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Tuesday 25 March 1986

The house is ours!¹ That’s a nice house I tell ya!

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1. I remember him with the rumpled look of the time which has been captured in some photos. The thick beard. The lumberjack clothes. He comes in the door and says its ours and my sister and I rush to hug him. We were excited about moving for all the usual reasons. The calendar tells me it was a Tuesday; we’d come home from school, and he’d been out negotiating. Worked out the deal, got the papers signed or whatever. Twenty years later he makes a show of the slowness of the corn syrup, saying it’s like molasses in January, although we have central heating now and he never eats molasses anyway. Time has shaved off the beard and etched gray into the air, and taken away a healthy plumpness which never turned obese and which I think I’ve inherited. He fills the coffee mug with the ice cream, a chore since the block is frozen hard. Then the patience of the thick corn syrup, which he’s always enjoyed with ice-cream.

Sunday 23 March 1986

We went to check out a house. Well, I think we might move.¹

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1.On 1986: When I later went to artschool and was taught about Modernism I never thought I would one day apply to that idea to my life, but I see it now quite clearly as an apt was of summing up 1986. For, in my mind, there is striation of a pre-1986 world, and the post-1986 world, and for years, the post 1986 world was the Modern one. The world of now, the present, the near yesterday. Of course, this is now 20 years later, and I can look back as to why 1986 had a different flavour and immediacy because of the way this day shaped by experience.

We went to check out a house. The folks had been looking to move for a while so we’d been to other houses. I vividly remember the dandelions in Comeauville the day we went to see the house with a turret. That must have been the previous May. On this day, as we walked in the front door, I can still see the boys in the field across the street playing around their little salvaged-plywood fort. We toured the house and went home, and I don’t really remember much about that - the boys in the field is what has stayed with me clearly.

Twenty years later, I was told, I’d be sitting in a dentist’s chair, with a mask over my nose, breathing laughing gas. Twenty years from now, it’ll be a Thursday, whispered, and this is what you’ll see. Pink and yellow and blue. Their faces over you. Reminded of those silly scenes in movies where doctors look down over the camera. The pinch and the flash as the teeth are removed. I didn’t feel a thing. This isn’t a big deal. Wow. Did you get it all out? All of it? All of it, she answers. She’s very pretty, and you keep thinking that’s half the sedation right there - to have such a pretty girl to look at during the procedure. Later the freezing wears off and you’re two teeth short of a full set, but have gone through the initiation rite of our culture, to have some wisdom teeth sacrificed to the gods of good dentistry. The coincidence is a little staggering actually, isn’t it: you sacrifice your wisdom teeth to become a full adult in this culture of stupidity. Or maybe I’m just being cynical. Of course, what does recuperation consists of? Channel surfing. Too distracted by the wounds to try reading, you listen to CBC3 podcasts with the TV on mute, and go round and round and round. Like Sampson’s haircut, your dental procedure has made you vulnerable to celebrity gossip and marketing campaigns.

But twenty years before, it was the prospect of moving, which opened a new chapter into your life.

Saturday 22 March 1986

Well, it’s the last week of bowling. Next week’s a banquet.¹

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1. I bowled on Saturdays and found it boring. Or maybe that was the following year … anyway, the banquet was something to look forward to. Little more than a potluck, it to, if I remember correctly, was boring.

Friday 21 March 1986

R’s¹ party was the pits. The car almost didn’t start to go to that garbage.

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1. As I recall, the car almost didn’t start because of the cold. R was my best friend through gradeschool, although it seems to me that our friendship would come to a close within the year, if I remember correctly. This party was a sleepover, and I recall being in the top bunk and freaked out by the general weirdness of the thing. R’s brother was a bully who I think spent time in reform school … and then these girls showed up who were intimating sexuality in ways that I wasn’t ready for which freaked me out even more. I got mad at them and told them I wasn’t ready to have sex, although I was probably overreacting, since they were trying to seduce us or anything - they were maybe 13 or 14 themselves, but needless to say, the atmosphere wasn’t one were I felt comfortable. Hence, ‘the party was the pits’.

Thursday 20 March 1986

Good day. You know this March break is kind of boring sometimes. Goto call, going to party tonight.

Wednesday 19 March 1986

Great day. Went to Yarmouth! Got Keith (Voltron). Went to McDonalds for supper. Got a fun crossword.