January 18, 2002

Thirty years ago:

I was earning straight A's in Miss Goater's Primary II class at The Eliot School, Devonshire Parish, Bermuda. My best friend for that year was Dennis Emery. We lived in a small bungalow with the quaint name of Gondora Cottage. The backyard was full of citrus trees - tangerine, orange, tangelo, lemon and lime. We had recently given away my dog Duffy, because my little sister had fallen on him and he reacted by biting her on the cheek. He had not adjusted well to the climate there. When I went to bed at night, before I fell asleep I used to imagine that my bed was a sailing yacht. Under the covers was below deck, where there were 4 cabins (one in each corner of the bed) that I shared with my imaginary friend/girlfriend/wife Mary. She was shorter than me, with jet black hair and emerald eyes. We would sail the oceans together, defying the tempests that rose up to swamp us. As I grew older, sometimes I would dream about her so vividly that when I awoke I had to pause to realize that me lying in my bed was reality, not the dreamscape where I had just been. I wonder what became of her. On Good Friday, my family and Dennis's got together atop a hill near his house, had a picnic lunch and joined with everyone else in Bermuda flying kites. There's a slide or a photograph, likely buried in Dad's basement under the watchful eye of his widow, of Dennis and I flying our kites soooo high that you can barely see them. At school during recess, we would play marbles or jacks, or just run around the playing field like fiends. I hadn't a clue about what I wanted to do with my life. The epitome of halcyon days.

Twenty years ago:

I was about to graduate from Grade 12 at The St. Catharines Collegiate, St. Catharines, Ontario. I should have graduated the year previous, having been advanced a grade by my other Bermuda school nine years earlier, but I stopped caring about my education somewhere around Grade 7 which culminated in my frittering away and essentially repeating my Grade 11. I started to care about my education again in time for Grade 12. My parents marriage was in its death throes; they would soon separate and subsequently go through a messy divorce. Every weekend in an old storeroom above the Rahams store in downtown St. Catharines, I would play Dungeons & Dragons with a regular group of like-minded folks. Soon, we would form the Niagara Gamers Association (I was elected Vice-president somehow) and hold 2 moderately successful gaming conventions at Brock University. My half-brother Robin rolled through town around the time of my birthday and bought me a 2-4 of Molson Canadian for my birthday, thinking I was turning 19. That case lasted a couple of months. (A year later, it would last a couple of days. ) I started smoking. I started writing poetry. I was still very naive when it came to affairs of the heart and remained girlfriend free. A friend took to me to a strip club in Thorold and I saw my first live and up close naked breasts. I nearly fainted. I shared my bed with my cat Boots, who used my bedroom window as his primary means of getting in and out. I had my first two encounters with ghosts - one when a ghost cat jumped on my bed, the other at a friend's house when the ghost opened and slammed shut the already locked screen door. I hadn't a clue about what I wanted to do with my life.

Ten years ago:

I was going through the motions of my lameduck job, my position being officially phased out. Unofficially I was getting jobbed by the head bean counter, who hadn't a clue about how to manage computer systems. I would remain unemployed for 3 months before finding a new job, one I am in still a decade later. Lisa and I had been living together for about 4 years, though we were having some problems. A year later they would come to a head and we would live apart for a couple of years while we got our shit together individually. We lived in the heart of the gay ghetto in Toronto with our two cats, Katie and Sam. Three years later, Katie would die too young from a genetic heart condition known as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Two weeks after her passing we got Abby and the rest, as they say, is history. Sam is still with us, a decade older and not quite as spry as he was back then. Our first car was on the verge of expiring, the result of which was the purchase of the car I'm still driving today. Lisa was about to lose her Nana to cancer, on the same day that Kristen French was abducted by Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. I had lost my oldest half-brother, who I barely knew, to cancer the year previous. Soon his son, my nephew, would have his face spread across the Toronto papers, guilty of being party to murder. Eventually his story would be told in a segment on the CBC news series The Fifth Estate. That same year there was an attempted suicide from the top of our 30 floor apartment building, for which I placed a 911 call (the jumper being some 29 floors above our balcony you see) that helped the police locate the distraught woman and grab her before she let go of the railing. There was also a murder in our building. The victim was dumped down the garbage chute into the dumpster, which were next to our apartment and just below our balcony. We had noticed that the place was smelling of rotting meat. When we arrived home after work to a sea of yellow police tape and television cameras, we knew the reason why. I hadn't a clue about what I wanted to do with my life.

This year:

We've had a cat with cancer, a grandfather with new knees, a new house in our not too distant future, neighbours from hell, some Three Way Action, you name it. Life's not nearly as boring as it makes itself out to be sometimes. I still don't have a clue about what I want to do with my life.

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