January 8: Credit cards on the floor and letters in the sand
(1)
My first ever memory is of my father writing the word 'flag' in the sand on a beach near our home in Ste. Catherine's, Ontario. I guess I was about two or three. I knew my ABCs and I guess I had just figured out that letters could be arranged into words like mom or dad or car or flag.
Why flag stands out, I'll never know. I knew what flags were but I had no emotional connection to them. My parents didn't make flags and I didn't spend a whole lot of time in a flag shop. Nor did I know anyone who did semaphore. Maybe it was just the right point in time for my synapses to fire and store something in the long-term memory.
I have other early memories too. I remember a hot dog wrapper lying on the ground at La Ronde - an amusement park in Montreal. The wrapper had drawings of people on it. I remember a box of number-shaped cookies on a closet shelf in a house somewhere. I remember sitting in another closet in another house and playing with plastic numbers. I guess I do pretty well when you mix numbers and closets.
Psychologists tell us that we start to form memories when we're about three, but those memories are few and far between. Like everyone, my whole babyhood has been wiped from my memory. My grade 4 teacher once told his class that he remembered being inside his mother's womb. Maybe he was trying to persuade us to adopt a pro-life perspective or maybe he was telling the truth. The point is that I remember him telling us that and I was nine.
(2)
When I was in college, I told the above story to a girl who, unlike me, was not in the theatre department. She told me that her earliest memory was eating an Oreo cookie at her grandmother's house. "I don't know where I was," she said. "I think I was sitting on her bed but I can't be sure."
(3)
I have memories of my son that he will never remember. I remember the morning he woke me by peeling my eyes open and, upon seeing that I was awake, started to howl. I remember the first time he smiled at me. I was feeding him his bottle and he was looking at me and suddenly, he smiled. I remember him falling asleep in the crook of my arm.
(4)
Today I was in a thrift store. There was a young mother and her four-year-old daughter in there too. The daughter immediately ran to the toy section while the mom perused the children’s clothes. “One toy only, Mandy,” she called. “Okay mommy,” was the reply.
Two minutes later, the kid came back with a used Barbie doll. The mom bought it along with a few articles of used clothing. The bill came to just under six dollars. The mom handed over a five dollar bill and then fished around in her purse for the remaining change. As they left, Mandy asked if they could come back tomorrow. “No, baby,” said the mother.
Mandy has no idea that she’s poor, but I hope she’ll learn to appreciate what she does have.
(5)
I hope my son learns to read early.
I hope he never plays Grand Theft Auto and will develop a hatred for video games.
But yes, I will probably cave and buy him a Wii or a PS7.
(6)
When I was a little bit older, my dad and I would play another game where he would lay his credit cards on the floor and I would pick them up.
“Pick up the Sears card,” he would say. And I would.
Then he would say “Pick up the Gulf card” and I would.
I would not be able to pick up the Gulf card anymore because Gulf no longer exists. In 1985, it merged with California Oil. In Canada, all the Gulfs became Petro Canada, which I used to think was a good thing but then I was told it was bad because Pierre Trudeau caused it.
I liked Gulf stations because they were orange – like Orange Julius stands or the Philadelphia Flyers. Not a lot of corporations have the cajones to use orange as their dominant colour, so props to them when they do.
(7)
I have four credit cards. I have a Visa, a Petro Canada card, a Staples card and a Best Buy card.
That’s four too many.
(8)
I actually don’t remember playing the credit card game but I do remember my dad’s credit cards. He had an awful lot of them. I had no idea what they were for. I thought they were toys.
Today, lots of people my age think they’re toys too.
(9)
I remember a time when paying with credit cards was a nuisance. In 1991, I had a summer job at a T-shirt store. A customer came in and bought a whole bunch of shirts and wanted to pay with his MasterCard. I had no idea what to do. I had to call the store owner*, who walked me through the process. He said there was a credit card machine under the cash register. I hauled it out, took the customer’s credit card, put a pay slip over it, wrote in the dollar amount, had him sign it and then I went ka-ching with the label carbon copy printer thingee, which was the most satisfying part of the whole process.
All credit card transactions used to be that way and I imagined the poor people at the Master Card head office getting inundated with pay slips from the T-shirt store and Berk’s Fried Chicken and the Vanishing Rabbit Magic Store and Nephi’s Radioactive Pine Cone Factory and Pammy’s House of Violins and Burger King and Monique’s Hair Salon and Shopper’s Drug Mart.
But then everything became electronic and all those people lost their jobs.
Say what you will about the miraculous and never-ending march of technology, it’s made a lot of us obsolete.
(10)
When I was 16, my mom wanted me to get a summer job. I wasn’t able to find one (the T-shirt job was still two years away) and I felt like a failure.
My dad cheered me up by telling me that there aren’t as many jobs as there used to be.
“I used to have a job as a pin setter at a bowling alley,” he said. His job was to reset the pins every time someone bowled a frame.
I’ve never seen a pin setter in my life. From as far back as I can remember, they were always robots.
(11)
A reporter once asked John Denver how he’d like to be remembered. John Denver, who wrote lots of great songs (and lots of icky ones) and once made a Christmas special with the Muppets, said this: “My kids’ dad.”
Ask any parent about their favourite memories of their children and they will likely tell you it’s something from when they were very young . They won’t tell you it’s when they first discovered television or when they beat up the mean kid down the street or when they first uttered a bad word.
No, they’ll reminisce about the time before their kids lost their innocence.
Like when they played the credit card game.
Or read the words you wrote in the sand.
(12)
Flag.
-------------------
* The store owner was a big fat smelly guy named Don. He had a cataract over one eye. He wheezed a lot and he smelled like sour milk. He drove around in an old pickup , which he slept in a lot. He owned a cassette tape of Ike and Tina Turner’s greatest hits. In addition to the T-shirt shop, Don owned about eight adult video establishments in Calgary. He told me once that he played an integral role in bringing pornography into Canada. Don’t worry. I didn’t applaud.)
My first ever memory is of my father writing the word 'flag' in the sand on a beach near our home in Ste. Catherine's, Ontario. I guess I was about two or three. I knew my ABCs and I guess I had just figured out that letters could be arranged into words like mom or dad or car or flag.
Why flag stands out, I'll never know. I knew what flags were but I had no emotional connection to them. My parents didn't make flags and I didn't spend a whole lot of time in a flag shop. Nor did I know anyone who did semaphore. Maybe it was just the right point in time for my synapses to fire and store something in the long-term memory.
It can be seen from space
I have other early memories too. I remember a hot dog wrapper lying on the ground at La Ronde - an amusement park in Montreal. The wrapper had drawings of people on it. I remember a box of number-shaped cookies on a closet shelf in a house somewhere. I remember sitting in another closet in another house and playing with plastic numbers. I guess I do pretty well when you mix numbers and closets.
Psychologists tell us that we start to form memories when we're about three, but those memories are few and far between. Like everyone, my whole babyhood has been wiped from my memory. My grade 4 teacher once told his class that he remembered being inside his mother's womb. Maybe he was trying to persuade us to adopt a pro-life perspective or maybe he was telling the truth. The point is that I remember him telling us that and I was nine.
(2)
When I was in college, I told the above story to a girl who, unlike me, was not in the theatre department. She told me that her earliest memory was eating an Oreo cookie at her grandmother's house. "I don't know where I was," she said. "I think I was sitting on her bed but I can't be sure."
(3)
I have memories of my son that he will never remember. I remember the morning he woke me by peeling my eyes open and, upon seeing that I was awake, started to howl. I remember the first time he smiled at me. I was feeding him his bottle and he was looking at me and suddenly, he smiled. I remember him falling asleep in the crook of my arm.
(4)
Today I was in a thrift store. There was a young mother and her four-year-old daughter in there too. The daughter immediately ran to the toy section while the mom perused the children’s clothes. “One toy only, Mandy,” she called. “Okay mommy,” was the reply.
Two minutes later, the kid came back with a used Barbie doll. The mom bought it along with a few articles of used clothing. The bill came to just under six dollars. The mom handed over a five dollar bill and then fished around in her purse for the remaining change. As they left, Mandy asked if they could come back tomorrow. “No, baby,” said the mother.
Mandy has no idea that she’s poor, but I hope she’ll learn to appreciate what she does have.
(5)
I hope my son learns to read early.
I hope he never plays Grand Theft Auto and will develop a hatred for video games.
But yes, I will probably cave and buy him a Wii or a PS7.
(6)
When I was a little bit older, my dad and I would play another game where he would lay his credit cards on the floor and I would pick them up.
“Pick up the Sears card,” he would say. And I would.
Then he would say “Pick up the Gulf card” and I would.
I would not be able to pick up the Gulf card anymore because Gulf no longer exists. In 1985, it merged with California Oil. In Canada, all the Gulfs became Petro Canada, which I used to think was a good thing but then I was told it was bad because Pierre Trudeau caused it.
I liked Gulf stations because they were orange – like Orange Julius stands or the Philadelphia Flyers. Not a lot of corporations have the cajones to use orange as their dominant colour, so props to them when they do.
Currently in the logo graveyard
(7)
I have four credit cards. I have a Visa, a Petro Canada card, a Staples card and a Best Buy card.
That’s four too many.
(8)
I actually don’t remember playing the credit card game but I do remember my dad’s credit cards. He had an awful lot of them. I had no idea what they were for. I thought they were toys.
Today, lots of people my age think they’re toys too.
Welcome to Staying in Debt 101
(9)
I remember a time when paying with credit cards was a nuisance. In 1991, I had a summer job at a T-shirt store. A customer came in and bought a whole bunch of shirts and wanted to pay with his MasterCard. I had no idea what to do. I had to call the store owner*, who walked me through the process. He said there was a credit card machine under the cash register. I hauled it out, took the customer’s credit card, put a pay slip over it, wrote in the dollar amount, had him sign it and then I went ka-ching with the label carbon copy printer thingee, which was the most satisfying part of the whole process.
All credit card transactions used to be that way and I imagined the poor people at the Master Card head office getting inundated with pay slips from the T-shirt store and Berk’s Fried Chicken and the Vanishing Rabbit Magic Store and Nephi’s Radioactive Pine Cone Factory and Pammy’s House of Violins and Burger King and Monique’s Hair Salon and Shopper’s Drug Mart.
But then everything became electronic and all those people lost their jobs.
Say what you will about the miraculous and never-ending march of technology, it’s made a lot of us obsolete.
(10)
When I was 16, my mom wanted me to get a summer job. I wasn’t able to find one (the T-shirt job was still two years away) and I felt like a failure.
My dad cheered me up by telling me that there aren’t as many jobs as there used to be.
“I used to have a job as a pin setter at a bowling alley,” he said. His job was to reset the pins every time someone bowled a frame.
I’ve never seen a pin setter in my life. From as far back as I can remember, they were always robots.
(11)
A reporter once asked John Denver how he’d like to be remembered. John Denver, who wrote lots of great songs (and lots of icky ones) and once made a Christmas special with the Muppets, said this: “My kids’ dad.”
Ask any parent about their favourite memories of their children and they will likely tell you it’s something from when they were very young . They won’t tell you it’s when they first discovered television or when they beat up the mean kid down the street or when they first uttered a bad word.
No, they’ll reminisce about the time before their kids lost their innocence.
Like when they played the credit card game.
Or read the words you wrote in the sand.
(12)
Flag.
-------------------
* The store owner was a big fat smelly guy named Don. He had a cataract over one eye. He wheezed a lot and he smelled like sour milk. He drove around in an old pickup , which he slept in a lot. He owned a cassette tape of Ike and Tina Turner’s greatest hits. In addition to the T-shirt shop, Don owned about eight adult video establishments in Calgary. He told me once that he played an integral role in bringing pornography into Canada. Don’t worry. I didn’t applaud.)
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