I remember....

2008-01-17T08:40:00.000-06:00

I remember a crazy motorbike ride....

Actually, I remember more than one. But this one happens in San Francisco, which makes it cooler!

It was time for a trip. I wanted to go to Europe, but I had blown all my money on French fashion magazines and extravagant parties, so I settled for buying a Greyhound bus ticket and heading south to San Francisco. My friend, I'll call her Shavonne, had invited me to come stay with her for a few weeks, said she'd show me the town.

It's a long, slow ride from Vancouver to San Francisco on a bus, but I'm good on buses. I had great chats with my seat mate, I made friends with the driver, I tried to do yo-yo tricks at every chance to stretch our legs....I was on an adventure! Oh boy!

Shavonne picked me up from the bus depot and we headed straight out to party. I don't remember what bar we went to, but we drank and drank well into the night. We met some of her friends there. One tall, black, and handsome friend started talking about his sportbike. "Oh, I love motorbikes!"

"I drive fast."

"Oh, I love to go fast!!" The ploddingly slow bus trip was mere hours behind me. The thought of speeding on a race bike sounded great!

Before I knew what was happening, I was on the back of this handsome stranger's bike. I remember having a fleeting thought that maybe we shouldn't be going so fast after drinking for such a long time, but the force of the wind as he accelerated blew it out of my mind.

It was late, so there wasn't much traffic...and that was a good thing, because he didn't stop. For anything. Not for red lights, not for other vehicles, not for pedestrians...nothing! He just drove like James Bond was chasing us, and I held on like a beautiful young spy.

I was not afraid. I was exhilarated. He was a very good driver, and there wasn't a scratch on the bike, so I knew he wasn't going to dump us as he leaned us into corner after corner. We finally arrived at his place to meet up with Shavonne and the others. I was in San Francisco! I had just gone on the fastest ride of my life in the middle of the city!! I hadn't even unpacked yet!!! I was on an adventure, oh boy!

I look back on this story, and I am amazed at the stupid risks I was so willing to take. I didn't want to die, I wasn't suicidal...but this wasn't the first time I happily put my life so completely into someone else's hands. The trust involved is staggering. Did I really think I was invincible, or did I still, deep down, believe that there was a God that loved me?

2007-11-09T08:14:00.001-06:00

I remember keeping a promise, even though I wanted to break it...

One of the weirder jobs I ever had was co-host of a short-lived TV show here in Canada. It was called "Pilot 1", aimed at teens. We would film once a week in front of a live audience, and after the third week, we began to recognize many of the kids. We had regulars! It was a lot of fun, a live band once a week, skits, information pieces...a magazine-type show.

The thing is, the show only ran for 8 weeks. Toronto pulled the plug on the Vancouver-filmed show before we even got one season under our belts. That's life with the CBC.

Anyway, one of the boys had asked me on the last day of filming for my number. He was 14. I was impressed with his bravery, so I gave it to him. A little while later, I got a call. "Paula, would you like to get together and reminisce about the show?" How cute. I told him sure, and made plans to meet him in a public place in North Vancouver where he lived.

A few days later I got a phone call from my friend, Dennis. "Hey, Paula, the band is playing a gig in North Vancouver, right outside at the Lonsdale Quay. Come support us! You are our best fan!" It was the same day that I was meeting the kid. Rats and phooey. "I can't come, Dennis. I've...uh...got a date." A date with a kid, why should I bother keeping it, why can't I do what would be way more fun?

What ended up happening was obvious, looking back on the situation. I did both. After meeting the kid at the bus stop in North Van, I suggested we go sit in the sunshine and listen to the Jazzmanian Devils at the Quay. He thought that was an awesome idea. I kept my promise and got to do the fun thing, too! We danced on the deck and had a great time. I remember at one point the band was singing "I Want You to Be My Baby", and every time they would get to that line, they'd all shout my name in unison. It was so funny, and really impressed my date.

I'll bet he remembers that afternoon, too, wherever he is now.

2007-11-03T00:26:00.000-05:00

I remember impressing boys in Junior High...

Most of my junior high years were spent hiding from boys. They either didn't notice me, or did and abused me. I found it was best to try and stay invisible, unnoticed.

But I had one talent that could not go unnoticed or unappreciated. My tongue was (and still is) as long and beautiful as Gene Simmons', and in 1978, that was saying something. Do you remember the rumor about Gene Simmons' tongue? In our school, we heard that his tongue was so long because he had a pig's tongue surgically implanted in his mouth. I was living proof of the error in that rumor.

I'd be at my locker, and some boy would come up to me and say, "Uh, I heard that you can do that Gene Simmons thing with your tongue." I'd unfurl my tongue in the appropriate shape, and the boy would get a look on his face of wonder and amazement. "Wow. Cool." The boy would walk away, and for that moment, I'd feel proud of myself.

I had so much more to offer than my long rock-and-roll tongue. None of those boys in junior high ever found that out. Their loss.

2007-10-17T23:13:00.000-05:00

I remember a strange moving day....

I had been living in a bachelor apartment in the West End of Vancouver. It had been a great place to live, with a friend next door and a swimming pool in the basement, but all of a sudden it was costing too much. I had lost my job and had no money. My friend, Jezebel (remember her from this post?) said I could move in with her. Great!! I would save a bunch of money and move in with a white-skinned bat-cave chick, upping my "cool" rating considerably.

I didn't have much stuff. My apartment had been almost empty, with my clothes in little piles along one wall, my stereo in the living room with my records leaning against it, and the couch that I slept on. That was about it, except for the retro dining table and chairs I had bought at a second-hand store. I decided to nab a shopping cart and load all my earthly belongings into it. Everything fit, except the couch, the table, and chairs. I decided to leave them behind--life was transitory, right?

I pushed the shopping cart into the elevator and rode the six floors down to the main floor. I felt kind of guilty about leaving without giving notice, but figured the table and chairs were a good peace offering to the sweet old landlady.

It was a short six or seven blocks to my new apartment. The shopping cart rattled loudly in the evening darkness. I couldn't help but wonder how far removed was I from the bag lady I appeared to be at that moment? No money coming in, all my possessions in one shopping cart...it was a disturbing thought, no matter how far up the "cool" rating I was moving.

2007-10-06T10:59:00.000-05:00

I remember being seriously freaked out, and liking it...

I had a rare evening alone. My roommates, Don and Irwin, were both out and I had our place all to myself. I had just purchased a new "Tales from the Crypt"...it was a compilation with a whole bunch of old issues all in one edition, and I couldn't wait to read it. I took a bunch of beer upstairs, I rolled myself a few joints, and sat down in my room. It was too bright to read spooky comics! I lit some candles and turned out the overhead light...perfect.

I sat in the dim darkness and read creepy comics for a long time, a few hours at least. I finally finished the last story and put the book down. It was so dark! There were shadows in places I didn't even know my room had! It was so quiet!! I hugged my knees to my chest, freaked out good and proper. After a few moments of that, I had to laugh at myself: a young woman, not some silly teenager, full of fear after reading a comic book. It made me happy to realize I had enough imagination left to still get spooked. I cracked another beer and began to read the comic all over again, start to finish. I stayed up until at least 4 AM, relishing the delicious shivers of fear.

2007-08-15T16:12:00.001-05:00

I remember trying on gloves....

I have a 13 year old daughter, and she is often looking at some new shirt I have and saying "No fair, how come you get all the cool clothes?" and we end up sharing sometimes. I start with this to contrast it with my mother's clothes. Never once in my childhood or teenage years did the thought of wanting to wear my mother's clothing ever occur to me. Her clothing was UGLY, all polyester and fortrel, just awful!!!

Except for the gloves. My mother had a box on the top shelf of her closet, and if my younger sister and I asked nicely, we could take it down. It was full of gloves. There were little white gloves with lace around the wrist. There were long black gloves that pulled up to our armpits. There were orange gloves, green gloves...so many gloves! We had never seen Mom wear these, but we knew that sometime in her past, she must have. This made her mysterious to us, because she didn't seem like the type of woman to wear something as fancy as gloves.

We'd put on the gloves, tie a scarf in our hair, and pretend we were rich. I'd put on the sparkly silver gloves, find some sunglasses, and pretend I was a movie star. Pam would put on the long black gloves and pretend to be a grieving widow....we would take them on and off for hours, pulling them off with our teeth like some vamp in an old movie.

I don't know where the outfits went that matched all of those glamorous gloves. I'll bet they weren't ugly. I'll bet I would have wanted to borrow them.

2007-08-08T11:38:00.000-05:00

I remember being unable to look away...

One of my special treats is taking myself out for lunch. I love eating by myself. I bring a book, I bring my journal, I watch people. This is one of my favorite things to do.

One day I was at a little cafe that used to be above Scratch Records in Vancouver. I was seated in the window with a great view of the street below and the Cambie Hotel right across from me. I was drinking my coffee after my lunch, watching the people walk by, more interesting than waves on the beach. Because of the area, the mix of people was wonderfully strange, business men in expensive suits, drunks, punks...quite a mix of society ebbing and flowing past me.

I leaned back in my chair, and my eye was caught by what was happening in the top window of one room in the Cambie. There were two old looking men with greasy grey hair sitting at a rickety table right in the window. The one man rolled up his sleeve, nice and neat, way above his elbow. As he picked up a rubber tube and began tying it around his arm, the other man lit a match and held it to a spoon.

They were preparing to shoot heroin, right in plain view of me at my shiny table in the neat cafe with a third cup of strong coffee. There was nothing to do but watch or look away, and I found I could not look away. They both injected the drug, then sat at the table nodding. I watched for a long time.

2007-07-20T08:44:00.000-05:00

I remember wondering if the smiles were real....

When I was 11, we went on a family vacation to Disneyland. All six of us piled in the car and we pulled the trailer all the way from Alberta. It was a grand trip, with lots of laughing and singing and goofing around. My older sisters were 21 and 19, so this was probably the last time all of us would spend a vacation together, and we all knew this, so we were milking it for all it was worth.

Disneyland was like an impossible dream come true. We were not a rich family, so my younger sister and I would have never pestered our parents to take us there. I remember the line-ups, I remember the heat, but it didn't matter...we were in the Magical Kingdom!

One thing struck me, though. All the people that worked there, they all had smiles plastered to their faces. The pimply teenager sweeping the grounds, the old lady in the gift shop, the man helping us climb into Captain Hook's ship...everyone in uniform had a big smile on their face. I found it eerie. I may have been 11, but I knew that nobody smiles all the time. I made a mental note to never apply for a job at Disneyland.

2007-07-10T08:26:00.000-05:00

I remember the rain falling sideways....

Travel back with me to Nebraska, 1985. I am selling books. It is Sunday, the one day of the week where we don't have to knock on doors from 7:59 AM until 9:30 PM. It is the day where we meet at the local hotel for our business meeting, which lasts for hours.

We arrive in the parking lot, none of us too anxious to rush inside. It is hot, hotter than usual, and the air is completely still. We all notice it. "Glad I'm not knockin' on doors today!" We are herded inside to one of the windowless banquet rooms for the meeting, leaving the opressive stillness behind.

I don't know how long into the meeting we are, but sometime after the motivational songs are over and sometime before the weekly testimonials, there is a frantic knock at the door. It is a worried looking hotel employee. "Uh, everyone, there is some extreme weather outside, tornadoes or something, and everyone in the hotel has to move to a safer place NOW."

Tornado? I know where they'll lead us, I've read Little House on the Prairie, I've read Wizard of Oz, and I know we'll be taken to the basement where we'll be safe as the winds do their worst. "Which way to the basement?" we ask cheerily. We are booksellers, prepared for anything. We'll probably spend our time in the basement telling jokes and singing songs.

"This hotel doesn't have a basement."

I look to my right as this statement sinks into my mind for a glimpse out of the hotel doors. The first thing I see is rain, rain shooting by like bullets in completely horizontal lines. Then I notice the cars parked by the curb...the wind is scooting them, lifting them a little, then dropping them a few inches farther down the pavement, hop-hop-hop. The sideways rain is whipping by so thickly that I cannot see past the hopping cars. It is a sobering sight.

We are led, along with everyone else in the hotel, into the innermost hallway. This is apparently the most structurally sound part of the building, but none of us are convinced as we listen to the wind howling and raging outside. There are no jokes, and none of us sing. We all feel very small and powerless, and sit with our backs against the hallway wall, hugging our knees in silence.

---------------------------------------

I don't remember how long we sat there. Apparently there were five or six tornadoes fighting it out in the air, though none of them actually touched down. When the storm was over, everyone ran outside to survey the damage, which was amazing and extensive. All the proud American flags were hanging in shreds and tatters. The giant MacDonald's sign had been torn free from its thick metal post; we found shards of the yellow and red plastic embedded in car tires, having sliced through the rubber like razors; one of the inch-thick iron bolts that had held the sign up was bent in half like a noodle and thrust through the center of a car's windshield. We ran to and fro in the parking lot marveling at the destructive power of mere air.

2007-06-20T09:31:00.000-05:00

I remember a nice woman on a rainy day...

During the summer of 1985, I sold books door-to-door with the Southwestern Book Company. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Instead of a boring summer job selling hamburgers or something, I would travel to Nashville for sales school, then they would send our team to some undetermined territory in the USA to sell books all summer. I had never been to Nashville! The adventure of the job grabbed my imagination.

The reality of the job was somewhat different. All I saw of Nashville was the inside of the sales school. Our "undetermined territory" was Nebraska, not at all as romantic as I was hoping. And our schedule...we would start knocking on doors at 7:59 AM, and we wouldn't stop knocking on doors until 9:30 PM, six days a week. On the seventh day God rested, but we had a sales meeting. This grueling schedule was exhausting and monotonous. Our bodies did as our brains told them, but they revolted in any way they could...none of us girls on the team menstruated all summer long. There was no energy to spare.

On one horrible day that will forever remain branded in my memory, the rain poured down in sheets. I kept walking from door to door, knocking like an automaton, droning in a monotone: "Hello, I'm talking to all the folks in the neighborhood with school-age kids, showing them these educational tools..." I was soaking wet, from my head to my book bag to my squishy shoes. Nobody let me in. Nobody. I just kept walking and knocking, walking and knocking for hours in the rain.

It was about four in the afternoon. I had been fruitlessly knocking for eight hours. I knocked on the door in front of me. A woman with a round face and square glasses answered the door. Before I could even begin droning my introduction, she began talking with exclamation marks. "I don't know what you are selling, but you look like a drowned rat! Get in here and dry off!!" and she swept me into her entry way, had me in a fluffy bathrobe with my clothes in the dryer and a mug of hot chocolate in my hand before I even realized what was happening.

Her home was decorated in dark wood and leather, and there was a massive cage in the living room with two very colorful macaws. "My husband is away on a photo safari in Africa, so I'm tending the fort right now!" There were tribal masks on the wall, trinkets from all over the world sitting on shelves and coffee tables. "We don't have any children, but these dumb birds keep me from getting lonely!" she beamed with obvious good nature. "So, show me what you are selling!"

It was the last thing I wanted to do. She was so nice, and I did not want to hit her with the sales pitch, which seemed so fake and rehearsed to me. I just wanted to talk. "I can show you the books, but they are for people with kids, so I don't think you'll want them."

"Show me anyway! You can practice your sales talk!"

I went through the sales presentation, feeling kind of silly as I sat there in her bathrobe. When I was done, she said, "Well, I'll take four sets of the Volume Library, and I need six sets of those Learning to Read books, and you might as well throw in a few of those cookbooks, too!"

My jaw dropped. I mean it. My mouth hung open in utter shock. "Really?" I squeaked.

"Yeah! I have batches of nieces and nephews, and they all have birthdays, and these books look good! Write it up!"

I had to borrow a calculator. I had never made such a big sale. I hadn't even sold that much in a week before, and here I was making the sale in one rainy afternoon.

Once my clothes were dry, I put them back on and headed back out into the rainy day, but it didn't matter anymore. The rain didn't affect me! I had just experienced a true miracle, and I knew it. I kept knocking on doors until 9:30 that night, knocking in the rain, thanking God for that nice lady who talked in exclamation marks and had such a big heart.

2007-06-07T07:50:00.001-05:00

I remember realizing that radios play songs more than once...

I was sitting in my sister's bedroom, probably 6 or 7 years old. I don't know exactly what I was doing there, but she hadn't kicked me out yet--let's say I was watching her brush her long, black hair. She had her little transistor radio turned to one of the stations that Dad thought was stupid (he never actually forbade us from much, but he'd let us know his opinion of our activities at every opportunity).

A song began that I'd heard before! I remembered it because it was about my favourite boxer, Mohammed Ali. Dad would let me watch the boxing matches on TV with him, and everybody knew Mohammed Ali was the King! "Mohammed, Mohammed Ali, floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee..."

"Carol!! I've heard this song before!! I am such a lucky duck!!"

"Yeah, they play it all the time."

"They play songs more than once?"

Carol threw back her head and laughed her teen-age laugh. "Oh, Paula, you crack me up!"

I sat on her bed listening to the rest of the song, marvelling at how much there was about the world that I still didn't know.

2007-05-14T16:50:00.000-05:00

I remember making my own flip books....

My mother just got back from a vacation, and she gave my daughter a really cool flip book that uses actual photographs of sea lions, so when you flip the pages, it's like you are watching a wee movie. The book is awesome, and it sparked a memory for me.

I was bored in many classes in junior high and high school. I would take my pencil, start on the first page of whatever textbook I was using for the class I was in, and I would draw a stick man. On the second page, the stick man would be moved very slightly, the third page a little more...you know how flip book animation works, right? I never knew what would happen to the little man until I drew it. Sometimes his head would pop off and he'd have to chase it, sometimes he'd fall off the bottom of the page and have to climb back up, sometimes he'd meet a stick woman...every text book was a different story.

It was perfect. I could still listen to the teacher, and as far as they could tell, I was absorbed in making notes or something. Once the drawings were all laboriously completed, I'd sit back in my seat and flip through the pages of my text and feel very pleased with myself as the little man would come to life. I don't think I showed these animations to anyone else. I had learned early on in junior high that any creative impulse must be hidden or you would be tortured for it. The little men were my little secret.

2007-05-06T22:47:00.000-05:00

I remember a friend with amnesia....

Anyone who has lived through secondary education knows what a pressure cooker school can be. Every professor thinks their class is the only one, and there are papers and exams and assignments until you sometimes can't remember if you are coming or going. If you are a music student, you also have hours of practice on your instruments of choice as well.

My friend, Rob, was a music major. He was so talented musically, had a disarming and charming sense of humor, and somehow managed to be completely suave and totally geeky both at the same time. One night he was giving an informal concert in the student lounge. He pulled a stool up on the stage and asked for a volunteer, then walked straight up to me and dragged me up there. He sang "Ain't Misbehavin'" to me, making me blush twelve shades of red when he'd look into my eyes and sing "I'm savin' my love for you!". It was a fun evening.

Not very long after that, Rob collapsed in his room, unable to breathe, a complete breakdown. He was rushed to Emergency, and we were all very concerned. Word came back to the school over the next few days that Rob had lost his memory, and once he was up to it, would probably benefit from visits from some of his friends.

A small group of us traveled to the hospital as soon as we were allowed. Rob was sitting up in his hospital bed. He looked at us all quizzically, and we introduced ourselves. He was still completely himself, charming and geeky, but he did not know who we were, he did not know his own name, he did not remember how to read...he couldn't remember ANYTHING! It was the oddest thing.

His roommate stuck in a cassette tape of some Beethoven symphony. Rob perked up. "What is that?"

"That's Beethoven. That's music."

"I like it! I like music!"

I felt like crying.

"Do you hear that da-da-da thing with the interesting tone? What is that?"

"That's the trumpet, Rob. You play the trumpet."

"I do?"

"Yes, you do."

"Well, listen to it. Can you hear it? There are four of them playing different tones...it's pretty. I like it."

Even though he didn't know what he was listening to, he was listening to it better than any of us could. His talent, his humour, the things that made him Rob were all still there. He just couldn't remember anything.

Over the next few weeks he began to regain his memory, bit by bit. The prognosis: stress. The treatment: take it slow. He didn't finish the school year, though he did come to visit a few times. It made me sad to see him, he seemed so tired and fragile. I found myself wondering how close to the line I was, how close to a breakdown, and what parts of me would be left if I got total amnesia.

2007-05-03T09:05:00.001-05:00

I remember the longest line of cocaine I ever saw....

I was living with Theresa. People would ask me, when they'd found out I'd moved in with her, how I could stand living with her...she was always talking fifty miles over the speed limit, she was intense and loud, her hands were always moving and fidgeting and pulling on her long red hair....and I'd reply that I didn't need a TV, I could just sit back and watch T. I got a kick out of her and her vibrating energy.

One day her old boyfriend, Seppo, got back from a fishing trip. This translates to "loaded with money and needs to burn it". He came over with Kelly, a quirky young punk-rocker we all knew, and a big bag of cocaine. We closed the curtains, put on Led Zeppelin II, cracked some beer and began to party, just the four of us.

The party itself is rather unmemorable; we didn't terrorize the neighbours, we didn't bust a hole in the wall. We just hung out listening to loud music. The reason I tell this story is because of this one image in my mind. Seppo, T. and I are all sitting on her bed, looking at records and liner notes in the dusty dimness. We look up, and Kelly is quietly sitting on the floor. He has taken the full length mirror off our wall, and has proceeded to cut the longest line of cocaine I have ever seen, snaking from one end of the mirror to the other and back again three times. We have no idea how long this has taken him. I can see him quietly bending over the mirror making little tiny chops...he looks up as he realizes we are watching him, and kind of giggles. "I just wanted to do one more line."

The line must have been 15 feet long! Silly boy.

I thought to myself at that moment..."This should be a scene in a movie. My life is like a movie."

2007-04-23T08:52:00.000-05:00

I remember being given a free burrito...

My best friends lived in Seattle, and it was one of those wonderful weekends when I was down visiting Sheri and the gang. Ed worked with stained glass, Sheri made beautiful collages, Nathan was sure he used to be a scribe in Ancient Egypt...something crazy and creative was always happening when we'd all get together. We'd smoke pot, drink Celestial Seasonings tea, and think of artistic things to do.

We were making our regular trip to Pike's Place Market (had to go to Tenzing Momo for fresh incense and stuff!). I was low on cash, but in high spirits. We were strolling along the street across from the market...well, they were strolling, I was skipping....and I was happily proclaiming to Sheri that I was hungry and I didn't care, when the young man behind the counter of a burrito stand called me over.

"Hey, come here!"

"Me?"

"Yeah. Here. I made one too many and I can't sell it. You can have it." He shyly handed me a huge burrito.

"Uh...thanks!!" I gave him a big smile and skipped off to join Sheri and the others. "Look what this guy just gave me..."

My friends shook their heads. Presents from heaven for Paula again. Now that I think about it, I may have been wearing my orange paisley shirt.

2007-04-19T09:05:00.000-05:00

I remember my father's hands...

They were huge.

I can picture my hand going up to hold his as we are walking when I am very young, and all I grab onto is his little finger, and it fills my fist. I feel very safe.

Or as an older child, sitting at the kitchen table eating grapefruit. Mom has cut the sections, and we have eaten all we can scoop out with our spoons, and then we try to squeeze the rest of the juice out into our bowl. We pick up the empty grapefruit shell and squish it with two hands, using all our might, our elbows and shoulders trembling from the effort. Then when we are done, our energy spent, we pass the shell to Dad and with one hand he squeezes out more juice than we could with two. It is our favourite breakfast game.

Or when we eat soup. The crackers are on the table, and we are allowed to put as many crackers in our soup as we want. I take a stack of four crackers and hand them to Dad. He puts the crackers in the palm of one hand, puts the other hand on top and, presto, with one little squeeze, the crackers have been pulverized into perfect cracker powder which he lets fall into my bowl. I try with one cracker, but am left with unsatisfying, irregular chunks. We laugh.

Strong, safe hands.

2007-04-05T08:48:00.000-05:00

I remember being given a free shirt....

It was a sunny summer day in Vancouver, BC. There was a big all-day concert at Stanley Park, they called it a "Be-In", I guess trying to re-create the glory days of the hippy movement in the late '60's. There was a whole line-up of local bands, and my friends and I were excited to go.

By the time we got there, more than half of the outdoor space was already filled with blankets and music lovers. It was too nice out to care about being close to the stage, so we happily set up our blanket slightly to the left, two-thirds of the way back. The breeze from the ocean was a bit cool, so I left my long-fringed buckskin jacket on over my tank top.

I was in heaven. I love live music, and I love being with friends, and I love being outdoors...so there wasn't much ruining my day. I felt like dancing, so up I stood, dancing like Stevie Nicks, fringes a-flying in the sunshine. It didn't matter to me one bit that I was the only person in a crowd over one thousand people that was dancing. I danced for the rest of the band's set, totally happy, totally alone.

I noticed up near the front of the stage one particular group of people. Most of them were engrossed in the music, but one man was staring at me the whole time I was dancing. He had on the most remarkable shirt. He was too far away for me to tell how old he was or even what his features were, but his shirt was impossible to ignore...bright day-glo orange, with some pattern that I couldn't make out. I determined to go talk to him once the band was done, and I headed towards him as soon as the music stopped.

"Hey, enjoying the music?"

"Oh, yeah, sister. I was totally grooving on your fringes while you were dancing."

The man had short, curly dark hair and looked to be in his forties. He also looked to be completely under the influence of LSD...I took him for an old hippy who was trying to relive his glory days some twenty years ago.

"Oh, cool. I wondered why you kept staring. Hey, man, that is one crazy shirt!"

Up close it was even better than I had imagined. It was day-glo orange paisley, with bits of day-glo lime, yellow, green...all on a black swirly background. It looked like some crazy black-light poster!

"You like it? Here, you can have it."

He began undoing the buttons.

"What? No, man, I was just admiring it, you keep it!!"

"It's OK, sister, I've got another shirt..."

He handed me the technicolor shirt and reached into his duffle bag for a plain white t-shirt, smiling like a lazy Bhudda the whole while. I thanked him and headed back to my friends and our blanket. They couldn't believe how cool the shirt was, and just shook their heads. Magical stuff like that was always happening to me.

This is a scan of the shirt. It doesn't do it justice. The orange is so bright that it almost hurts your eyes to look at it! But I thought I should include the scan for posterity's sake.

2007-03-30T18:36:00.000-05:00

I remember hanging out with the Beatnigs....

For years I had a radio show at CiTR, a university radio station. One of my favorite perks of working there was interviewing bands that would come to town. I'd set them up in their booth with mikes and headphones, then head back to my booth, wave through the window, and off we'd go. I often didn't know more than ten minutes ahead of time if a band would be coming, so there were no rehearsed questions. We'd just start talking about music and see what happened.

I was expecting the Beatnigs to come, but I didn't know when they'd be arriving. I had been playing quite a heavy set, some Throbbing Gristle, some Coil, some Test Department, and it was time for a station break. I opened the mike and began talking, when all of a sudden I began receiving a back massage. "Ladies and Gentlemen of Vancouver, you may not believe me, but I am at this moment receiving a very impressive back rub from a tall, black man that I have never met before. No, don't stop, sir, we're on the air!" Good radio fun, I loved random radio! The Beatnigs had arrived, and Michael Franti was giving me a back rub.

I started the next song, some Einstürzende Neubauten, which really impressed Michael and Rono. I knew they liked industrial music, that's why I was playing it, duh! I ran a good show, I wasn't some dumb air-head playing pop tunes!! I'd done my research...after all, I'd known they were coming for at least an hour.

The interview went very well. Michael is a very intelligent man, and has opinions on just about everything, so I hardly had to say anything. In fact, for the rest of my shift, I didn't really have to do anything at all. I let loose Michael and Rono on the turntables and they mixed music for over half an hour while I stood there and soaked it up. That's good random radio!

Michael Franti is the driving force behind "Michael Franti & Spearhead". You should check them out. Michael is not only a great musician with a lively social conscience, he gives a great back-rub.

2007-03-29T10:06:00.000-05:00

I remember finding stuff in my locker....

One of the perks of Junior High at our school was getting a locker in the hallway instead of just stashing your stuff in your desk like in the kiddie grades. I liked having a locker. It was my little space.

I opened the door of my locker one day and found that all my stuff...my books, my jacket, everything...was covered in cigarette butts and ashes. Someone had taken the time to cram the entire contents of their ashtray through the little air holes at the top of my locker. I sighed and began picking the dirt and soot out of all my belongings. I could hear other kids laughing as they walked by.

Apparently I was not allowed to have even the tiniest of spaces to myself.

2007-03-13T22:07:00.000-05:00

I remember trying on clothes from the missionary box...

As the pastor's family, it was our privilege to have first dibs on the clothes that were donated for the missionaries. I never knew what missionaries these clothes were designated for, I don't know if anyone did. I just knew that if Mom came home with a big cardboard box, we were going to have to spend about an hour trying on clothes.

This was always fun at first. I'd pick out the old lady dress and put it on, then mince around the room like Carol Burnett as the old lady. If there was a hat, I'd put it on and pretend to be French. Mom would laugh hysterically, but soon she settled down to business. She wanted us to try on anything that looked like it might fit. Anything. Everything. Even the ugly things. And there were lots of ugly things!

Mom would spend a lot of time trying to convince us how great an outfit looked if she liked it. I distinctly remember the sinking feeling of futile stubbornness in my gut that arose as she oohed and ahed over a seer-sucker pantsuit. It was so out of fashion that I had never even HEARD of seer-sucker, but Mom was determined that it looked fabulous on me, and so it went into my closet.

I tried not to wear it, but one day there were no clean clothes and the bus was coming, so on it went. All day long at school, people laughed at me. I tried to defend myself, explaining that it was seer-sucker, but that term is nothing but cannon fodder to cruel junior high students. It was a long day, and I never wore the outfit to school again.

2007-03-07T08:34:00.000-06:00

I remember an adventure at the bus stop....

It was a sparkling day in Vancouver, the kind of day where you can't imagine being anywhere else but in the middle of the city, right where you are. I was riding the bus home from somewhere, and I felt like breaking up my usual routine--the people filling the sidewalks all looked so beautiful and interesting! I got off at Granville and Broadway. There was a little cigarette shop there, and I wanted to see if they carried any unusual cigarettes. They did, and I bought some.

I headed out of the shop and sat on the bench at the bus stop, waiting for the next bus. I opened the pack of French smokes and lit up. A bus pulled up, but I didn't want to get on it yet, so I just stayed seated. The door opened. I was about to wave the driver on, when two of my friends got off the bus, Scooter and Olly!! (I'm not making up these names. Isn't that great?) They jumped over to the bench and squished me in a sandwich.

"Paula!! You're beautiful!! What are you doing here? Wanna come with us to an art opening?"

Yippee!! I knew this was a sparkling day! Scooter's dad was a fairly successful artist, and was having an opening at an exclusive little gallery right across the street! Of course I wanted to go! We hooked our arms together and sashayed across the street, sweeping into the gallery like three goofy rejects from "The Wild One". Scooter introduced me to his father, who was very busy schmoozing with the people in suits who had lots of money. We spent some time looking at the paintings, but mostly we hung out at the free bar.

Scooter dragged another older gentleman over..."Paula, I'd like you to meet one of my art instructors." The old fella seemed bored with the proceedings and was happy to hang with us three young ones. In fact, stealing the bottles of scotch and red wine from the bar and heading to my place was his idea!! Ha!! We each discreetly snatched a bottle of booze, hid it in our respective leather jackets, then headed back to the bus stop.

Scooter's art teacher was hilarious, with an opinion and a joke about everything. Scooter sat there watching him, a crinkly grin on his face, obviously deeply respecting the man. We sat in my living room listening to music and finishing those bottles, putting a lovely bow on the sparkling day.

2007-02-28T15:21:00.000-06:00

I remember when I was a mechanic....

I was 6 or 7, I'm not sure. A lady in our church was getting married to a nice man, a mechanic. As was the custom, all the other ladies in the church planned a big wedding shower for her in the church basement. Someone had the cute idea to have the presents brought in on a wagon pulled by me, dressed as a mechanic, driving my little push-pedal station wagon. (Mine was a cool gold colour, not the sissy pink in the picture here.)

Mom left me pretty much to myself to pull my outfit together. I put on jeans with holes in them and an old sweatshirt. I asked Dad if I could borrow his tool belt and some wrenches and stuff, and I also asked for a shop beanie, the kind with a little brim. I tucked my hair into the hat, brim backwards, rubbed a bit of grease off the floor of the garage onto my face and hands, buckled on the tool belt and headed over to the church. I think Dad must have carried over the pedal car for me.

In the basement of the church, I ducked out of sight of all the ladies gushing over their little ladies games and tea and fussy little sandwiches. We tied the wagon onto the car in the hallway just outside their meeting room, and I climbed in to wait for my cue.

The door opened and one of the ladies beckoned to me. My stomach lurched a bit, but I composed my face into bored nuetral and drove the car into the room, heading for the table where I was supposed to drop off my wagon load...I could feel every eye on me. There was whispering and giggling, and all those women looking just at me...and I LOVED it! I decided that if I was a mechanic, maybe I should probably fix my car a little. I turned my head to the side to listen to the engine as I had seen my dad doing, then got out of the car, grabbed a wrench and stuck my head as far under as I could. More laughter and whispering! I tinkered for a few minutes, then got up, wiped my hands together in satisfaction, and finished my drive to the gift table, all decorated with pink streamers and pompoms. Could this be my first ever round of applause? I know I loved it.

I didn't stick around for long. Us mechanics feel kind of uncomfortable in the presence of all those ladies...we get worried that we will get them dirty or something. I seem to recall eating a bit of white cake with pink frosting and then heading back to the garage.

2007-02-21T14:48:00.000-06:00

I remember seeing a white guy that played guitar like Jimi Hendrix....

Because of my radio show at a college station (CiTR), I was exposed to all kinds of music that I wouldn't have known about otherwise. One of my favorite guitar players was Roy Buchanan, mainly because he sounded just like Jimi Hendrix, all bendy and trippy....yet plain as day on the cover of his album, he was a grey haired white man. I loved the paradox this presented to me!

When I heard he was coming to town, I bought a ticket right away. I figured when I got there, I'd run into all the other people I knew...but as I entered the main area of the Commodore, I realized I was wrong. The club was full, but not of my scenester friends. I was surrounded by a club full of men, men with short-cropped beards, men with jean jackets, men who had no fashion sense at all. I was surrounded by blues fans! It was quite funny! I think there were about 800 men, and maybe 6 women. I had entered the blues universe.

It was an amazing show. Roy Buchanan played guitar in some other dimension, he was a complete master of his instrument. I never noticed anything else until the lights came on at the end of the show, he really took me somewhere, I tell you. Once the show was over, I hightailed it out of there...too much testosterone for me to handle, even though apparently I was man enough for the blues.

The next year, I heard that Mr. Buchanan had hung himself in his jail cell. I felt very sad about that, he had seemed so happy when he was playing guitar on stage...it made me wonder about happiness and the things that bring it, and why is it so fleeting? Why is happiness unable to penetrate to the dark parts of our soul? It didn't seem fair to me.

2007-02-15T09:44:00.000-06:00

I remember Valentine's Days in elementary school...

We'd spend the week preceding Valentine's Day making little mailboxes to put on our desk. Then on the big day, everyone would walk around and drop Valentine's into all the mailboxes. It was expected that you'd just give a card to everybody, but I always had a hard time dropping a Valentine into Walter P.'s mail box. I really didn't like him. Near the end of the day, there'd be a little party where we could open our mail boxes and read all our Valentines.

Every year, from Grade 1 until Grade 5, my mother would make heart-shaped sugar cookies. She'd spread the hearts with pink frosting, then with white frosting she'd write the name of everyone in my class (AND my sister's class) on their own special cookie. Each heart would get a white piped edging of icing, and maybe a sprinkle of pink sugar. They were beautiful, true works of art.

On Valentine's Day, my sister and I would carefully carry our own Tupperware container onto the school bus, guarding it with our lives. "What do you have?" "Is there one with my name on it?" "Those look so good, can I have one?" As soon as we got to school, we'd give the container to our teacher, and she could guard it until the right time. I remember feeling very proud as the teacher would announce each year, "Paula's mother has prepared us a special treat!" and then she'd call up each person by name to get their very own cookie. It used to bother me, though, that Walter P. got a pretty cookie...I didn't think he deserved one at all.

Is that what they mean when they say "It rains on the just and the unjust"? Even the unworthy get pretty cookies? I guess that's good. I've been unworthy of most of the blessings in my life, too, if you come right down to it.

2007-02-13T09:24:00.000-06:00

I don't remember writing this letter....

"Dear Roger: You don't need to apologize for writing a depressing letter. Depression is a normal human emotion. I love you even when you don't tell jokes. (God, how I need someone to tell me that now.)

Is loneliness an evil under the sun? If it is, then I am a very evil person. But I don't think being lonely is evil; it aches almost the same as love.

I will read 'Waiting for Godot.' When you become a famous director you may cast me as Vladimir.

Funny thing -- just yesterday I was full of joy and very happy. Now I feel awful. This too shall pass. I had been wearing my hair forward. Today I brushed it backwards. Everyone said they like it. This too shall pass. I was very popular in high school. Now I sit alone at dinner. This too shall pass. Oh God, I pray that it will . Consider yourself privileged, Roger. Rarely do I get so personal in a letter. (Perhaps that is why it is so short?)

From one brave new lonely wave,

Paula"

My friend, roger, called me yesterday. He had been cleaning out old boxes in the garage, and there was this letter from me. I had written it on the wrapping of a McDonald's Apple Pie, slapped a stamp on it, and mailed it to him. I didn't date the letter, but it was probably from 1985 when I was a student at Trinity Western University. I don't remember sitting and writing this letter specifically, but I do remember the general malaise of my youth.

Looks like I was emo before any of these young kids with their hair falling in their face were even a tear-drop in their fathers' eyes.

2007-02-08T19:28:00.000-06:00

I remember realizing I was claustrophobic...

Another winter day in Alberta, another day my sister and I were kicked outside by Mom to play in the snow. Bundled up in our warmest coats and snow-pants and boots and hats and scarves and mittens, we were exploring the back yard...again. We had explored the yard countless times already, but we had no choice but to explore it again. Mom said.

We noticed that the latest blow of snow had covered over the white picnic table. One of us decided it would be cool to dig a tunnel under the table, and it would be safe because the table couldn't collapse on us like snow could. We began shoveling the snow out by the mitt-full, and soon we had a neat little cave. I began crawling in to explore the space, which would have been fine, but then Pam came in close behind me, wanting to explore, too. As she pushed against me from behind, I realized there was no way out, no quick way out at any rate, and I began to panic. "Get out! Pam, back up, let me out!" She didn't respond, wanting to come in. "Get out NOW!!!" I screamed.

"What is your problem?" she asked as she backed out, injured that I'd yelled at her.

"I didn't like that. I didn't like feeling trapped in there." I answered shortly, embarrassed at my weakness.

Pam spent the rest of the afternoon playing in the cave. I never went in it again. I'm still no good with small, enclosed spaces.

2007-01-30T18:11:00.001-06:00

I've been immortalized. Check it out here.

2007-01-29T09:29:00.000-06:00

I remember going to see Jason and the Scorchers....

If you know me at all, you know that I have a penchant for roots-type music...rockabilly, old-timey, bluegrass...I love it. Even when I was a dyed-black punk rocker, I loved it. One of the bands that I would play on my show at CiTR was the cowpunk group, Jason and the Scorchers. They could really rip their way through a Hank Williams tune! When I heard that they were coming to town, I was very excited! My friend, Li'l Debbie, and I agreed to go together. We both wore lots of black, lots of leather, fishnet stockings with black boots, red lipstick, thick black eyeliner, sheriff badges...everything cowboy and punk that we could think of! We looked great!

As we walked into 86 Street, excited to see who else was there that we knew, every eye turned to look at us--we were the only freaks there, and we stuck out like leather-clad thumbs. Apparently we were the only cowpunks in Vancouver!! The club was packed, but not with scenesters like us...with people who looked like they actually listened to country music radio, people with feathered hair and flannel plaid shirts and big belt buckles and tight Wranglers...it looked like a cowboy bar in Alberta, for Pete's sake!!! We headed straight for the front of the stage, not really feeling up to mingling.

When the band hit the stage, it was guns a-blazing! The guitar player, Warner E. Hodges, planted himself right in front of us and played the whole show just for us, it seemed. He was probably wondering where all the cowpunks were, too! After the show, it was a matter of mere moments before Li'l Debbie and I were asked by Warner if we wanted to come back-stage. Well, yes! Introductions all 'round, beer from the band's supply...we couldn't have felt more cool.

Warner had us one at each hip for the rest of the evening. He was a gentleman, didn't try anything untoward...I think he was just lonely and bored and wanted somebody to talk to. The band was heading out that night, so we rode back to the hotel where they had been staying to send them off. Warner, with one arm around each of us, declared he wanted to buy us a drink. The three of us walked into the sleepy hotel bar, pretending it was an old-time saloon, and loudly ordered the barkeep to give us three shots of Jack Daniels and "keep 'em comin'!". It was fun, goofing around in the presence of the bored business men, talking with southern drawls about barroom brawls. When Jason stuck his head in the bar and hollered that it was time to leave, Warner gave us each a kiss on the cheek and disappeared into the tour bus.

I've thought about that kiss on the cheek. I've thought about what a gift a little kiss can be, how it communicates so much in such a short time...it says "Thank you" and "You were worth spending time with" and "You are beautiful" and "Good bye forever". Li'l Debbie and I staggered out of that bar feeling like the two most beautiful women in the world. It was a good night.

Thanks to papaherman for sparking this latest memory!

2007-01-24T14:40:00.000-06:00

I remember learning what shame feels like...

Early in the morning, 5:30 or 6 am, I would rise and go downstairs into the living room before anyone else woke up. This was my favorite part of the day. It was just me and my books. I was 6 years old, and I would sit on the brown couch with a volume of the Childcraft library and read until Mom woke up to get our day rolling. The volume I read the most was called "Look Again", and it was full of works of art, from Jasper Johns to Picasso to daVinci and Rembrandt. I loved it. I'd pour over the pictures again and again.

I discovered that if I held the book just right, the hard part of the spine made me feel...well...very good. I had no idea why it made me feel good, but it did, so I'd sit there with the book between my legs. It was as mindless as wrapping your hair around your finger or sucking your thumb.

One morning my mother came out of her bedroom and discovered me sitting in this way. She erupted in disgust. "Shame on you, you dirty girl! That's disgusting!! I don't ever want to see you doing that again!" The book was ripped out of my hands and I was marched to the bathroom to wash. Reading was wrong? Or was feeling good wrong? I was very confused. I felt a hot burning on my cheeks, and guilt that was unattached to any action, as far as I could tell. This was shame--an embarrassed confusion covered with anger...I had finally discovered an activity that I had to hide from my mother.

Over the next years, I continued to find ways to "feel good", and felt dirtier and dirtier. I was very good at hiding it. It wasn't until I was in Grade 5 and read a book by Judy Blume that I discovered I wasn't the only person in the world who enjoyed the feeling I got from rubbing my genitals. I nearly cried as I read that book. I had thought I was some kind of freak, that I was broken in some way...and here I was normal. It was a shocking thing to realize.

2007-01-11T08:28:00.000-06:00

I remember dancing with old men....

There was a little bar in downtown Vancouver called the Marine Club. It was the kind of bar with a big jar of pickled eggs on the counter and a ratty old pool table in the back. The old-timers that sat on the stools around the counter were such permanent fixtures that the yellow-gray smoke haze that coloured the wall coloured them as well. It became the place that us undergrounders would go to escape for a cheap, quiet beer.

A few nights a week, a tall old black man named Frank would carry his keyboard up the stairs, set up in the corner and play music. He was incredible!! You could ask for any request, and if he didn't know it that night, he would know it next time he came. He'd turn on the drum track, start noodling away on songs like "Fly Me to the Moon" or "The Girl From Ipanema", and the old men and women would peel themselves off their bar stools and dance. I would call out requests for even older songs, songs my mother used to sing as she swept the floor, songs like "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree", "Night and Day", or "Beat Me Daddy(Eight to the Bar)", and Frank would shake his head and laugh and ask me how a girl so young knew such old songs.

The old drunks would saunter over and ask for a dance. I always said yes. I remember these men as perfect gentlemen, polite, charming, and quite good at dancing, considering the amount of alcohol in their systems. Grey hair combed into place, stubborn grey stubble poking through jowly jaws, faded and stained polyester suits....they smelled of beer and cigarettes and Bryl-creem as I danced with them, and I loved it. I loved every minute of it.

2007-01-05T17:46:00.000-06:00

I remember finding Blue on the road...

Blue was our dog, a beautiful little blue merle Shetland sheepdog that looked just like the one in the picture here. We had bought her from a breeder in Calgary. She had such a sad beginning in life. The breeder had sold her to a man, then months later was driving along a busy Calgary street and saw a bedraggled dog at the side of the road. She picked up the starving pup, and after checking tattoos, realized it was Blue! She called the man, and he was unapologetic..."She was a pain, so I let her out of the car to fend for herself." At the tender age of 11, I couldn't imagine a man being so cruel and evil. We bought Blue and brought her home, the fanciest dog we had ever owned, with papers and a pedigree and everything!

She was so smart! My little sister and I would make up tricks, and we'd only have to show her two or three times, and she'd know the trick forever. We'd point our finger at her, say "Bang!", and she'd fall down dead. We'd say "Slip me some skin" just like Huggy Bear from "Starsky and Hutch", and she'd put up her paw to shake. She was one groovy dog, certainly not a pain in any way! I felt proud that we had rescued her.

One hot, dusty summer day I was out in the garden grazing on the raspberries. After I'd had my fill, I began meandering back to the house, when I saw a kind of heap on the gravel road. I walked a bit closer to investigate, and realized it was Blue--not a good place for her to be napping! "Blue, come on! Get off the road!" The heap of blue-grey fur did not move. As the realization of what I was looking at slowly dawned on me, I froze. "Blue?" I could barely do it, but I walked two steps closer. There was no life there, none at all.

I ran to the house, crying. I told Mom what I had found, and she ran out to investigate. She came back to the house. "Oh, honey" she said, and pulled me into her arms. We cried and cried. I cried not just for the pain of losing such a sweet pet, but at the futility of our attempt to rescue her.

2006-12-20T10:56:00.000-06:00

I remember being mooned for the first time...

Sheri, my best college friend, and I hopped in her car and headed south of the border to Seattle to go see Steve Taylor in concert. We were very excited to see him, he was so New Wave and crazy! The show was great, even though there was nowhere to dance...what is it with concert halls that don't allow people to actually enjoy the music?

Anyway, after the show, we were full of pent-up energy. There were blocks and blocks to walk in late-night Seattle, but both of us were bouncing along as we headed towards the car. There wasn't much traffic, so we noticed when a car drove slowly by. It took a moment to register what exactly I was looking at. The passenger in the back seat had his pants down and his butt squished against the window, mooning us. I had never even heard of such a thing before! I felt insulted, like somebody had just called me a rude name. Why would he do that to us? What had we ever done to him? Did we look funny or something? I thought it was disgusting, and Sheri and I shook our heads as we finished the walk to the car.

I have discovered in the years since that mooning isn't such a big deal to many people. My husband has, on occasion, mooned his own mother! Bart Simpson has mooned just about everybody! But when I was 18, all I knew was that some hairy teenager with pimples had pulled his pants down and I felt insulted. My upbringing had not prepared me for public displays of butt.

2006-12-14T15:39:00.000-06:00

This is my 100th post. 100 memories from my life laid down the best I can, for anyone at all to read if they want to. I was wondering what to remember on this special occasion...something funny? Something sad or depressing? How about a little of both...

I remember practicing the piano....

Mom expected us all to take piano lessons. We weren't asked if we wanted to, we just had to. I hated practicing, especially my scales and triads and arpeggios. I knew they would help me play songs better, but they were so boring.

I can clearly remember one practice session. I was having trouble with my arpeggios, they just weren't coming out right. I was making the same mistake over and over again, and I was beginning to get very frustrated. I tried slowing it down to a crawl, but my fingers were still fumbling over the one area. I tried speeding it up to see if I could fly by the trouble spot...

By the 100th time of playing it wrong, I was in tears. I was angry! I was depressed!! I placed my fingers on the keys, took a deep breath, and tried again. WRONG! I slapped myself on the face, hard. "Stupid!!" I cursed myself. I tried again. WRONG!! I slapped myself again, harder. "Idiot!!" I even banged my head on the keys at one point, like a real-life version of Don Music from Sesame Street.

As you can guess, this attempt at humiliating my fingers into submission got me nowhere.

2006-12-14T15:31:00.000-06:00

I remember my Saturday morning job...

Every Saturday morning we would clean the house from top to bottom. Mom, being a pastor's wife, never knew if there would be company the next day so the house had to be spotless. My job was cleaning the bathroom, Pam's job was dusting. We both preferred our jobs and would rather fight than switch. I would use Comet cleanser and a rag and clean the bathtub, the toilet, and the sink to a polished shine. I would put fresh towels and fold them perfectly. I took special care to shine up the metal on the faucet.

I did this every Saturday for years. You think I'd be better at cleaning my own bathroom now, but I'm not. Maybe if my sister still lived with me...

2006-12-04T09:10:00.000-06:00

I remember meeting a group of handsome men...

When my shift was done at the souvenir kiosk outside the gates of Expo 86, I would walk downtown and hop on the newly completed Skytrain for my ride home. Tonight was a late one, and as I walked down the stairs to the station beneath Granville Street, a young man kept calling out to me. Easily ignorable, I tuned him out, bought my ticket, and descended even farther beneath the earth to the platform. He rode the escalator behind me, making rude comments, asking me if I wanted a date, a boyfriend...that sort of thing.

Unrelated side note: Anyone else see the irony of going down into the depths of the earth to catch the "Sky"train? LOL!! The train only went underground for two stations...but this always made me laugh. Anyway, back to our story...

I strode with purpose towards the group of people waiting for the train heading East. The young man stood off to one side, continuing with his tirade of what he was prepared to do for me. Everyone on the platform was wondering what I'd do. When the train slid into the station, he followed me into the car and sat down behind me. I'm no dummy. Just before the door slid shut, I jumped up, ran out of the car and scooted into the next one. He tried to follow, but the doors shut and the train accelerated out of the station, leaving him standing alone on the platform. Hah!!

I was feeling very clever! Then I looked around to see who was in the car I had just dashed into. The only empty seat was in the midst of a group of incredibly handsome men, all dressed in expensive clothing that fit them perfectly. They clapped for me and my clever evasion, indicating that I was welcome to sit with them. I took a little bow, and joined their party. As I began a conversation, I quickly realized that these men were Italian and could speak almost no English. The only Italian words I knew were the musical terms I'd learned from 10 years of piano lessons. I spouted off a few to their great merriment. "Allegro! Pianissimo! Dolce!" Much laughter, white teeth. "Expo 86?" I asked, figuring them to be tourists.

"Si! Si!!" They nodded happily. "La Scala!"

"Are you here to see La Scala perform?" I knew the famed opera company was going to be performing for Expo 86, and assumed any Italian worth his salt would be lining up to buy tickets. "You watch La Scala?"

"No!" insisted the gentleman with the perfect white teeth and immaculately groomed graying hair. "No watch. La Scala!!" He reached for his wallet and handed me a business card. I don't read Italian, but I realized that I was sitting with members from the company! They were with La Scala! "You come see?"

I pulled out my pockets, pantomiming my poverty. "I can't afford the opera!"

"No!" Darn that language barrier!!! "You come see! You come! We show!" How did he get his teeth so white? What? Was he inviting me to come as his guest? For free??? We eventually figured it out, after much hand gesturing, that I was invited to the final dress rehearsal, and that one of my new friends would meet me at the door to make sure I got in. We waved good-byes and ciaos as they got off at their stop.

I showed up at the Pacific Coliseum at the proper time on the proper day, August 23, 1986. Nobody was waiting for me at the gate, but I convinced the person at the door that I belonged there by showing him the Italian business card I had been given. I walked in, totally excited. I had never been to the opera before! I wasn't sure where I would be allowed to sit, so I was wandering down the aisles looking for an empty spot when I heard a welcoming cry. "Hallo!!!" It was one of my friends! He rushed up to me, grabbed me around the shoulder and steered me straight toward the backstage. Backstage! He introduced me to someone who could translate for us, and then I was given a whirlwind tour of the whole backstage area. I saw the costume room, the singers putting on their makeup, the props and backdrops...I felt like I was walking in a dream.

I was led to my seat, right near the front, and watched Verdi's "I Lombardi". Is it any wonder that I felt like my life was charmed? Why would something so magical and fantastic happen to me, merely because I was smart enough to dodge a dummy on the Skytrain? I didn't know why, and I didn't care. If heaven wanted to drop gifts in my lap, I certainly wasn't going to refuse!

2006-11-29T19:02:00.000-06:00

I remember staying at the Kinsey motel....

There is no such motel. But we stayed there all the same!

Our friends, the Kinsey's, had invited us over for dinner and games on New Year's Eve. They lived even farther out from town than we did, and it was snowing hard, so we bundled up very warm for the drive over. We had lots of fun, playing board games and eating and laughing. Us kids were completely wrapped up in playing, oblivious to the changing weather outside.

The grown-ups were looking out the window. "It's really blowing out there. We'd better head for home right away," said Dad as he headed outside to start the car so it could warm up.

We didn't want to leave! It was New Year's Eve, we were going to stay late and have fun, weren't we? But in Alberta, the weather dictates many things, and even us kids realized we had to go as we heard the wind picking up speed. We got into our many layers of winter wear. As we headed out the door, I remember Mrs. Kinsey having trouble pulling it shut behind us in the howling blizzard. We could barely see the car!

Dad seemed completely fearless as we inched the car onto the gravel road. We could see nothing in front of us, absolutely nothing but a whirling wall of white. Mom's lips pressed tightly together. "Abe, how can we drive in this? You can't even see the edge of the road!"

"Look up. This is a ground blizzard, there's no new snow falling." He was right. The wind was whipping around the snow that had fallen earlier that evening, but the sky above was clear. We could see the very tops of the telephone poles, eerie and strange in the night glow of the blizzard. "I should be able to navigate by keeping in between the poles."

"But what if there's another car?" asked Mom, quite worried.

"In this weather? Who'd be out driving in this?"

For 15 minutes Dad tried to keep it between the poles, driving no faster than a slow roll. It was no good. We had reached the intersection near their house, less than a quarter of a mile away, and there were no more telephone poles. Now what? Dad put on his toque. "I'll walk in front of the car, and you follow me. We are turning around and going back, and I don't want to go in the ditch as we try and change directions." Mom scooted over, Dad disappeared in front of the car. All we could see was his black and white toque flickering in and out of view. Mom managed to get the car turned around by following Dad in this way, then scooted over to let him back in.

My little sister and I weren't dumb. We knew to keep quiet during this tense operation, but I tell you, what an adventure! We kept looking at each other and squeezing our mittens together to keep from giggling and hooting. We were going back to the party!!

When we pulled in, the Kinsey's weren't surprised. Mrs. Kinsey, as she bustled around getting out foamies and sleeping bags and blankets, kept joking about how the motel was open for business and no complaining about the rooms. Dad sat on the chair in the kitchen warming up and telling the story of how bad it was out there, when there came a knock on the door. It was the neighbors from 3/4 of a mile down the road! They had even better stories to tell about not knowing what to do, and should we keep driving or do we try to turn back, and keeping it between the poles until we hit the Kinsey's.

Nobody was going anywhere in that weather. This was turning into a real party! My sister and my friend and I had never had a better New Year's Eve, sleeping on the living room all together as the grown-ups kept talking in the kitchen about what a storm.

2006-11-22T09:20:00.000-06:00

I remember a date gone wrong...

This fellow had asked me out on a date. He was an acquaintance of mine, not somebody I had my eye on, but there was no real reason to say no. He seemed nice enough, a bit of an artist type.

I don't remember what we did. Dinner? I think that was it. We were walking around after we ate, and he suggested we head back to his apartment for some ice cream. This request seemed completely innocent to me, and I love ice cream, so I agreed. He had a little squalid apartment; old fridge, hot plate, tipsy table and chair in the kitchen, and in the other room, a messy bed, a thread-bare easy chair and a dresser. I noticed a fascinating little purple box on top of the dresser, so pretty and out of place amongst the clutter. I couldn't take my eyes off it.

We were having pleasant enough conversation. We ate ice cream, sitting in the other room while we waited for the tea to boil. At this point, he made a move to embrace me. Embrace is a nice word, I don't think it works. He tried to grab me. I moved away quickly, and told him to cool it. He informed me that he bought me dinner, he fed me ice cream, and now it was time for me to "put out". He used those very words.

I jumped off the easy chair, grabbed the pretty little plastic box from on top of the dresser, and ran out of the apartment without a backward glance. I know for a fact that if I had stayed, I wouldn't have had an option about putting out or not. I couldn't believe it, that I had been so naive and that he was such a boor. I didn't think people like him actually existed except in novels and movies.

I still have the little black box with the trippy purple lid. The purple lid is holographic, and it looks like you can see deep inside the pattern...but the box itself is only about 1/2 an inch deep. I keep my guitar picks inside. Every time I look at the box and gaze into the misleading lid, I remember that shallow people can appear to be very deep, and that I am easily fooled by pretty wrapping.

Note: I have edited this piece after reading everyone's comments. It should be a bit clearer now why I took the box.

2006-11-15T16:46:00.000-06:00

I remember a unique Christmas tree (thanks, Amber, for reminding me of this memory)....

My boyfriend, Earl, lived in a house with a lot of roommates. I loved hanging out there, it was almost always fun. One roomie, named B., had a little pet marijuana plant growing in his room. It wasn't very healthy, but he lovingly tended it and cared for it anyway.

One November evening, the Christmas spirit hit early. We were all well into the rum and egg-nog, we were singing Christmas carols to anyone who would answer the phone...when we realized we had no tree! Bruce ran to his room and brought out his scrawny plant, put it on top of the TV, and we made some paper decorations for it. (These people knew how to have fun, I mean it.) It looked like Charlie Brown's pathetic tree, if Charlie had grown up to be a stoner.

Our impromptu Christmas party was rolling along beautifully. We had dug out some Christmas records and were singing along merrily, when there came a knock at the door. A peak through the window, and we all groaned. The hermit-tenant who lived downstairs had called the cops on us again! If we did anything more than hiccup, he would call the police, and they would come and roll their eyes and tell us to be quiet, knowing full well that we were being mostly good. We were used to this drill, but we had never had a marijuana plant decorated with paper chains and stars sitting on the TV before.

"Hello, officer, what seems to be the problem?"

"We've had another noise complaint, sorry about this."

"We were just singing Christmas carols. We'll try and keep it down, sir."

"OK. None of you are driving anywhere, are you?"

"No sir. All eight of us are staying right here."

"All right then. Merry...Christmas" he said with a little grin, and that was it. He left! He had been standing about two feet from a perfect reason to ruin our day, and either didn't see it, or decided not to notice it out of regard for the season.

I'm sure it was only the first week of November. Cheers, Earl and B. and M. and J. and P., wherever you are!

2006-11-13T14:57:00.000-06:00

I remember drinking home brew and watching Batman reruns....

I had been to see Alice Donut play at the Town Pump in Vancouver (June, 1989). I was enjoying hanging out with the guys in the band, and asked them if they wanted to come to my place and watch Batman reruns and smoke dope. What band would refuse that offer? A local friend offered to bring a crate of home brewed beer, so he got to come to the party, too. We all arrived at my place and had a quiet evening.

Rock and roll isn't all wild parties, you know. Sometimes it's flaking out on the couch and having friendly arguments about who made the better Catwoman, Julie Newmar or Eartha Kitt. We drank all the beer and watched Batman until we all fell asleep, curled up like kittens on the big couch.

2006-11-06T10:38:00.000-06:00

I remember making my mom cry in 1981.....

My friend, Raychelle, from church was heading into Lethbridge with her mom for a shopping day, and they invited me to join them! How exciting!! Raychelle was one of my more thrilling friends, full of paradoxes. She was very popular at school, yet she was a faithful church attender. She was nice to me, yet she was one of the beautiful people. It didn't add up! Blond feathered hair and sunny smile, she was an angel to me of kindness. I got permission from my mom, and off we went for the day.

We went into all kinds of great shops, trying on all the trendy clothing. I could almost imagine I was one of the beautiful people, hanging out with Raychelle in the mall. Her mom looked at her watch. "Girls, it's time to head to the hair salon. Raychelle's appointment is in a few minutes."

Raychelle was whisked off by the beautician. As I sat in the salon with Mrs. West (names changed just to be safe), we began pouring through the hair-do magazines. "Look at this cute cut, Paula. I bet it would look adorable on you!" It was short, spiky on the top, with little long wisps of hair at the back. So new-wave! I agreed, yes, it would look good on me, in some other lifetime. "Paula, if you get this hair cut, I'll pay for it. You need a new look." Mrs. West said with finality.

Huh? What? My hair was just past my shoulders, long and thick and with no style at all. I usually just ignored it. A radical short funky hair cut was mine for the taking? I felt like I was on a game show. "Monty, I'll take door number 2" "Congratulations, young lady, you've won your first stylish hair cut!"

Soon it was my turn in the chair. I was trembling with excitement as the chunks of hair fell to the floor. I was being transformed! I was one of the beautiful people, but even better because my haircut was daring and unusual!! When the beautician was done, I looked at myself in the mirror and couldn't believe it. I looked like someone from Friday Night Videos. I looked like I lived in a city. Wow!

When I got back from the drive, after thanking Raychelle and Mrs. West profusely, I bounced into the house, thrilled to show my family my new do. My mom took one look at me and started crying. "What have you done?"

"Mrs. West payed for it, Mom. I didn't pay for it." Why was she upset? I spent no money!

"But Carol's wedding is coming up in the summer and you girls were all going to have long hair!" More tears. This was the first I'd heard of the long hair plan. I slunk to my room and sat on my bed, angry and sad and deflated.

Carol, my sister, came into my room and sat beside me. "I love your new haircut. I think it makes your eyes pop out. You look beautiful." We hugged. I did not understand my mother at all.

2006-11-01T17:50:00.000-06:00

I remember enjoying a free concert that I thought I would hate....

I often scored free tickets at the college radio station where I had a show. Usually these tickets were for shows I was excited about, but I ended up with two free tickets to see George Jones, Loretta Lynn, and Conway Twitty--a show I was most definitely NOT planning on seeing. My boyfriend, Earl, and I decided it would be worth going, if only for the aspect of cultural adventure.

We dressed up as if we were going to the best punk gig ever. Earl leaned over to me as we took our seats and whispered, "It looks like everyone here shops from the Sears catalogue!" I giggled. It was true! Brown dress slacks, plaid short-sleeved shirts, polyester everywhere! Earl and I were out of our element, sticking out like a black-leather thumb. We were also about ten years younger than everyone else.

George Jones was up first. I had never heard of him before, but he was a good enough showman. We weren't overly impressed, but he didn't suck, either.

Then Loretta Lynn hit the stage. Earl and I were both dumbfounded. She was incredible!! We figured she would know her way around a stage, having been in show business for so long, but we didn't expect her to be so incredibly fabulous! After one song we became loyal subjects of the Queen of Country, Loretta Lynn, and she held us captive until her very last song.

Thankfully Conway Twitty was last. He was horrible, talking to the women in the front row like a dirty old man, putting out his hand for them to kiss, which they did. It was embarrassing. Before his second song was over, we fled.

We both liked Loretta Lynn so much that we were unashamed to tell all our country-music-hating friends how awesome she was.

2006-10-24T10:27:00.000-05:00

Editorial note:

I have gone to the very back reaches of my archives and labelled everything. I wasn't very organized, and I may redo it again sometime with more generic labels....but, it would be a good time for anyone who wanted to click on the little labels and see where they lead you.

Have fun!

2006-10-19T17:52:00.000-05:00

I remember getting hit in the back of the head....

The lockers at our school came in two rows, and the locker for my junior high years was in the bottom row. One day I was crouching down to get the books for my next class in the near empty hallway. Two boys from my class came running by, and one of them swung his Adidas gym bag, full of gear, into the back of my head as they passed. I was pushed by the force of the blow right into my locker.

If this was a scene on a TV show, there would be a laugh-track. I'm sure it looked kind of funny. I did not laugh, but pushed myself out of my locker and sighed. Another meaningless violence against me. I grabbed my books and continued on to class. I think I was lectured for arriving late.

2006-10-14T11:36:00.000-05:00

I remember not wanting to walk into class...

Junior High. An awkward age for many, but especially awkward for me, as I was one year younger than everyone in my class. I thought it was very cruel for puberty to leave me alone for so long; while all the girls in my class were developing breasts, I was still a little girl.

I would get off the bus, go to my locker and put my coat in, grab my books, then walk to the door of my classroom and hesitate. I'd steel myself, then walk in. Every day my classmate, Terry, would sneer at me from under his long bangs and say loudly, "Jesus F***in' Christ, Rempel, are you ever ugly."

Every day.

There is no response to this. You can't argue it, you can't agree, you can't ignore it. It's a losing situation no matter how you look at it. Somehow his statement always made everyone else laugh. You'd think they would have got tired of the same announcement day after day.

I was 11. I thought I was ugly.

2006-10-10T09:40:00.000-05:00

I remember playing in the car....

Before you start clucking your tongue, this was something I was allowed to do. I wasn't a little kid, for goodness' sake. I was 11 or 12!

It was a sunny day and I was playing by myself. I was sitting in the driver's seat of the '68 Comet, pretending to be a grown-up, all cool and suave. I rested my right wrist on the steering wheel lazily, then rolled down the window and nodded nonchalantly at the people I was pretending to drive by. Oh, they were impressed with my driving skills! I glanced at the radio and pushed a few buttons, looking for imaginary rock and roll music.

At this point, I remember my eye landing on the cigarette lighter. All of a sudden I could look at nothing else. There it sat, woefully unused except for the few times Dad had showed me how it would pop out when it was hot. I found myself wondering how it worked. I pushed it in. I waited. It popped, and I pulled it out and looked at the glowing red circles. How could this light a cigarette? There wasn't even any flame. I did the next thing that popped into my mind. I touched it.

Wow! I burned myself a new set of fingerprints, and fast! First I dropped the lighter. Then I looked around quickly to see if anyone had noticed my stupidity. Nope, still alone. Then I stuck the lighter back in its place and sucked my finger.

This is how I have learned many of the important lessons in my life. There seems to be an inability to accept anybody else's word for anything. It means I have hurt myself many times, burned myself many new sets of fingerprints...but I know what I know, and nobody can tell me any different.

2006-10-06T13:26:00.000-05:00

I remember begging my friend, Carolyn, to come rollerskating....

I was 16, and I loved rollerskating, and I loved rollerskating with Carolyn. She would laugh at all my jokes, and hers were even funnier than mine! Once a week all summer long, an outfit rolled into town and turned the unused hockey arena into a roller-skating rink, complete with music and skate rentals. We were there every week without fail.

The last week of skating approached. School had already started, and the next week they would begin turning the cement floor into ice again for the hockey season. I called Carolyn and asked if she was coming. "My parents aren't home and I'm babysitting my little brother and sister. I can't come."

"But, Carolyn! It's the last skate of the year!! You HAVE to come! Couldn't you drive in and bring your sister and brother?" I whined. This was a terrible thing for me to ask her to do. Her parents were very strict, and I was sure they hadn't given her any kind of permission to do something so brash...but I really wanted to enjoy the last evening of skating with her.

"I'll see what I can do."

That is the last time I ever spoke to her. I arrived at the skate, laced up, and began racing around the arena, keeping one eye on the entrance, but she never showed up. I figured common sense must have prevailed, but I was disappointed she hadn't found a way to come. I skated alone until the very last note of the very last song.

Later that night, I got a phone call. Carolyn had been driving into town for roller skating with her little brother and sister in the back seat. She lost control going around a gravel corner and crashed the car, killing herself and her sister and severely injuring her little brother.

You can see that I felt responsible for this. How could I not? I begged her to come, I put the idea of driving into her mind, I urged her to sneak out of the house while her parents were away with her siblings...

There was a huge memorial at school. I was asked to give a short talk of my memories of her. I visited her parents. They were Japanese, and I saw for the first time a shrine to the dead, pictures of Carolyn and her sister on a table with beads and little items of hers and symbols in red and gold that I was unfamiliar with. There was a candle burning, I think. It seemed very sad and beautiful. I attended her funeral in a big temple, with robed priests banging gongs as we sat silently.

I walked alone through this whole time as one walks through a dark fog. I told no one of how I had cajoled her that evening.

2006-09-17T00:30:00.000-05:00

This morning at 3:30 AM, my dad breathed his last. My mom was holding his hand. I haven't cried since. I feel relieved that his struggle is over. I know I will start crying in the days to come, and I certainly cried many tears in the days leading up to this moment...but for now, I am at complete peace.

I will miss you, Dad.

2006-09-14T09:35:00.000-05:00

My blogging is going to be sporadic for the next while...not sure if writing here will be helpful through this process or not. Bear with me.

Here I sit, listening to the rain pour down. My father is in hospital in town here, in the last difficult stages of pulmonary fibrosis. He was diagnosed four years ago, and has been in a slow decline ever since; but just as the summer weather ended and autumn weather hit us, he began dying in earnest. My sisters are arriving from their various parts of the continent, and we sit by his side, trying to help ease his discomfort in his last days.

He is at peace with dying. Mom is settled in a comfortable, easily manageable apartment, all his daughters are happily married and walking in relationship with God...so he is at peace. All his loose ends are tied up. He knows he is going to Heaven. But death is still something to be fought against, even when you aren't afraid of it. The body can't seem to help but fight it.

These aren't easy times, but I am glad I am here through this process anyway. The thing that kept hitting me yesterday was the reality of this. It doesn't get any more real than this. It felt TOO real, and I spent quite a bit of time crying.

Won't be long now.

2006-09-11T14:04:00.000-05:00

I remember chasing dust devils.....

When I was a kid we lived six miles out of a small town in Alberta, smack in the middle of the prairie. There was dust everywhere. You could only get to our home by gravel road, and any time a vehicle thundered past, clouds of dust would rise and be carried by the movement of the air. The farmer's field to the west of us was often standing in summerfallow, blowing top soil in our direction whenever the wind was right. In the summer we would blow our noses before bed and the snot would be black with dust. This was normal. We thought nothing of it.

Occasionally as we would be playing out in the warm summer afternoons, we would see an undulating column of dust moving towards us from down the gravel road. In my imagination, this small updraft of wind was actually a giant tornado, whirling out of control towards us, smashing everything in its path. Naturally I wanted to stand in the middle of it, proving once again my childish invincibility! My sister and I would run towards the tiny whirlwind and try to predict where it would travel, then stand in its path so it would swirl around us. If we guessed right, the wind would whip around, lifting skirts and hair and shoelaces, and we would shriek with delight. If it was very hot, we could chase the wind all afternoon.

The grit in the eyes, the dust stuck in the mucus membranes....these were small prices to pay for dancing with a devil.

2006-09-08T08:49:00.000-05:00

I remember grooming my dad....

Dad would turn on the television for Hockey Night in Canada. He'd stretch out on the floor on his stomach, his chin on his arms, to watch the game. My sister and I would run for the curlers, a glass of water, and a comb. Whichever girl got there first got to sit on Dad's massive back. As long as we weren't too noisy, we could sit there and put curlers in his hair for the whole game!

Dip the comb in the water. Comb up a piece of hair. Put the curler at the tip and roll down to the root. Insert bobby pin. Enjoy the smell of Brylcreem wafting up from Dad's hair. Repeat.

My dad's hair wasn't long, but it was very thick, and we could use dozens of curlers before we had to take them out and start again. I saw nothing strange in this activity. I thought all girls put curlers in their fathers' hair while they watched hockey. I realize now that this wasn't so, and my respect for my father is immense.

2006-09-05T08:55:00.000-05:00

I remember discovering a phrase that had been coined about me....

Year: 1987
Place: Friends' apartment near Denman Street, Vancouver

A whole gang of us had been out dancing and drinking and having fun. It was late in the evening, and we, one big leather-clad, spiky-haired, metal-studded monster, stumbled back to Adam and Geoff's apartment. One of the girls, maybe Nancy, headed into the bathroom to puke. When she came out, she flopped straight onto the couch and passed out like a dead thing. Somebody laughs. "Hey, she pulled a Paula!"

Ummm...I'm sitting right over here. "What do you mean?" I asked.

"Oh, man...you used to do this every f***in' night! We always had to drag you home from somewhere."

"Oh, yeah. That." I pretend to laugh because everybody is looking, but that really bothered me. Who were these people that I trusted so much, so much so that I was willing to walk around unconscious and let them guide me? I didn't really know any of them at all. I knew their names, but I knew nothing about their hearts.

I secretly vowed to become better at holding my liquor.

2006-08-23T09:47:00.000-05:00

I remember winning a little drag race....

It was summer down in Southern Alberta, and it was hot. HOT. HOT!!! Our family was driving to Lake Newell near Brooks to spend a day at the lake. My little sister and I were sitting in the back seat of Dad's 1974 Mercury Montcalm, legs sticking to the vinyl from the heat.

As we pulled up to a stop light in Brooks, a very shiny red fancy car pulled up beside us. I don't know what kind of car it was, I was only a kid. Dad, with a twinkle in his eye, looked through Mom's open window to the young driver and revved the engine. The guy looked back at Dad, saw the family sitting in the giant boat of a car, and laughed. Dad revved the engine again.

The light turned green. The young guy put the pedal to the floor and pulled away, but Dad only let him get up to the front bumper, and then Dad hit it. We soared past that sports car and left him in the dust!! My little sister and I were bouncing up and down in the back seat from excitement! Wahoo!! The family beat the young hot shot! We looked back at him through the rear windshield and laughed and hooted.

At the next red light, the sports car pulled up beside us. "What do you have under the hood of that thing?" he asked my Dad. Dad told him some big number, 235 or 438 or something (I was just a kid, I don't remember!). The young man looked very impressed. He learned not to judge a car by its cover that day.

Too bad they weren't racing for pink slips!

2006-08-11T15:22:00.000-05:00

I remember getting my first tattoo...

I was dating young Adam. He had a home-made tattoo gun, real punk rock: the motor was taken from a ghetto blaster, the needles were enclosed in a Bic pen casing and duct tape, and when he needed ink, he just went down to Office Depot and bought some. He was doing tattoos on anyone who would let him, and it was only a matter of time before he asked me if I wanted one. I certainly did! It was time to do something permanent in my very unstable life; plus, I could picture me as a grandmother one day, calling over the grandkids and saying, "Looky here at Granny's tattoo!"

I thought about it, and decided I wanted a Chinese-type dragon. Adam said he could do that. I decided that if I was getting a tattoo, I wanted to be straight--nothing to numb the pain (no alcohol, no drugs), and nothing to blame my choices on. Adam said that was really cool, and suggested listening to loud punk rock music to distract me some.

A home-made tattoo gun works very slowly. Adam worked on my right shoulder blade for four long hours the first day. "That's all I can do, my hand is cramping. We'll have to finish the colour work tomorrow." I came back to his little apartment the next day and he worked for four more hours on the already red and raw dragon. That may have been the longest four hours of my life! I don't care how loud you turn up the Black Flag or Subhumans...a slow tattoo still hurts.

Yup, that's me in the photo, a few weeks after the job was done. About a year later, Adam added scales to the body, but he had a real gun by that time, and it only took about an hour. When I went for my most recent tat, I told the artist about Adam's home-made gun, and I could see his level of respect for me rise about 98%. He had never seen a tattoo made with a gun like that, though he had heard about such guns.

I still can't wait to show my tattoos to my grandkids one day, IF I ever have any. I doubt they'll be as impressed as that last tattoo artist, but it'll still make my day.

2006-08-08T15:58:00.000-05:00

I remember the first time I tried acid...

I worked with a skinny little fellow, lets call him Simon. He managed a little downtown bar off of Denman Street in Vancouver, and I was bartending there part-time. Picture a shorter, skinnier version of Tiny Tim, and you are picturing Simon.

One day at work, he asked me if I'd ever done LSD. I hadn't. He asked me if I wanted to. I thought about it, and I did want to try it. He said we'd need a whole day and a safe place where we wouldn't be disturbed. I had no roommates, so my apartment was to be the place. It seemed to take a lot of planning; marijuana took no forethought at all, other than the need for a match. I wondered how hippies had managed to take LSD so successfully if it took so much organization.

Simon buzzed my apartment on the decided morning. I was quite excited. I had read about hallucinations, and I was hoping I wouldn't be disappointed. I wanted to see things that weren't there! Simon entered the apartment and handed me a little square of paper. "What's this?"

"That's the acid. You put it on your tongue."

"I'm supposed to eat paper?"

He popped his little square onto his tongue, showboating his experience compared to my naivete. "Just let it get soggy, then swallow it. Then we wait."

"We have to wait?" Again with the planning. With weed, you smoked it, you got high, just about that quickly. I was going to have to wait? "How long do we have to wait?"

"It takes awhile. Just relax. Remember, if you start freaking out, I'm here to guide you through your trip." Simon was being very superior, I thought, but I was glad there was someone there with experience.

We sat in my apartment talking for awhile. I looked at my hand and noticed that it seemed to be breathing on its own, which I thought was really cool. I asked Simon if perhaps the acid was starting to kick in. He said that it was, and not to be scared. I wasn't scared at all! I looked around the apartment, and I could see the walls breathing, too! It made me laugh out loud. I knew it was just induced by the drug, so I didn't see what there was to be afraid of. I began exploring my apartment, enjoying all the silly and bizarre things it seemed to be doing.

I have no idea how long I was distracted by the walls and the carpet fiber, but when I looked back at Simon, he was laying flat on the floor with his eyes closed and his body rigid. "Simon?" He didn't respond to me at all. He just kept moaning about horrible things, calling out to Satan to leave his mother alone, that sort of thing. Yecch. I didn't know what to do for him. If his eyes did open, he'd look at me and start talking to me as if I was his mommy. Blech!!! He didn't appear to be in any physical danger, so I decided the best thing to do would be to leave him to his private nightmares and go sit on the deck.

The sky was beautiful. The light rays bouncing from high-rise to high-rise were electric. If Simon the Experienced was having a bad trip, I was having a good one. I just sat on the deck for hours, watching the sun move across the sky, watching a spider build a web, watching feathers form on the back of my hand...that sort of thing.

When Simon finally regained lucidity, he joined me on the deck. I tried to tell him how he was all freaked out, but he seemed to think nothing had happened, no time had passed. I let it go. The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful. We went for a walk when we started to come down. That was about it.

I wish my first trip had been a bad one, actually. The experience had been so magical for me, I made LSD my drug of choice for almost a year after that, dropping acid on average twice a week. I didn't have any bad trips until the last two. The second last one was scary, and I decided that if that ever happened again, I'd quit. The next time I took acid, the last time, I was so nearly permanently disturbed that I knew the ride was over. I wonder how many memories I traded for those little pieces of paper? The whole reason I started this blog are because of the giant holes in my mental history, and I am convinced that the huge amount of LSD I took are what put them there.

Break on through, indeed...

2006-08-04T08:40:00.000-05:00

I remember getting bit by a dog...

It was the summer of 1985, somewhere in eastern Nebraska. I was selling books with the Southwestern Book Company, based in Nashville, Tennessee. I won't even get into the psychological brainwashing you have to allow in order to be successful at door-to-door sales. I just want to tell this one story.

It was my day to ride with our sales manager, to follow her around and see how it's done. She had a car, so she was selling out in the country, driving to farmhouses to show them books. Linda was so good at the job, she sold books at almost every house we stopped at. I was in awe. We pulled into another farm house, and as I got out of the car a big farm dog loped towards me. He looked friendly compared to some we'd seen, so I was able to push away my normal fear of strange dogs (I had been terrorized by a neighbor's dog when I was a child, and I had a healthy respect for dogs I'd never met). I reached out to pet him, and he bit my wrist, quite hard. I turned away from him slightly, and as he released his grip on my wrist, his teeth snagged my back pocket, ripping through my pants and cutting my skin a bit.

My reaction was swift and immediate. "BAD DOG!! Go lie down!!!" He hunkered down in shame and ran over to the corner of the house and curled up. I couldn't believe it. If I had tried to run, that dog would have been all over me, but somewhere in my bookseller-brainwashed-I-can-solve-every-problem brain, I found the right thing to do.

It turns out nobody was home at that farm, so we put a couple of band-aids on my wrist and headed to the next one. You don't stop selling books for a little thing like a dog bite.

2006-07-29T20:37:00.000-05:00

I remember sneaking illegal substances past the border guard....

I had traveled alone on a Greyhound bus down to San Francisco for a vacation back in 1989. My friend was working there, and she hooked me up with all the great parties. I have a few memories from this trip, they'll probably work into other blog entries....but for now, I'm thinking about the ride back.

My friend, D., happened to be in Frisco doing some band business (she was a promoter for alternative and punk bands). It made way more sense for me to travel back with her in her van than to buy another Greyhound ticket! D. planned to drive back all in one shot, using speed to help her stay alert on the road. My job as navigator was to mix the speed into our drinks and keep an eye out for the cops (I had to stay awake, too, to help D. stay awake!!). We drove too fast, listened to loud punk rock music, we waved at cute boys in other cars...it was quite a trip.

We pulled up near the border in the very middle of the darkness of the night. The speed was all gone, no problem there...but there was a bit of marijuana that we planned on smoking once we got home so we could fall asleep. What to do? Obviously, I wasn't thinking that clearly anymore, and I suggested that we hide it. I took D.'s little garbage can by the driver's seat, dumped it on the ground, then took a nondescript dark plastic container out from the midst of the refuse. I stashed the weed in the container, dumped all the garbage back into the can and put it back by the seat. "There! He'll never see it." We felt very clever.

When we got to the border, the guard took one look at us, all tattooed and wild-eyed, and told us to pull over. I can tell you honestly that I wasn't nervous at all. We sat side by side on a little bench while he proceeded to go through every box and bag and suitcase in the van. As he came across all the band merchandise that D. had, he was very suspicious--the one band, Lard, had given D. baggies of actual lard to use as band promotional material. We could see the guard hold up the baggie full of a white square like he'd hit the jackpot....we saw him open the baggy, stick his finger into the lard, then taste it to see what drug it was....it was all we could do to keep from screaming with laughter!

After about half an hour of fruitless searching, he let us go. I promptly rolled a big joint as soon as we were on the Canadian highway, and we toasted each other's good fortune.

This story. I don't know how to tell it. I look at it now, and I am amazed that we didn't end up with a huge fine or a criminal record. I feel like I should turn it into a morality tale of how bad drugs are....but I just can't. Don't get me wrong...I think drugs stole the best part of my brain, and I have no desire to do them again--yes, kids, they are bad. But this story! We got away with it! We stuck it to the man!! No other experience I've had can match the glowing feeling of invincibility we had as we smoked that weed on the last leg of the journey home.

2006-07-28T16:30:00.000-05:00

I remember feeling bad for Peter.

Grade 8 in small-town Alberta, sitting in class listening to the teacher. She asks me to read aloud from the text. I stand and read, clearly and with good diction. I feel somewhat proud of my reading ability. She asks the person behind me to read, and they do so, and so on down the row. She gets to Peter, the last in the row. He stands to read, and he can barely get the words out. He is sounding out simple words, words like "actual" and "promise". I become very embarrassed for him. Some kids are giggling, but I can't join in. I wonder how he can have got to Grade 8 without being able to read. I want to stand up and read for him. I want to tell the teacher to quit asking him to read, she knows he can barely do it. I do none of these things. I feel bad.

2006-07-18T10:01:00.000-05:00

I remember my sister talking to me about love...

I was hanging out in my bedroom way back in, oh...1977 or '78. My oldest sister, Carol, who was home for a visit, waltzed into my bedroom and flopped onto my bed.

"Love is grand!"

I had no idea what she was talking about.

"Look at the hat he bought me at the Calgary Stampede! It was really expensive!!" He had bought her a cowboy hat. I tried it on, but at the age of 11 or 12, my head was already much bigger than Carol's, and it perched on top of my hair like a novelty hat. We laughed.

"He makes me feel so wonderful! I just want to spend all of my time with him! One day you will fall in love, too, Paula, and you will see what I am talking about." She sighed happily, then floated out of the room.

I sat down on my bed, wondering if there was someone out there who would buy me a cowboy hat one day, and would that actually make me float like Carol.

I hoped so.

2006-07-14T08:44:00.000-05:00

I remember my first black eye...

It did not happen in my childhood. I had scrapes and bruises like most kids, but no black eye, no broken bones. It did not happen in my teenage years. I wasn't really a brawler.

It happened at a Red Hot Chili Peppers' concert. I was in my early twenties, probably 1989. The Peppers were playing at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver, the place with the springy dance floor. I was very excited, everybody I knew was excited...the Peppers were touring the "Mother's Milk" album and it was going to be an explosive show.

The dance floor was packed. The term "mosh pit" hadn't really come into vogue yet, but picture a mosh pit with about 800 people, all just going bananas! (There were no spectators, if you know what I mean.) I was right in the middle of the floor, dancing like a maniac. At one point I vaguely remember making contact with some sweaty hunk's elbow...we grinned at each other and kept on dancing. I didn't think anything of it--I was making contact with everyone around me!

At the end of the night when I went to the ladies room to freshen up, I saw I had a huge shiner! My left eye was turning that beautiful purple-black colour. It must have been the elbow from the cute hunk...

This black eye became a badge of honor for the time it took to heal. "Where'd you get the black eye, Paula?"

"Oh, I was slamming seriously hard at the Chili Pepper's show..."

Inevitably..."Coooooooooool!" with a tone of hushed reverence and awe.

Yup, I milked that black eye for all it could give me. Looks like I still am!

2006-07-10T18:02:00.000-05:00

I remember discovering what burning hair smells like...

I'm not sure how old I was in this memory, but I remember it very clearly. I was probably 9 or 10, when we still lived out on the prairie. Our family was invited over to another's family's home for supper, and I was excited because these people actually had kids I liked near my own age. As a pastor's family, we were often invited over to the homes of people with no children at all, and we'd have to be good, and it was SO BORING!!!

But these people had Janelle, and she and I got along great. After supper, she and I were playing in her room...we were playing with Barbies, which usually went against my grain, but I let it slide in order to be friendly. All of a sudden, all the lights went out, pitch darkness--no big deal, just a power outage. If you live on the farm or in the country, the power could go out during any little wind storm, and we were all used to it. Janelle's mom came bustling with a candle for us into the room where we were playing...she set it on the dresser. Then she bustled out to take candles all over the rest of the house.

As soon as she was gone, we realized that the small light of one lone candle didn't reach down to where we were playing. We moved the candle down to the floor beside Barbie's Dream House and continued to play, doing our best to be careful and not knock the candle over. All of a sudden, we both stopped. Eeeew! What was that awful smell? I was turning my head to see what was so stinky all of a sudden, when Janelle noticed that my long hair was decidedly shorter in one area. We took the candle into the bathroom so we could inspect my hair with the help of a mirror...it was all frizzly on the ends. I must have moved my hair through the candle flame when I was reaching for Ken or something!! I could have lit my head on fire!!

For some reason we felt incredibly guilty, and had an overwhelming urge NOT to tell our mothers what had just happened. Surely trying to light your own head on fire was a punishable offence! We used fingernail scissors to trim off the frizzly burnt parts, but how to hide the smell? We scrambled through the bathroom looking for something, anything...hairspray! That stinks pretty good! Janelle and I sprayed first my head, then her entire room with hairspray.

No, we did not set the house on fire. Somehow in our ignorance of the flammability of aerosol propellants, we managed not to spray near one of the open flames. To this day, the smell of burning hair gives me the delicious sneaky feeling of getting away with something. Unless my mom starts reading this blog, which is unlikely, she will never know I burnt my hair that evening! Ha ha ha!!!

2006-07-06T17:37:00.000-05:00

I remember listening to rock and roll with my cousin...

We moved to my uncle's farm when I was 14 years old and lived there for two years. This time shines in the history of my teenage years like a polished diamond. Previous to moving to Vauxhall, I experienced three years of living hell during junior high in Three Hills, and my last year of high school in Coronation was OK, but mostly lonely. It was in Vauxhall that I truly enjoyed being a teenager, and that is largely due to the influence of my cousin, Tim.

Tim was one year younger than me, and the only child remaining in my uncle's home. He and I were inseparable. We'd discuss all manner of things, from whether the people in the new school would think I was good looking (Tim assured me they would), to whether a vanilla milkshake made with a whole bottle of vanilla would make you drunk or not (Tim assured me that it would).

Tim knew so much more about music than I did. He had records--rock and roll records!! When our parents weren't home, we'd sit in Tim's living room and he'd put on Styx or Rush or Meatloaf at ear-splitting levels and we would pour over the lyric sheets or dance around the house. My little sister would be at home in our trailer, and she assured us that the windows were shaking even over there!! Wow!!! What power...

I remember reading the lyrics for songs like "Paradise by the Dashboard Lights" or "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" and realizing that I knew nothing at all about sex. Tim and I would discuss this unknown part of life, wondering what it would be like, wondering why God had to make things so difficult for teenagers. I value those discussions, I hold them like precious stones. It was perhaps the first time that I was able to be completely open and honest with someone, to ask any question I was thinking of without fear of judgment or embarrassment.

2006-06-29T10:16:00.000-05:00

I remember my first real party...

...you know the kind I mean, the kind with--*drum roll*--alcohol? As a teenager, I was fairly clean-cut. I did what my Mom and Dad said, for the most part. Once when I was 14 I had a few drinks from a friend's beer bottle at a school dance, but other than that....clean.

In Grade 12, we moved to a new town even smaller than the one we had been living in for two years. The kids at the school were nice enough, but they had known each other since Grade 1, and I was definitely the outsider. One day, Shirley asked me if I wanted to come to her place for a party Friday night, beer and barbecue. I couldn't believe she had even asked me...she knew I was the preacher's daughter! I lamely said I'd ask my mom, never expecting her to say yes.

I asked my mom straight out, with no pleading or "I'll be good!" She looked at me and smiled and said, "Go ahead, honey. Sounds like fun." Was this trust? Yes, it most definitely was! There was no lecture, no warnings about the evils of alcohol...just trust.

So I went to the party. There were only 33 kids in my class, including me, so almost everyone was there. Most of them were drinking beer. I remember one of the guys standing at the barbecue pouring beer over his steak, something I had never seen done before. Someone asked me if I wanted a beer. I said no thanks, but is there any soda pop? Sure, in the fridge, help yourself. I think I had half-expected to be mocked and ridiculed for turning down the beer, but nobody even noticed.

I remember "White Wedding" howling through the speakers and all of us singing along with Billy Idol.

I didn't stay really late, but I had fun. I felt like a bridge had been crossed, like I had hung out on alien turf and been accepted as I was. Perhaps it didn't dawn on me then, but I had also accepted these other kids as they were, without expecting them to clean up and come to church or youth group or Bible study. It sure made a difference in how I was treated at school...not quite as much of an outsider, a little bit more like someone who belonged.

I hope I remember to trust my daughter when she wants to walk on alien turf. It's a good place to learn about people, a good place to learn about yourself, hanging out with the "aliens". You realize there really isn't any difference at all, to speak of.

2006-06-19T08:26:00.000-05:00

I remember realizing that it's possible to like Jimi Hendrix too much...

A bit of background. I grew up in a home with plenty of music, but almost no rock and roll. We sang choruses and hymns, Dad would listen to Jim Reeves or Tennessee Ernie Ford on the record player...but we were NOT allowed to listen to rock and roll radio. When I went to college and started volunteering at a college radio station in 1985, my mind was blown wide open by all the music in the record library. One day I'd be excited about the Violent Femmes, the next day it was Janis Joplin or the Doors....it was ALL new to me. My favorite, though, was Jimi Hendrix. I played him every week on my show, mixing him in amongst the Ramones, the Talking Heads, and Einsturzende Neubauten. It made perfect sense to me, and I often talked on air about how I thought Jimi was--if not ACTUALLY, then practically--God. Anyone who listened to my radio show in Vancouver knew how I felt about Jimi.

An acquaintance of mine, David (names have been changed to protect the guilty), asked me on a date. He was a quiet sort with a brooding intensity, and I knew him well enough from my social life, so I said sure. I think we went for a walk along the seawall, and then went back to his place so he could cook me dinner. As we were sitting at the table after the delicious meal, David started talking about Jimi Hendrix. He loved Jimi, too! This was starting to look like a promising date! He pulled out all the Jimi albums he had, which was more than I had ever seen before, and put one on. He sat at the table and closed his eyes as the music started. I, being me, pushed my chair away from the table and started dancing around the room like a hippy, blissed out as I let the guitar notes tell me what to do next.

David spoke up: "What are you doing?"

"I'm dancing! I just have to move when I listen to Jimi!"

"You can't listen properly if you are dancing. You have to sit and listen without distraction!"

I realized at that moment that all the promise of the first half of the date was at this moment being destroyed by David's obsession with Jimi. I had been told all my growing up years that dancing was wrong and I should stop, and here was this long hair telling me to stop, too. "Uh...I listen best when I move!"

"No. Nobody can properly absorb what Jimi was trying to communicate if they are not paying full attention. Sit down."

Rather than make a scene, I sat and listened to Jimi with David for about another hour. It was very boring. Apparently if you want to really "get" what Jimi is communicating, you can't dance, talk, or do anything but sit there with your eyes closed! I can picture us in that apartment sitting at the table in the candlelight, David's eyes closed, mine sort of closed but actually peeking at David just to make sure he wasn't kidding or pulling my leg or something. It was quite humorous, but I couldn't wait to leave.

I was fully prepared to turn David down the next time he asked me out, but he never asked me out again. I must have failed his test as completely as he failed mine.

2006-06-09T20:38:00.000-05:00

I remember the stranger who laughed at me...

As the family of the pastor, we often had guests over at our house for dinner. This was something I usually looked forward to. I enjoyed entertaining people, and new guests were a new audience who hadn't seen all my old material!

One afternoon there was a few people over, grown-ups without any children. I was cavorting around the kitchen listening to their conversation, when one of the men looked at me and laughed. He made some comment, I don't remember exactly what, about the enormous size of my tongue, and then proceeded to stick his tongue out like someone with Down's syndrome and roll his eyes at me. Everybody laughed. Except me. It so happens that I do have a very long tongue, and as a child when I was concentrating on something, it would sometimes rest on my lower lip with my mouth partly open. This was an unconcious act that I didn't realize I was doing...until this man pointed it out. I was humiliated. I discovered what it meant to be self-conscious.

I spent the next few minutes alone in front of a mirror, purposefully trying to recreate my usually absent-minded tongue placement. Even I had to admit, it looked ridiculous. It made me look dumb.

Friends, thinking of this memory still fills me with hot shame and anger. I want to find this man, who's name I thankfully don't know, and kick him in the shins, just like an 8 year old would. I can't believe I am still holding onto the hatred I felt for him. I guess it's time for me to let it go, to realize that a man who would mock a child and laugh at her like that must be a small man indeed, with a small opinion of himself, and probably needs my forgiveness more than I need his respect. So, little man, wherever you are...I forgive you for laughing at me.

2006-05-27T11:51:00.000-05:00

I remember feeling like an outsider in my own kitchen...

I think I am 6 or 7. There is company over at our house, and we are all in the kitchen around the table, chairs pushed back for leg room. My little sister runs into the room and climbs on my mother's lap, pushing herself in for a serious snuggle.

Mom says proudly, "This is my cuddly girl!"

I'm sitting at the table watching this. I think to myself, "I like cuddles. I'm a cuddly girl. What about me?" I think that my little sister is obnoxious, stealing cuddles before they are offered. I would never do that. It seems rude to me. I think hugs and snuggles should be a gift given to me, not a right demanded by me. I try and remember the last time I ever jumped into Mom's lap like that....I can't think of one instance.

The company all respond with loving comments about how sweet she is. I sit and watch, an outsider, a middle child.

2006-05-23T17:16:00.000-05:00

I remember hearing that my sister had been killed in a car accident...

I was 18, it was 1984, and I was working in Banff all summer as a chambermaid and evening desk clerk. One morning as we were getting ready for work (all us chambermaids lived in the same house), my boss, Ralph, came to the door. This was highly unusual; he NEVER came over to the house, especially not in the morning. One of my roommates came and said, "Ralph wants to talk to you, Paula". I think we all thought that I was going to get fired, though I couldn't for the life of me think of what I had done to deserve being fired.

Ralph looked so uncomfortable, I knew something terrible had happened. "Paula, your father called the hotel this morning. Your sister and her husband were killed in a car accident." He chose his words so carefully...

I started crying immediately, uncontrollably. "Which sister?"

Ralph looked like he was going to be sick. "I'm sorry, I don't know. Your father is coming to pick you up so you can be with your family. Your job is safe here, don't worry about us at all."

I stumbled to my room and grabbed my photo album and began looking at the pictures of my older sisters. Kathy and Jim or Carol and Bill? Kathy or Carol? Which sister was dead? I sat there crying for hours. It takes a long time to drive from Vauxhall to Banff, it takes hours and hours. As my dad drove to get me, I sat there crying over my photo album, not daring to pick which sister I'd rather live without. I had never felt so alone in all my life.

When Dad arrived, he smothered me in a tearful hug before I could say anything. I pulled away. "Dad, Ralph didn't know...which sister of mine is dead?"

"It was Carol. Carol and Bill."

It felt a little better to know who I was grieving for. Those three or four hours where I knew I had experienced a loss but didn't know who was gone were very strange. Very strange. I wouldn't wish that on anybody.

If anyone chooses to comment, you don't have to tell me how sorry you are or anything. Carol was 28 when she died...she would have been 50 on May 20th. I miss her still, but life goes on, doesn't it? I passed the 28 year mark, and I almost felt guilty for outliving Carol. It felt like uncharted territory, being older than my oldest sister. I realize that these are illogical thing to feel, but when emotions are involved, logic often takes a coffee break. Grieving is a strange, strange cloak, and once you've been given it to wear, it is always a part of your wardrobe, and on some days, you take it out and try it on just to see if it still fits...it usually does. It's the one piece of clothing I don't think you ever outgrow.

2006-05-11T13:38:00.000-05:00

I remember hitting a woman in the head with a golf ball...

We lived in the country beside the little church my Dad pastored. One of Abe's most passionate hobbies was golfing, and one spring Dad turned our huge backyard into a pitch and putt golf course. He filled gopher holes along the fairways, dug nine holes and put a tin can in each one to catch the golf balls. He mowed the grass nice and close along the greens, and made a flag we could move from hole to hole so we could see where to aim. It was awesome!! My sister and I each had our own putter and a driver, and we'd golf all afternoon on a Saturday. I even got a hole-in-one on the longest hole one day! This was no easy feat...I'm not talking Miniature Golf here, but a true Par 3 Pitch 'n Putt. Like I said, it was a huge back yard.

One day, I was at the back of the yard, lining up for a good long shot towards the hole nearest the church. I hollered "Fore!!!" and gave the ball a mighty whack...just as a woman walked out of the side door of the church. My ball headed straight for her, hitting her in the temple; she crumpled like a limp towel to the ground. It happened so fast, there was nothing I could have done. I felt so guilty!! Apparently it took her a long time to recover from that injury. My line drive caused her head-aches for years afterwards. Oops.

Now that I think of it, I haven't golfed much since.

2006-05-10T17:51:00.000-05:00

I remember my dad taking me out for lunch....

When I was in grade school, once in awhile my dad would come into town, pick me up from school and take me to the Three Hills Inn Restaurant for lunch. I would always order a grilled cheese sandwich, and he would always order an open denver sandwich. We would eat our sandwiches and joke about things and drink our respective drinks, coffee for him and root beer for me. He always had me back to school in time for my next class.

These little meals together were casual, rare enough to be a treat, yet often enough to produce a feeling of "special" in my little girl heart. You see, I did not know if Dad did this with my other sisters. He never told me. As far as I knew, I was Dad's favorite daughter, the only one important enough to merit a lunch-time treat.

Years later I was talking with my mother, and I mentioned how special those dinners made me feel. Mom laughed. "I had to tell him to take you girls out now and then, he never would have thought of it. But he was always good to do it once I told him to."

The dinners weren't his idea? He took my other sisters, too? I had to change the subject, for I found that even though I was a grown-up, all of a sudden I felt like crying like a little girl.

2006-04-26T15:13:00.000-05:00

I remember driving my friend, Jon....

We had come into Vancouver from Langley to see Grapes of Wrath play at the Luv Affair. It was 1985 or so, and the Grapes were "the next big thing". Jon was old friends with the Hooper brothers from the Kelowna days, and I was excited to see them play. We parked about a block away from the space, and I was hopping to get in there. Jon pulled out a bottle of some sort of liquor, I don't remember what...."Want some?"

Oh, brother, what a nuisance. We were going to miss the band! I took a small swig, then passed it back. "Come on, Jon, lets GO! They will start any minute!"

"You go ahead. I want to drink for free out here instead of paying what they charge for drinks in there. I'll be there in a minute."

I left him at the car and ran into the club. The Grapes put on a good show, played all my favorite songs...but where was Jon? They were finishing the show and I realized that Jon was still nowhere to be seen! As they ripped into their encore (a hilarious version of "Smalltown Boy" by Bronski Beat), Jon came stumbling in. He was tanked!! Gassed! He could hardly walk!! Even more incomprehensible to me, he had missed the entire show! I helped him up to the stage so he could say hi to his friends. Tom just started laughing at him, slapped him on the face, hard...and Jon just wobbled and smiled. "Thish is my frien', Tom." Tom thought it was the funniest thing, slapped him a couple of times just because Jon wasn't stopping him. Nice guy.

It was then that my dilemma hit me. Jon drove us there from Langley. We both had an 8 AM class next morning. Jon was too drunk to walk, let alone drive. I did not have my driver's license. I didn't know anyone in Vancouver. I began explaining all of this to Jon as we made our way to his car. I had to explain it a few times before he got it. I was NOT going to drive to Langley at 2:30 AM, an almost hour's drive on a big highway.

"Jon, do you have a friend near here? Can you direct me to a friend's house?" Once he understood that he had to navigate, I started up the car and began driving. Yikes! I kept playing over and over in my mind what I would say to the policeman who would probably pull me over, how I had to drive so Jon wouldn't kill us both. The trip took awhile because at every corner I had to ask Jon if this was where we turned, and then he'd have to think about it...so I would slow down. I was quite freaked out!

We made it to Jon's friend's house, probably 3 AM. I had to knock on the door of a stranger in the middle of the night, hoping it was the right house, hoping he actually liked Jon enough to let him in and not just slap him and laugh at him like his friend, Tom, at the show. Thankfully the guy was still up. I explained the predicament to him, and he agreed to let Jon sleep if off for a few hours. As soon as Jon hit the couch, he passed out.

Now what? Here I am with a complete stranger, watching our mutual friend sleep. It was awkward. I don't remember his name, but he made coffee and we sat up talking the whole night. I wish I could remember what we talked about. I'm sure at least part of the conversation revolved around the folly of drunkenness!

I shook Jon awake at 6:45 AM and made him drink a bunch of coffee. He drove us wearily back to Langley and we both made our 8 o'clock class. This would have been a great lesson for me, as I couldn't believe Jon had missed something so great as a concert for something as lame as alcohol...it would have been a great lesson if I had learned it. If you search through the archives of this blog, you will find many examples of me doing pretty much exactly the same thing. I guess instead of a lesson, it was foreshadowing....and I should have considered myself warned.

2006-04-22T17:13:00.000-05:00

I remember wishing I had a car...

It was probably 1984, and I was still an earnest young student at Trinity Western University. I helped put out the school newspaper, and was given the lucky task of interviewing Larry Norman at his upcoming show. Yippee!! I loved his music, and I couldn't wait to grill him with earnest young questions.

I caught a ride into Vancouver, almost an hour away, with my friend, Walter. The show was fabulous. Larry was touring with his younger brother, Charles. (He looked EXACTLY like he did in this picture, which was the only one I could find on the internet of him in those days. Did he hide them all? I don't know why he would, he looked hot, or at least I thought so.) Anyway...after the show I got to go backstage and interview Larry. I found I didn't really have to ask any questions. He just talked and talked and talked, roving from one subject to another, all of it good. He wandered off to talk to someone else, and I got talking with Charles. By now it was late, 1 or 2 in the morning maybe, and I could see Walter looking at his watch and glaring at me.

I remember the next few moments very clearly. Charles, who was quite shy, looked up from beneath his glorious nest of hair and asked, "Umm...do you want to go to McDonald's or something and get something to eat with me?"

Yes! Yes, I did!!! I was 18 years old, and all of a sudden I wanted to go to McDonald's very, very much. "Uh...I have no ride back to school. Ummm...just a sec!" I ran and pleaded with Walter to come along, but he would not. Walter is a very stubborn person. He wanted to go back to Langley at that very moment. I did not know what to do. I couldn't remember ever feeling more frustrated at not being able to drive. I gave Charles my regrets, and Walter dragged me out of there before we could say anything else about it.

In hindsight, I think I should have gone with Charles and risk being stranded. What a wimp, to not take a chance, to not grab the adventure before me, simply because I did not have a ride home. I am pleased to tell you that six years later, when another stranger chased me down and asked me to go for coffee, I didn't worry about the consequences or schedules, but instead said yes. Then I married him, and fifteen and a half years later, I'm still not sorry I did it! Perhaps I learned something from Charles after all...

2006-04-20T09:00:00.000-05:00

I remember watching "The Exorcist"...

Back in 1981, I was still not allowed to go to movie theatres, so when a movie was shown on television, it was a really big deal for me. They had been showing ads for "The Exorcist" for weeks. Mom kept clucking her tongue. I expressed no interest in watching the movie, though I secretly wanted to. It didn't look possible to watch it anyway, as I was going to be helping a friend babysit that night.

Mom drove into Raychelle's driveway. "Don't watch that horrible movie."

"OK, Mom, no problem."

She drove off and I ran into the house. Raychelle met me at the door. "Hurry!! I put the kids to bed already, and 'The Exorcist' is just about to start! Come on!!"

This is where I had a decision to make. This is the moment where I had to choose whether to obey my mother or to disobey her. I didn't even think twice. "Awesome! Is there popcorn?"

We sat in that farmhouse, side by side on the couch, and watched that movie in the deep shadows of the living room. I was terrified as the story unfolded. We shared a blanket, both becoming seriously freaked out. We had never seen anything like it, and we were all alone in a creaky old farmhouse in the dark. My mother's advice suddenly seemed like good advice, and I wished I had taken it, but it was too late.

As soon as the movie was over, Raychelle and I turned on every light in the house and sat in the kitchen waiting for her family to come home. We sat there for hours.

2006-04-17T17:12:00.000-05:00

I remember starting to smoke...

I had tried a puff or two of other people's cigarette's when I was in High School, but I had never bought my own pack. To me, the level of your addiction was always related to whether you paid for the goods or not. I was only smoking vicariously through other people's habits...

...until I got back from that drama tour I wrote about in the previous entry. I had a summer job lined up, selling T-shirts outside of Expo 86 in Vancouver. I had a roommate and we had a place to live, a little travel trailer in the backyard of a Salvation Army preacher. And I no longer had any reason not to smoke, since I no longer counted as valid anything I'd been taught about behavior and morality.

The first pack of cigarettes I bought myself was More Menthol's. I figured they'd look good with my red fingernail polish. (It is all about looking good, isn't it?) I LOVED how they looked. I'd smoke while I walked to work, admiring myself in shop windows as I passed by. I'd smoke while I drank cups of coffee, learning to blow smoke rings and French inhale. I would smoke at the Luv Affair while I danced. I smoked as I waited for the bus. I loved smoking!

It didn't take long to become addicted all on my own, without any of my friends to blame it on or bum smokes from. Of course, back in 1986, you could buy a pack of smokes for $1.50 at the cheap smoke shop. I soon switched from More's to Peter Stuyvesant's, a Dutch cigarette, when I could find them...and if I couldn't find them, Player's would do in a pinch. I pretty much smoked non-stop for at least four years after that.

2006-04-10T09:00:00.000-05:00

I remember having nothing to say...

I was a second-year college student at the Christian school, Trinity Western University. My major was Fine Arts, concentrating on Drama, minoring in English. I had joined the little drama troupe, Spectra, a five-person team that performed sketches and little plays. This was a great thing for me, really challenging but not beyond my abilities. I enjoyed being a part of it. To be honest, I had quite a crush on Dirk (yes, that was his name), but he never returned my affections. Oh well.

Anyway, at the end of the school year, we had a three-week tour booked all down the West Coast to California and back again, playing at churches to represent the school. The evening would consist of about half an hour of sketches, then one of us would give our testimony (for the unchurched among my readers, this means my little story of what God had done for me lately), and then the school staff member would give a plug for the school. We each took turns giving our testimony, one per night.

I'm not sure where on the journey this exactly happened. I was sitting in the back seat of the van beside Dirk, watching the highway roll by. The staff member called back from the front of the van, "Paula, it's your turn to give your testimony tonight." I was quiet for awhile as I thought about this. What had God done for me lately? What had He impressed on my heart? What difference was He making in my life? I couldn't think of a single thing. I watched Dirk watching the road roll by. He was so beautiful, so unattainable.

"Celestina?" I called up to her, "I can't give my testimony tonight. God hasn't done a bloody thing for me, and I don't want to lie to anybody."

It was very quiet in the van after that. Everybody used most of their energy to not look at me. I could feel them not looking at me. Dirk quietly asked if I was OK, and I said "yes". Inside, though, it felt like I had just jumped off of a very high bridge. I was realizing that the whole foundation on which my young life had been built thus far was, at worst, meaningless to me, or at best, unfathomable. All of a sudden my future was completely blank, wide open...empty.

Everyone kept me at arm's length for the rest of the trip. I performed my bits in the sketches, but I wasn't asked again to give my testimony.

2006-04-04T08:27:00.000-05:00

I remember listening to my sisters' records....

The year, 1972 or -73. My two older sisters would once in a rare while be allowed to spend their money on records IF it wasn't rock and roll music. Simon and Garfunkel were allowed, but just barely.

I'm not sure where my mother or other sisters were during this memory. Perhaps they were out in the garden or cooking in the kitchen....but I remember having the living room all to my eight-year-old self. I remember the scratchy brown chesterfield and the knubbly green carpet. I remember taking Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits out of it's white paper and carefully placing it on the record player, then moving the heavy arm over and gently placing it on the black vinyl.

My favorite side was Side 1. They mentioned Jesus in "Mrs. Robinson" for starters, they felt groovy...they sang about silence having a sound. But the song that really got me was "I am a Rock". I would sit there, cross-legged on the floor with the record jacket on my lap, and sing that song with all my childish heart. When the song was over, I'd lift the needle arm and put it back at the beginning of the track and listen to it again, and again, and again...

I was a year younger than everyone else in my class at school, and I didn't fit in there very well. This song made me feel strong inside, I think. I read the lyrics now and they almost make me laugh. They read like bad junior high poetry! But I'm glad that song was there for me when I was a lonely little girl.

2006-03-25T18:56:00.000-06:00

I remember skipping school in Grade 11...

As far as I can remember, this is the only year in school that I skipped classes, 1981/82. I blame it on our Math teacher...he was horrible. Still, kids, don't skip school!

(There, I got the required Public Service Announcement out of the way)

My friends and I would go down to Ming's, the local Chinese restaurant. If one of us had enough money, we'd order a big, fat egg roll and drench it in plum sauce. Otherwise we'd just hang out in the pinball room. My favorite game was Gorgar. If you started racking up a high score, the big red demon would speak to you!! "Gorgar getting angry!" and if you were playing really well, you heard "Gorgar hate you!!" When the ball inevitably went down for the last time, it was "Gorgar beat you!". Awesome...

I would occasionally save a quarter for the jukebox. I think most of the music was Led Zeppelin or April Wine, but my favorite song to play was "Rock Lobster" by the B-52's. You have to understand that due to my sequestered upbringing, I had no knowledge of bands, none. All I knew was, that song made everybody else in the place angry, and it made me want to dance. That's all I knew. I played it whenever I could.

Do you think as much as I enjoyed making Gorgar curse me, I also enjoyed making my friends curse me? "Who put on this crappy song?", or "I hate this, it isn't even MUSIC!" they'd yell. Is that why I liked it? Have I allowed other people's opinions to shape me in some reverse way? That's almost a disturbing thought--me, who has practically based my identity on not caring what people think about me, doing exactly the opposite of the status quo. If I truly didn't care what people thought about me, I wouldn't care if what I did impressed them OR bothered them. I'd be indifferent, unaware...neutral.

I think I'm more indifferent now than I used to be. But I'm only human...

2006-03-22T12:11:00.000-06:00

I remember drinking coffee at the Zen Cafe....

It was a little coffee shop just off the main drag on Robson Street in Vancouver. The year, somewhere around 1986 or 87. (My memory is VERY unreliable from this time!) All I know is, I'd stay out dancing and partying til late, late, late. The 12 noon blast from the BC Hydro building would wake me up. I'd make myself presentable, and head straight for the Zen to meet the tribe. We'd sit there drinking coffee for hours, creating all sorts of rituals around the drinking of the cup.

I'd pour in two creamers and NEVER use a spoon. We all decided that it was much prettier to watch the cream mingle with the coffee naturally, without help of stirring. If you really ponder the swirling cream, you can't help but start thinking of the universe and it's constant turning...I'd almost get dizzy at the thought of it.

We'd have contests to see who could flip an un-opened creamer the most times without making a mistake. If you flipped it with just the right amount of force, it would make a complete rotation and land upright, ready to be flipped again. My personal record was in the high fifties, this after hours of practice.

There we'd sit, tattooed, dread-locked, leather-clad youngsters--pondering our cream swirling in our coffee. We'd discuss the art work on the walls, we'd make plans for outings, we'd debate the meaning of life...all very bohemian, really. The owner of the cafe never seemed to mind us sitting there, spending only a dollar or two, taking up five or six tables. He must not have been very busy. I don't recall ever thanking him for that. We were all so self-absorbed, it probably never entered our minds.

To this day, I refuse to use a spoon to stir my coffee.

2006-03-14T19:27:00.000-06:00

I remember getting choked by Gene Kiniski.....

The band, D.O.A., was shooting a music video at the Town Pump, and the call had gone out to their friends and associates to come be the crowd for the shoot that day. My friends and I got all punked out, too fun a chance to miss!

The cameras were all set up, and we were told how it was going to go: the band would pretend to play on stage, we'd jump around like maniacs, Gene Kiniski would run in with a briefcase (he was representing the corporate pigs, I guess!) and start causing mayhem, and then Joey would jump off stage and kick the crap out of Gene. Sounds great!

The cameras began rolling and we began jumping around to the music. Gene ran in, and I was in shock. I'd heard of the wrestling legend before, of course, but he was so BIG! He saw my dumbfounded look and headed straight for me, wrapped his big mitts around my neck, and then proceeded to choke me, cartoon-style. The director made him choke me a couple of times so they could get a good shot of it. Gene was awesome! As soon as the cameras would take a break, he'd laugh and say "You look like you are havin' fun!", but as soon as the director would yell "Action", he'd turn into this wild-eyed madman and go straight for my throat!

I've watched the video a few times, and I don't think that shot made it. Too bad. I'd like to watch my head shaking back and forth as Mr. Gene Kiniski throttles me. I think it would be good for those days when I'm getting too high an opinion of myself...might take me down a peg or two to see what a wimp I really am!

2006-03-13T10:23:00.000-06:00

I remember sleeping over at my Grandma's house...

Whenever we would make the trip to Calgary, we would sleep over at my Grandma B.'s house. She had a colour TV! She had a remote control! She had cable! We were in television-watching heaven. Whenever we wanted, we could go downstairs to her freezer and get a fudgecicle...she was always stocked up, and never said "No".

This memory centers around where I slept, though, in the basement. She would make up a bed on the couch down there, with the blankets like a hot dog bun, and me the hot dog. I'd pull the blankets over me and stare at the wallpaper. It was covered with cowboy scenes, western stuff...there were teepees, Indians, horses, lassoes. Where does one get this wallpaper? I'd love some wallpaper like that now! Sleeping down there, I often had dreams of gun-fights and sunsets...and I was always the hero, saving someone, usually my little sister, from the dastardly black-hatted cowboy. Yessir, I'd sure like some of that magic wallpaper in my house now.

2006-03-06T23:07:00.000-06:00

I remember spending a day with two people who were more punk rock than I'd ever be....

It was a sunny Vancouver day, and there was an outdoor music festival at Stanley Park. I arrived and saw a couple I'd met a few days earlier on a blanket in a good spot, and they called me over. They had been there for awhile already, and were quite drunk. They offered me the vodka bottle, very generous of them, I thought! We were being loud and belligerent, but so was everybody. It didn't seem like we were sticking out too much. At one point, the guy picked up an empty jar and threw up into it...I was struck by how casually he did this. Then I was struck by how clear the liquid was. And then he shrugged and said, "No point in wasting good booze!" and proceeded to drink...well...you know. The stuff in the jar. I had never seen anything so punk rock in my whole life!

His girlfriend just hit him, then grabbed my hand. "Come on, I gotta go to the bathroom." We stumbled our way through the crowds towards the Women's Washroom. There was a huge line snaking out of the door and around the corner. "Forget this, let's use the Guy's can," she said as she pulled me along. We burst through the door, and I remember all the surprised faces of the men at their business. "Don't mind us! There's a line-up a mile long over at the girl's can..." She was so confident!! Holy cow! I pretended to swagger along with her, but I was actually embarrassed.

There have been times in my life where I have experienced that strange feeling of attraction and repulsion mixing like oil and vinegar, like a lava lamp. This was one of those times. The whole memory is so surreal, like a scene out of "Sid and Nancy"... I didn't see that couple much after that. They kind of faded out of my realm of reality, but they reign in my mind as the punk rock King and Queen. I never quite managed to attain that level of separation from my morals, no matter how hard I tried.

2006-02-27T09:07:00.000-06:00

I remember being propositioned...

At the time, I lived in an apartment building right in the downtown core of Vancouver. It must have been 10:30 or 11 at night, when I was walking home from a friend's place, dressed in ugly grey sweatpants and a t-shirt, real casual. I was tired and a bit cranky, don't remember why.

As I stood on the corner waiting for the light to change so I could cross the street and go home, a car drove by sloooowwwwlllly. The window lowered, and the man inside called out. "How much?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing! I get that a woman standing by herself at dark in the downtown core is probably "working", but in the area I was in, the girls dressed UP, wore furs, expensive boots, mile-thick make-up. I was in sweatpants and sneakers, for goodness sake! My hair was unkempt, I had no make-up on, and I was CRANKY!!!

"Buddy, you have GOT to be kidding. If I was actually working this street, which I'm not, you would not be able to afford me."

The window rolled back up and the car drove off as the light changed. I shook my head and crossed the street. I mean, I was in sweatpants! Sheesh.

2006-02-21T08:46:00.000-06:00

I remember getting a free ride...

I was probably 11 or 12, and our family was visiting the Red Deer Exhibition. There were fairway rides, carnival games, a little rodeo, and a show in the evening. It was quite an outing for us, and my little sister and I were very excited!

I remember sitting on the grass in the sunshine eating the lunch that Mom packed so we wouldn't have to buy food. I remember scouring the area with my sister to get pop cans and beer cans so we could get the money later. I remember running into Tommy Hunter on the midway and asking for his autograph, secretly shocked because he was drinking a beer! (Hadn't I seen him singing hymns on his TV show? How could he sing gospel and drink beer? I was confused.)

I also remember not having any money to go on the rides. Mom gave us permission to go look at the midway, but no money for ride tickets...our family just couldn't afford it. I don't think us kids felt too resentful, but we couldn't help feeling a bit disappointed. At least we were allowed to roam--we were thankful for that.

As we strolled along, a carnie called out to us. "Hey, girls, come ride the Tilt-a-Whirl!"

I felt like such a hick. "We don't have any money."

He paused a second, then hollered out to us, "Aw, come on, anyway...I can't run the ride unless I have two more people."

Sis and I looked at each other. Did he mean for free, or were we going to have to pay? I felt very uncertain. "Come ON!!" he hollered. So we jumped on the ride, hoping we wouldn't have to bring our parents over later to pay for our foolishness. The ride was exciting, we screamed our heads off, and then it was over. He waved to us as we left...and that was it! He hadn't asked for tickets! It really was free!

I still wondered about the incident, so when we went running back to Mom to tell her all about it, I asked her if it was right to take the free ride. I'll never forget her answer. "Honey, if someone gives you a gift, you don't make them feel bad for giving it. You smile and take it, and say thank you very much." Spoken like a true pastor's wife!

I would be reading a book, and some character in the book would say "We don't accept charity!" and I just wouldn't understand how they could be so cruel and proud and thoughtless. It never seemed like a positive quality to me after that lesson from Mom.

2006-02-15T09:52:00.000-06:00

I remember meeting a nice guy and a jerk one evening....

It was 1988, I think. Ray Condo was playing a Rockabilly Christmas party at Club Soda in Vancouver. I knew exactly what I was going to wear: a 1950's vintage red velvet dress, off shoulder, tight waist, huge circle skirt. It doesn't get more rockabilly Christmas-ey than that! Hair in a high pony-tail, bright red lipstick, and black vintage pumps...I was in the zone.

I left my girlfriends at the table and headed to the counter to buy another drink. As I passed by two Fonzey-types with slicked back hair and black leather jackets, one of them called out, "Nice tattoo...can I get a closer look?" The dragon tattoo on my right shoulder blade was peaking out over the top of the red velvet, so I stopped and let him get a closer look. He was very polite, not at all intimidating. We had a nice little conversation about tattoos and the beauty of my dress as his friend stood looking as bored and unimpressed as he could.

I didn't recognize either of them from the usual gig crowd, so I asked them if they were from Vancouver. The silent guy finally piped up. "We aren't from here! We're from L.A., we're here working on a show..." like I should know who they were, but I didn't know who they were, and his attitude was off-putting. I said it was nice meeting them and headed back to my friends at the table.

"Oh my GAWD, do you know who that was?? You were talking to Johnny Depp!!!" they gushed, pretty much in unison.

"Who's Johnny Depp?"

Open mouths, rolled eyes..."He's only the cutest guy from 21 Jump Street!"

"Oh, right, that show they film here. I don't watch TV, I'm too busy living my life at the moment...which one was Johnny?" My friends were disgusted with me, but they pointed out Johnny, the nice guy, and told me the name of the jerk, Richard Grieco, also from 21 Jump Street.

As Johnny just kept getting more famous and Richard just kept getting less famous, it was no surprise to me. I sometimes wonder if they remember that evening when they met a girl in a red velvet dress that wasn't impressed with their celebrity.

2006-02-08T23:11:00.000-06:00

I remember an interesting old woman at Expo 86...

It was a very exciting day for me and my friends. One of our favorite bands, Einsturzende Neubauten, was going to be playing the International Stage at Expo. All the way from Germany, they were "industrial" before Nine Inch Nails were out of diapers, and I could not wait to see them live!! Lucky for me I worked right outside of the Yellow Gate at the Expo grounds, so as soon as I got off work, I rushed on to the Expo site and got changed in one of the Ladies Washrooms. I stood in front of the bathroom mirror putting on my silver lipstick with the black lip-liner, powdering my face with white powder, adjusting my fishnets, making sure my hair was pointing straight to the sky...much to the curiosity of the normal women who were merely there to wash their hands. I remember feeling very powerful and alien. I felt Alternative.

As soon as I was ready, I headed to the International Stage to line up. I wanted to be in the front row for this show!! Hooray! There were only a handful of people in line, other Alternative types whom I recognized from around town...but right in front of me, there was a prim little woman, probably in her 60's, with her grey hair in a neat little bun, her hands holding a tidy little purse, and sensible shoes on her feet. What was she doing in the line up to see this noisy, noisy band? I figured she must have read her schedule wrong, so I struck up a conversation with her, hoping to save her from standing in line for the wrong thing.

"So, do you know what you are standing in line for?" I asked politely.

She replied, quite excitedly, "Oh yes. I'm waiting to see Einsturzende Neubauten!"

I hope my jaw didn't drop. I really hope it didn't. I was flabbergasted! "You know their music?" I asked.

"Oh yes. They are one of my favorite Industrial Noise artists." She smiled sweetly at me.

Who was this woman? She stayed for the whole concert, sat in the third row. I saw her take earplugs out of her purse and insert them in her ears before the show started. The show was brilliant: gut-wrenchingly loud, metal grinders and sparks and fire and mayhem--and through it all, she sat beaming. I couldn't take my mind off her! She was, sitting there in her cardigan, more Alternative and Strange than I had ever been. To be that comfortable in one's own skin, to not feel the need to put on a costume to fit in...she shines in my memory like a beacon of Truth and Mystery, an angel whom I am only beginning to be as free as.

2006-02-04T15:10:00.000-06:00

I remember getting frostbite...

Junior High was a bad time for me; I tend to not drag up memories from those years too often, but I just saw my old gym teacher walking down my back alley, and this memory popped up unbidden.

I'm not quite sure of the year, either 1977 or '78. It was one of those days where the mercury had dipped down to -38 C or something ridiculous like that, one or two degrees too warm to warrant closing school for the day. We were taking skating lessons for Phys Ed at the time, and were expected to walk from the school to the arena, a good eight or nine long blocks. I had forgotten my mittens on the bus. I knew this was a bad thing, I wasn't trying to be tough or anything....but nobody liked me in those years, and there was no way I would be able to borrow gloves or mittens from one of my fellow classmates, so I began the walk with bare hands. I kept clenching and unclenching my hands, stuffing them in my pockets, moving my fingers, trying to snap them....they hurt so badly after only a few minutes! If I kept my hands in my pockets too long, my skates would start to fall and I'd have to steady them, exposing my fingers to the frigid air.

I only got half way. I went into the drugstore to warm up. My fingers were white, and I couldn't move them. As they started to thaw ever so slightly in the store, I was overcome with the worst pain I had ever experienced...it felt like someone was trying to saw off my skin with a rusty hack-saw. I began screaming in pain, I couldn't help myself! Some of the girls from my class had also come in to warm up, girls who generally hated me and tormented me as much as possible. I could see the confusion in their face as they felt compelled to help me, yet repulsed and embarrassed by me and the scene I was making.

Somebody had the presence of mind to call the doctor, who had an office just down the street. He came running over, put his arm around my shoulder and began walking me to the clinic. As we walked, he grabbed some snow in his mitten and covered my white fingers with snow. "You don't want them to thaw too quickly or it will hurt!" Gee, really? I figured that one out in the drugstore.

My parents were called, and I got to go home for the rest of the day with the last three fingers of my right hand bandaged up to protect them. Over the next few weeks as they healed, the top layer of skin on each finger came loose and eventually shed off, like a snake shedding its skin...I remember grossing out my gym teacher by pulling the skin on my right pinkie finger up and down like a little jacket. I figured it was the least he deserved for making us walk that day.

Seems to me that from that day on, whenever a class had to go to the arena, the school provided a bus. Me freezing my fingers sort of made me the sacrificial lamb, taking one for the whole school. You'd think the students would have been more grateful....

2006-01-31T08:45:00.000-06:00

I remember when I thought I saw the Easter Cat...

At the time, I had a boyfriend, Earl. He lived in the Farkle House, a house near Commercial Drive in Vancouver with a bunch of wonderfully weird roommates...I loved hanging out at the Farkle House. Something crazy was always happening!

Earl and I were hanging out in his room. I can't remember which drug we were on that night, but it was usually something or other. I know we weren't straight because we weren't fighting. Anyway...we were talking about life and music and art, when Mimi, the Farkle House cat, came strolling into the room. She was one of those all-white cats with one blue eye and one green eye, very mysterious and lovely. The lighting in the room was low, I think we only had a few candles burning, so it took awhile to register...but Mimi wasn't white anymore. She was rainbow! She looked like the Easter Bunny!

I recall wondering to myself if I was maybe hallucinating, but then Earl said, "Whoa! Mimi is like the Easter Bunny, what happened?"

The roommates had bought a box of Easter egg dye and decorated Mimi for the holiday. She was really beautiful.

It's funny...I sometimes wonder how Earl is, and if he settled down into a stable life like I somehow managed to, but I don't miss him. I certainly don't miss the drugs and the insanity. But I DO miss Mimi, and I do miss friends crazy enough to dye the cat for Easter. I miss that.

2006-01-30T08:41:00.000-06:00

I remember wondering if I should jump...

I was living in a warehouse with my artist room-mate, Don. It was an old, empty warehouse that the landlord rented to artists for studio space. It wasn't zoned for habitation, but all six floors were full of artists, all living there, which the landlord conveniently chose not to notice. It was a beautiful old building, exposed brick inside, massive wooden beams along the twelve-foot high ceilings. Don and I rented one half of the very top floor.

One of my favorite things to do was sit in the open window and watch people go by on the sidewalk some seventy feet below. Unless I pulled out my guitar and started singing, they had no idea I was there. It was a free feeling, like I was unattached to the world, like an angel or a spirit or something.

One day, as I sat watching the people, I was overcome with a voice in my head, saying, "Why don't you just jump?"

As I sat there looking over the past few years of my life and what a failure they seemed, I couldn't think of a single reason why not. I began to wonder what it would feel like to float for five and a half stories, and would I feel anything during the sudden stop at the end...I imagined my funeral, and how none of my friends would probably bother to come. I wondered if any of the small tiny humans below would be in the way when I jumped, and would I kill them or just injure them? It was getting quite morbid, quite pathetic. Thankfully, Don came home in time to stop me from moving from pondering to action (I always knew procrastination was a good quality).

I talked things over with Don. Even with the usual propensity towards depression that any creative type suffers, this was abnormal behavior for me. We came to the brilliant conclusion that I should stop taking that new prescription of birth control pills until I talked to my doctor, who confirmed that a possible side effect of the Pill is suicidal tendencies. I guess if I was dead, I certainly wouldn't be getting pregnant, now, would I? Very effective method of birth control, that...

2006-01-27T08:59:00.000-06:00

I remember saying this blog would be about memories...

...so this entry is elsewhere. Cuz it isn't really about memories at all!

2006-01-14T13:38:00.000-06:00

I remember feeling uncomfortable in my shoes...

The time, late 1986. The place, a high-rise office building in Vancouver, BC.

I had acquired a job as a receptionist/secretary for a legal insurance company that was just getting off the ground. I had to dress "office" for work, which I didn't mind, but I usually managed to show some sort of individuality by wearing funky shoes with my boring secretary clothes. My favorite pair of pumps were a bright turquoise satin pair with very pointy toes, straight from the 1960's, and oh, so new wave! I bought them at a garage sale down in America for about fifty cents.

I was sitting at my desk one day when one of the lawyers that worked for us, a weasel-like short little man, wandered through the office. He stopped at my desk, looking down at my feet. Without moving his gaze, he said slowly, "Nice shoes."

I felt uncomfortable.

"Thanks," I said.

His gaze didn't lift. "No, really...I like your shoes," he almost muttered to himself.

I felt really uncomfortable. Small-town girl in the big city, I had never heard of a shoe fetish, but I found myself confronted with a man who was becoming very, VERY interested in my shoes. I felt violated, and I wasn't even sure why! I crossed my feet under my chair, as far under my chair as they would go. Sounding as bored as I could, I said, "Thanks. Don't you have some work to do?"

Finally he looked up at me, kind of chuckled sneeringly, if you can imagine what that sounds like, and wandered out. After that day, he always managed to slither through my section of the office and check out what shoes I was wearing, which, because of my love for shoes, were usually pointy or buckled or leather. In fact, I didn't own any boring shoes. I seriously considered buying some.

What a creep.

2006-01-11T15:13:00.000-06:00

I remember winning the "Good Sportsmanship" award.

Every year they'd make us elementary students compete in a Track and Field day. Every year I'd try my hardest, come in just about last in every event, feel like crying but manage to somehow hide it...and then be called up in front of everybody in the gym later at the awards ceremony and given the public humiliation of the Good Sportsmanship award. They only ever give that ribbon to losers, even little kids know that. I certainly knew it. So up to the front of the whole school I'd go, again feeling like crying but managing not to, shake the teacher's hand and take my ribbon. They may as well have written "Loser" on my forehead with a Sharpie.

I think I won four of those stupid ribbons. I didn't save them.

2006-01-05T20:11:00.000-06:00

I remember my first "punk rock" gig.

I think it was my friend, Sandi, who suggested we go see The Enigmas, GoForThree, and Slow do a gig at the Commodore. I was very excited, nervous about what to wear, how to behave, all of that stuff. We got duded up and drove into Vancouver.

The Commodore, as I learned later, is a beautiful, fabulous place to see bands play, and this night was no exception. The place was about full, and every person was so different from who I was usually surrounded with at my Christian college campus, it was like a sparkling adventure. Spiky black hair, the smell of sweaty leather, the boots, the eyeliner!! It was probably 1984, but I'm not sure of the year.

The first band, GoForThree (or however that's written) weren't very exciting. The next band, Slow, was amazing, really energetic and creative. The final band of the night was the Enigmas, a garage-type band.

Sandi took me by the hand and dragged me right up to the front when Slow started, and we stayed there, squished up against the stage as the slam-dancing (that's what "moshing" used to be called, kids) raged at our backs. The press of bodies against us, the "accidental" groping, began to be overwhelming, so we hopped up on stage and sat cross-legged to watch the music. Nobody stopped us! We had a fabulous view of Paul Mackenzie, the lead singer, going through his mad gyrations and contortions. As the show really heated up, he grabbed a knife and pretended to disembowel himself--he must of had a bag of raw liver taped to his stomach--and it spilled out all over the stage. Sandi and I figured this was punk rock, so we grabbed it and started hurling it at the rest of the crowd. Really, there was no other course of action even worth considering! You would have done the same thing.

I remember looking over the sweaty, young crowd, looking at the mad bands, and thinking "This is where I belong! This makes sense to me." By 1987, I played the Commodore, opening for the Scramblers. As I stood on stage for the sound check, I vividly remembered the gig a few years before where I had decided this was where I should be. And there I was. It was quite unfulfilling, actually. Maybe I should have brought raw liver, maybe that would have helped.

2006-01-01T21:18:00.000-06:00

I remember the year my mom discovered Snow in a Can.

Remember the old farm house I lived in, the one I just mentioned in the previous post? It was the parsonage for Mount Olive Church, back when this church was a country church six miles west of a small town in Alberta. As the church could afford, the house was slowly updated. I remember when the coal furnace was removed and replaced with gas, I remember when the ringer washing machine was replaced with a modern top-loader...

...I digress, but with a purpose. I want you to understand how quaint and old this house was. You need to be able to picture that in the winter, we could draw patterns in the frost on our bedroom window just like Laura did in Little House on the Prairie.

I remember Mom bringing out this blue can with a red lid one day as we were preparing for Christmas. "It's decorative snow!" she said. "We can make pretty patterns using stencils on our windows..." She seemed very excited. First she used the can to spray the white foam all over our real Christmas tree...the pine smell was replaced with the odour of propellants, and if you squinted, our tree almost looked fake. In my childishness, I thought this was very clever! We could never afford a REAL fake tree.

Then Mom used the can to spray white foam into all the angled corners of the window, covering all the real frost with a nubbly sheen of faux frost. This was not quite as clever, in my opinion. What window could I draw on now? Only my bedroom window upstairs, all the others were out of reach! Oh well. Mom knew best. My little sister and I begged to be allowed to do some of the spraying, and I think we were allowed to try...but we sprayed it on unevenly. The can went back to Mom.

She still uses that Snow in a Can stuff. I don't get it. Maybe if we lived somewhere hot like Arizona and frost was something we dreamed about along with the sugar plums and other Christmas visions, then it would make sense to fabricate it on our windows. But real frost is so pretty, and here in Alberta (especially in our old poorly heated farm house) we had plenty of it! No sir, I don't get it.

2005-12-30T09:37:00.000-06:00

I remember being afraid of the toilet in the middle of the night.

When I was a little kid, we lived in an old farmhouse out in the country. My bedroom was upstairs, and the ceiling sloped on both sides...in a larger house, it would have been the attic, I guess. My bed was tucked into the narrow place where the ceiling met with the wall. I had to watch how I sat up in the middle of the night, or I'd bonk my head!

The trip to the bathroom in the dark of night is where my fear comes in. Unlike many kids, I wasn't aware of any monsters under my bed or in my closet. My fear was directed towards the toilet. I knew with certainty that if I wasn't back in bed before the toilet stopped flushing, that I would be dragged back and sucked into the vortex. Being close to my bed didn't count...I was sure I could be dragged back down the stairs, through the piano room, through the kitchen and into the bathroom and sucked down the toilet unless I was in my bed with my head under the covers.

So, here's how it would go. I'd relieve myself. I'd put my hand on the lever and assume the "On your marks" position. Then flush, run like my life depended on it, back through the obstacle course of the first floor, up the stairs, and dive into my bed, heart racing.

I never told anyone about this fear. It was mine, and I didn't want to share it. As an adult, I watch this whole memory with amusement, but also with wonder. Almost every night I faced a near-death experience and won! I had set up for myself an almost impossible obstacle, and then would conquer it every time I had to relieve myself. Talk about esteem-building! Is that what our childhood fears are for...so we can practice survival in the face of our fears?

Thanks to Papa Herman for sparking this memory for me.

2005-12-23T17:14:00.000-06:00

I remember being witnessed to by a true Rastafarian. (Warning, dear children, there will be drug references in this memory!)

I was hanging out at the Channel 1 Klub in Vancouver, just down some stairs from Denman Street. There were three or four guys from Jamaica, dreadlocks, big funny hats and everything. I got into a conversation with one guy, and he asked me if I wanted to smoke a joint with him...at the time, that was a bit of a rhetorical question with no need for an answer from me. We headed to a car park for some privacy, and Mr. Rasta (I can't remember his name) pulled out one of the fattest doobies I'd ever seen. We shared it, then headed back into the club. As we sat down by the bar to talk, he pulled a little well-worn New Testament from his back pocket. He opened it and asked me if I knew that Jesus loved me.

I burst into fits of giggles...I just couldn't quite put the whole experience together in my head. First, Mr. Rasta gets me more wasted than I'd ever been before up to that time, then he starts sharing the gospel with me. 'Interesting witnessing technique', I remember thinking, 'If people smoked you up first, you might be more inclined to listen to people proselytize!'

He shared the whole thing with me, the whole Romans Road...and I just kept giggling. I kept seeing myself in Sunday School memorizing the very verses he was reading to me, and then seeing myself at that moment, sitting in the dark club listening to him. The two images just didn't juxtapose.

Part of me wonders...was God reminding me that He was there, watching over me? I was certainly trying to ignore Him as much as possible, yet somehow He was always there, peeking through a window, eye to the keyhole, ear to the wall...unobtrusive, yet inescapable. Nice thought...

2005-12-21T08:45:00.000-06:00

I remember winning "Most Improved" in our college choir.

If you've been reading my blog for awhile, you'll remember Mr. Janz. He was conducting us through Handel's "Elijah" for Masterworks Choir at Trinity Western University. This was going to be a big deal, a performance with professional soloists, an orchestra...we were excited and nervous to take on this mammoth challenge.

It seemed that Mr. Janz was constantly singling me out. For the first part of the semester, he would stop the music and say something like, "Did everyone hear how Paula did that? It was wrong. Paula, let's try it..." and I'd have to work the part out in front of everybody until it was right. Mr. Janz, as all good musicians should be, was a perfectionist. Couple my crush on him with my own perfectionism, and you can imagine how humiliating this whole process was for me.

But by the end of the semester, he would stop the music and say, "Did everyone hear how Paula did that? She was the only one who did it right!! Now, Paula, sing it for us so everyone can hear how to do it." (In case you haven't guessed, I sing loudly whether I know what I'm doing or not...) And when it came time to vote for "Most Improved", apparently I was the obvious choice, the only one brash enough to make my mistakes and improvements in full view of the class.

I still wonder if he ever got married. Ahem...

2005-12-21T08:33:00.000-06:00

Not really about remembering at all....but rules are made to be broken, yes?

Your Inner European is Italian!

Passionate and colorful.
You show the world what culture really is.

Who's" Your Inner European?

2005-12-15T08:34:00.000-06:00

I remember shopping for a winter coat with my mom.

We lived near Three Hills, I was about 12, and I needed a new winter coat. We drove into town and went to Fields. I think it was Fields even way back then...I could be wrong. I'm sure the location was the same as the Fields now; not much changes in these small towns.

I remember walking into the store and seeing the coats on the racks. I walked over, picked out a red down-filled coat, tried it on, and said, "This is the one, Mom. I like this one." She made me try on every other coat in the store to see if I liked some other coat better. I didn't. We spent an hour in there, and in the end I walked out of the store with the coat I had known I liked from the very first.

I am sure this confused my mother. I know I was certainly confused by her that day. Why try on more coats if you've already found the One?

2005-12-05T09:02:00.000-06:00

I remember New Year's Day with my roommate and his mother...

Don was Danish, and his mom asked us over for a smorgesboard to celebrate New Year's Day with her. I had never met her before, but Don assured me she was nice. She lived in a little apartment by herself. The dining room table was covered with little plates with all kinds of food on them, all covered in plastic wrap. As the afternoon began, she unwrapped a few of the little plates, and we'd all help ourselves. After a few of the plates had been tackled, she disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a liqueur she'd been keeping in the freezer, Aquavit. She poured us each a little glassful, and then we all knocked it back in one quick gulp. It was refreshing! Then more little plates would be uncovered, then more Aquavit, etc. Always the Aquavit would be put back in the freezer right away.

I had to ask a lot of questions, as there were many foods that I had never seen before, or never had enough courage to try. Pickled herring, lots of different white fish, a spread for crackers made of beef fat, all kinds of little strange nibblies. I'm not sure what the ratio of plates to Aquavit was, but Don's mom seemed to have an equation all worked out. By the end of the last little covered plate, we were all getting happily sloshed, Danish style!

It seemed very strange to me at first to be drinking with someone's MOM. Drinking is something you hide from your mom, isn't it? My parents are teetotallers and look down on drinking. I had never shared a drink of alcohol with my parents, but after dancing around the living room singing "I Wanna Be Like Yoo-oo-ou" from the Jungle Book with Don and his mom, I began to wonder if maybe MY family was the weird one, and that maybe I had been missing out.

2005-11-23T08:44:00.000-06:00

I remember my first shoplifting experience.

I was about 8 or 9 years old, and we lived in a very small town with a very conservative Bible School. This very conservative Bible School had a book store full of books, Bibles, cards, and every other thing that you can think of that can have a Bible verse stamped on it. This particular day I was drawn to the rotating display of Chick tracts. I loved comics, and these little gospel tracts were all in comic book form, and just exactly the right size to slip into my pocket. Mom was busy talking to the saleslady, and I knew I didn't have 7 cents....so I put it in my pocket. It was easy.

As I followed Mom out of the store, the cash register at the door loomed over me like a judge pointing an accusing finger...but I made it by, cool as a cucumber. I kept the tract in my bedroom under my pillow for awhile, but I felt so darn guilty every time I read it that I couldn't enjoy it! I thought if maybe I gave it to an unsaved friend that the good would even out the guilt and I could go back to normal. (Thankfully, I resisted that urge...Have you read Chick tracts? Yikes!!)

In the end, I saved my pennies and went to the book store and quietly left the change on the counter, no explanation, no apology...just a quiet righting of the wrong.

2005-11-18T08:48:00.000-06:00

I remember a bus driver treating me like a human.

This is a tough one for me, because the memory itself is in patches, as if it were a picture sewn on a quilt, but parts of the fabric have frayed, and I don't remember my motivation or how I got into the mental state I was in.....but I digress. I'll try and start the story from the beginning. No, not the beginning...but as close to the beginning as I can.

I'm in Vancouver. I am on the sidewalk outside the Channel 1 Klub, not on the Denman entrance, but around the corner on the side street. I am feeling very angry and frustrated, desparate. I think I may have gone into the Channel 1 to ask my friend for some money, and been told to piss off...and I needed the money, I'm sure. But whatever the reason, I am feeling so hopeless that I begin to bang my forehead against the wall of the building. Bang it, over and over, as hard as I can. I think I am trying to knock myself unconscious so I won't have to feel like such a loser.

"Stop that! What are you doing?" I look up, and it's a city bus driver who I'm on "Hi, how are ya" basis with. He must have been on his break, looked over and seen my scene. He proceeds to talk to me for about five minutes, not a lot of time. Hardly any time at all. But in those few minutes I begin to feel like a human again, like someone with enough dignity to not mutilate their forehead in public.

I can see why, as I look back into my brain for this memory, I have remembered the parts I have. The reason for my despair was unimportant. The almost anonymous man who was perhaps an angel....I will never forget.

2005-11-10T14:29:00.000-06:00

I remember husking corn on sunny September afternoons.

My mother grew a huge garden, really truly huge...the canning and freezing of produce kept our family of six in vegetables all winter long. This meant a lot of work for us kids, a lot of weeding all summer long, a lot of picking of peas and carrots and raspberries and tomatoes and beans and......well, you get the picture. The day we husked corn, though...that was maybe my favourite day.

Dad and my older sisters would be picking corn all morning, and my little sister and I would cart it in our little red wagon to a sunny spot beside the house and dump it in a mountainous pile, then head back to the garden for another load. Once all the corn was picked, then we started husking.

Can you smell the warm sun heating the pile of corn so it smells like golden bread? Can you see the pale green and yellow as we strip ear after unashamed ear naked of their husks? To me the whole memory is infused with slanted September sunlight, gilding every kernel of corn, every strand of silk, every bug hiding in the husks with harvest gold. We would make wigs of the silk, we would make dolls of the husks, it seemed the whole of the day was filled with play...yet somehow we always made it to the bottom of the pile.

I think I needed this memory to prod me to approach work now as I did then...how do I make it fun for myself? How do I remove the drudgery and replace it with joy?