Sept. 11: Serendipity

Serendipity is described as "an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident." I prefer to describe it as "stumbling into happiness."

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This makes me think of fudge. Apparently, fudge was created by accident. According to legend, an American confectioner accidentally dropped some chocolate into a pot where he was making French caramels on Valentine's Day of 1886. The result: fudge.

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I like fudge. My waistline does not. 

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We spent much of today in Cornwall. Kiddo has therapy there on Wednesdays but today was also his first swimming lesson at the Cornwall pool. I was nervous at first, afraid kiddo wouldn't be able to follow along, but he did and even learned to float on his back.

I'm not sure if that qualifies as serendipity.

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Here is something that qualifies as serendipity. I have told this story before. I will tell it again.

In 1993 or 1994, I was looking for a job, so I went to the local Hire a Student office to see what they had. There was a balloon shop on the corner of 17th and 17th that was looking for someone to make and sell balloon bouquets and do the occasional singing telegram. The balloon store was in a mini plaza along with a barber shop and used book store.

I applied at the balloon store, got a haircut in the barber shop, and then wandered into the book store, where I met the proprietor, the late Rook St. Peter, and a very tall man named James. They were playing chess and talking about the Book of Mormon, which neither man believed in.

I introduced myself and fell into conversation with the two. It turned out they were both writers and that Rook hosted live readings at his store on the final Saturday of every month. I began attending and, despite the constant cloud of second hand smoke that hung in the air of that bookstore, it wound up being one of the greatest and happiest memories of my young adulthood. I met a lot of writers whom I still count as friends today and, more importantly, discovered a community where I could thrive both professionally and personally.

Words Books and Cappuccino Bar became a mainstay of mine for the next five years. The writers' nights consisted of three sets of four writers each with each writer getting 15 minutes. Often I went over my time allotment. Sometimes I got away with this. Sometimes I did not. 

I brought Dessi to the writers night once and I read a short story about a young guy who had been taskedf with driving his boss's Corvette down to Florida and who got sidetracked by a girl who tricked him into a romantic encounter somewhere in Colorado. After I read the piece, Dessi seemed a bit nonplussed. When I asked her if something was wrong, she said of my protagonist: "Did he have to call her a bitch?"

Well Ian Fleming, who I was chanelling, would have said yes. Vesper Lynd is unavailable for comment.

There was Mike, a gothic novelist who was also a social worker. There was Scott, a courier/poet who is today dealing with multiple sclerosis. There was Kerry, who wrote sexually charged poems about vegetables. There was Tanya, a fiery redhead whom most of the men adored. There was Janet, who had written a Star Trek novel. There was Laura, who I may or may not have been in love with. There was Joe, who was almost always drunk and who nobody liked.

My discovering Words was serendipity. Up until then, I primarily hung out with other magicians and we weren't a very good group of people. None of us were doing much with our lives and, later on, I would unearth some very disturbing discoveries about one of those magicians, things so grisly that I didn't want to spend much more time in his presence.

It was more fun hanging out with writers. I miss those days. Over the years, I have tried to recreate Words Books. I have attended various writers' gatherings and they all lack that je ne sais quoi.

The late AE Housman would have simply quoted his poem, which goes like this:

When first my way to fair I took / few pence in purse had I. And long I used to stand and look at things I could not buy.

Now times are altered, if I deign to buy a thing, I can. / The purse if here and there's the fair but where's that lost young man?

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The number one song of 1996, according to some sources, was Donna Lewis's I Love You Always Forever, which is a direct quote taken from the late H.E. Bates' novel, Love for Lydia.

I sort of know this because I used to have a casual job driving rose salesgirls to various bars throughout Calgary. Obviously, Saturday night was an important night for this because that's when all the young people go to bars. For me, going to Words was more important than driving the salesgirls, so I tried to beg off one Saturday a month but sometimes I relented of the company's owner was really desperate.

One of the salesgirls was this emaciated skeleton of a girl who I will call Josie. Josie was madly in love with her boyfriend and every conversation eventually segued into a discussion about him. To wit:

Shteevie: Mind if we listen to the Flames game while we drive?

Josie: Okay. My boyfriend doesn't like the Flames though. He likes the Canucks.

or

Josie: What's the suitcase in the back?

Shteevie: That's my magic case. I did a magic show today.

Josie: Oh. My boyfriend knows some magic tricks.

Once we were driving and she was telling me about how amazing her life was since she started dating her boyfriend and then I Love You Always Forever came on the radio and Josie told me that was her and her boyfriend's official song and that it had been for the past three years. I knew that the song had just come out that year but I didn't say anything.

Josie quit the job a couple weeks later. Word got back to me that the boyfriend found out Josie had a male chauffeur and promptly blew his cork. He wasn't about to tolerate his girlfriend being along with any dude, even if it was entirely for professional purposes. I asked my boss what Josie was doing for work and he said he didn't know.

So I was out of work for that Saturday, which happened to be the last Saturday of the month, and decided I would head over to Words to see if maybe I could grab a slot on the schedule. I turned on the radio and caught Donna Lewis singing I Love You Always Forever and I snapped it off immediately. Sorry, but the serendipity was a bit too much.