I’m an optimist……..it’s the only reason I can think of to explain my never ending capacity to be disappointed in people. I must retain some vestige of hope, hidden away beneath a grim certainty that as a race we can, and will, eventually fuck up everything we touch.
Hope…..acquired from being fortunate enough to witness acts that demonstrate we have the capacity to behave admirably, heroically even. I think though that for every profound human achievement there are a thousand small acts of courage and justice that get us through each and every day. Those acts go mostly unnoticed, so I am going to share a couple I’ve been fortunate to witness.
I was in another fucking airport. I don’t like airports and this day was even worse because I had to fly West Jet. Lots of people like West Jet but I would rather fly without having one of the two airwaitresses named Chelsea tell the passengers that she is going to be our M.C. today. There is no requirement for a pilot at a wedding so I fail to grasp what fucking value a master of ceremonies adds to a flight from Calgary to Winnipeg. I think that rather than telling jokes and introducing school teams that she should be telling people to sit the fuck down so we can get this baby in the air on time.
Plus I don’t like knowing that school teams are flying with me because I always think about how badly a year book is going to get fucked up if we crash.
Anyway, I was sitting near some shops debating how to kill an hour when this woman and her son provided a moment I think of often. Mom was leading the way, she was tall, an inch or two over six feet in heels. She was wearing a business jacket and skirt that were flattering and she was trying to motivate her son to pick up the pace. Her son was about thirteen and he badly wanted to be thug like. He was trying hard to project a white rapper vibe, I guess like Marshall Mathers.
But this version was a kid so I’ll call him m&m. He was about five feet three inches tall and skinny enough to be an extra in Schindlers List, so not exactly imposing. His untied basketball sneakers were at least three sizes too big for him and his pants rode about halfway between his waist and knees. Batman cartoons on his publically displayed boxers would have been strangely appropriate. The chains draped over his Chicago bulls jersey made him look more like pharaoh than a gangster and his sideways hat with tag still attached screamed white kid wannabe from Airdrie, not Inglewood gangster.
He was lagging, and mom had stopped and turned toward him and was asking him to get his ass in gear. She turned away again and started to walk when m&m uttered six words that piqued my attention. He said ” Yo, yo bitch, calm yo tits.”
Business mom stopped dead in her tracks. One second you could hear the precise click of high heels in a hurry and then…….absolute silence. M&M was wrapped up in trying to project dangerous so he didn’t notice she had stopped and as a result missed the real danger that was about to enter his thug life.
She turned. Her face was a paradox for me. Obviously enraged yet beautiful and deadly. Like a Cobra or a Lioness poised to strike. M&M was oblivious and he continued to move nearer to her. I instinctively thought about providing a shouted warning to him but I was too late.
A blur of Chanel menace moved toward him so quickly that he only had a second of abject terror to realise he was utterly fucked. He didn’t even get his hands up into a defensive posture before she was on him.
The look on his face will be with me forever. Sometimes if I’m having a bad day I close my eyes and savor the memory. It makes me happy.
His jersey ended up in her fist and she twisted it forcefully enough to restrict his air intake which was actually good for his survival because he stopped talking. With one arm, she raised him to her eye level, providing him with the first time his Nike’s had actually earned their air designation. Then with their eyes locked and faces inches from each other and with what I can best describe as an elegant snarl she said,”I am no ones bitch, if I chose to be someone’s bitch it surely wouldn’t be your bitch. You are a white kid from Airdrie that drove here in a Volkswagen with his mother. Pull up your pants, and don’t talk anymore, you’re embarrassing both of us.”
She dismissively dropped him back to the floor, turned, reacquired her roller case and walked away from him without looking back. He hesitated a millisecond and then pulled up his pants and hurried after her. His whole demeanor had changed. He was paying attention now and I felt like she had at least temporarily made the world and his perspective of the world a little bit better.
I understand that there are some people out there who think she crossed a line when she grabbed little Tupac. I don’t understand why they would think that but I understand they’re out there.
Years ago I went to Grand Forks North Dakota to watch the Canadian juniors play in the world championships. We got snowed in and so ten thousand Canadians, mostly from Winnipeg were stuck. The hotels were all full and people actually ended up sleeping on cots in community centers. We got a hotel room but it was pretty sketchy. I remember wondering if the travel shitshow was going to make this trip memorable for the wrong reasons. Like taking the kids to Disneyworld and any memory of Thunder mountain being surpassed by the hurricane that rolled over Kissimmee.
The trip was memorable for the weather and because Canada dominated all the way to a gold medal, but there were a couple of other moments with our American neighbors worth sharing.
Not everyone from Canada was drunk for the entire week. It’s understandable that the Americans might think that though, because there were alot of drunk people and they were all wearing team Canada jerseys. Mostly guys between eighteen and thirty……or maybe seventeen and forty, possibly forty five.
In between the second and third period of the semifinal game, the arena announcer reported to the crowd that more beer had been consumed at the Canadian home games in the round robin than in all the games that year for the University team that called the arena home.
Our American hosts and commentators then looked on bemusedly as the Canadian fans rose to their feet and provided a couple minutes of deafening self congratulatory applause and cheering for the notable accomplishment.
It was a pretty fucking funny moment to be a part of though. I could see the Americans that worked the Arena looking at one another with a little puzzlement and then as the reason for the noise dawned on them they would start to laugh and join in.
The fact the Americans laughed made me pleased to be their neighbor, but I had another moment the next day that was even better. Remember that somewhere around ninety percent of the eleven and a half thousand seating capacity in the arena were Canadians and we were already on a record path for beer consumption.
The announcement that the highways were closed was met with cheers instead of groans, and the beer sales jumped sharply as people realised there was nowhere to drive after the game so we might as well get pissed. As a result there was a strong rumor the next day that the entire city was perilously close to running out of beer. With the highways closed the situation looked grim.
I was outside the arena smoking before the start of the next Canadian game. It was snowing pretty hard so I was hanging out in a shelter with these guys from Winnipeg. They were all absolutely wasted and seemed oblivious to the cold in their red tights, face paint and white capes. They actually looked like drunken bobsledders only with capes.
Anyway, some State Troopers looking businesslike in their trooper hats with chin straps came over and asked us to please move back from a railing that overlooked a delivery ramp under the arena. The Toban’s put up some verbal resistance about wanting to stay in the shelter but the cop got cranky and yelled at them so they complied.
Once we moved back, the trooper got on his radio and soon we sawthe flashing lights from a trooper four by four come out of the snow escorting a line of big rigs. There were troopers everywhere, and they lined up to allow the trucks to pass safely without running over Captain Canada.
We weren’t sure what the hell was happening until the trucks got nearer and you could read the Budweiser and Michelob logo’s. As fate would have it, the trooper that gave us shit earlier was the nearest to us. One of the painted Toban’s pointed toward the trucks and yelled excitedly to his buddies. “Look, they risked their lives to escort beer trucks through the storm, these fucking guys rock.”
I could see that our trooper friend was listening and I thoughtI saw a bit of a grin but I couldn’t be sure he wasn’t grimacing from the wind and snow. As the first truck started to back in, the painted Toban’s transitioned flawlessly from random cheering to chanting, “U.S.A…..U.S.A……U.S.A.”
The cop turned to face them and burst out laughing. I like to think that the stress of the drive vanished as he bowed theatrically to the growing crowd and acknowledged their appreciation with a couple friendly waves.
It was a good moment and when you consider that state troopers, beer delivery and a mob of pissed up Canadian hockey fans is a recipe for disaster, that good moment became a really good one. Those moments are out there everywhere. I guess the trick is to recognise and then appreciate them.