Instagram or reading – all of which are tempting in their own insipid way. After all, a body at rest tends to stay that way – it’s a Newtonian Law. If I don’t make the conscious decision every day to move then I’m making the opposite to stay on my butt. It’s not like I have to chase little people like I did when I was a young mama – and when it was probably harder to try limit myself to only 10,000 steps a day.

Of course, much of my sitting time is Working Time. But taking a time out for a walk – even around the house for a couple minutes as my Fitbit reminds me at 10 minutes to every hour – can be so rejuvenating. Just like when I was a young mama and Rick had to get me Out of the House and Away from the Kids in order to refocus, a step outside the house can be transforming. In other words, a hour a day is a small investment in my future.

See ya later. I gotta go for a walk.

About Walking the Pond

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One of the hidden blessings of our move just a few blocks west in our town is how close we are to The Pond. While we have lived for the last 16 or so years on the edge of Vermilion Provincial Park and have enjoyed the trails immensely, the five minutes it takes to walk to The Pond from where we currently live has been a true serendipity. Even when Rick gets home from work tired, once we get out the door for our constitutional, we are never sorry when we get to The Pond.

We’ve always been Walkers but the lockdown last March definitely cemented that distinction. With everything closed, the great outdoors became our gymnasium. With extra people in the house, each one of us used the park as our personal retreat. For the sake of just exercise, walking anywhere will do, but I find that the spiritual and emotional benefits of beautiful scenery definitely amplify the physical.

Walking the pond in the fall and winter is quieter – although we do see a lot of action from the muskrats. AND THE CRAZY BEAVERS.

But in the spring, it’s like Nature cannot contain herself. The leaves erupt from the trees like a time-elapsed video. And the beavers get chased away, it seems, by the influx of ducks and blackbirds. And maybe people – because we’re not the only ones who appreciate the finer points of The Pond.

I missed the crocuses this year, but yesterday I saw my first buffalo bean at The Pond!

And there’s always a lot of unreasonably paranoid gopher citizens on patrol.

Last year, Rick and I witnessed the hilarious mating rituals of the Red-Winged Blackbirds as the males danced crazily along the path totally oblivious to us as we walked by. However, I learned that a little later in June, they’re not so oblivious anymore and I stay away from the pond for awhile to avoid the protective dive-bombing parents.

But the best part, in the early morning, is the orchestra of frogs and birds and critters. Sound on!