The Plant in the Shiny Brown Pot (An American Thanksgiving Day Parable)

Once there was a plant.

The plant lived in a shiny brown pot on a glass coffee table in a family room not far from where you live.

The plant had a family of people who cared for it and sat with it on evenings and weekends watching television and playing games. The plant had a few plant friends as well: A cactus on the mantle, an African violet on a side table, and a potted ficus on the floor. They didn't talk much, but they took comfort in each other's company.

The plant's life was orderly and predictable and that's the way it liked it.

That's not to say that every day was exactly the same. There were times when a family member would spend an unexpected day at home, lying on the couch under a blanket. And other times when somebody would forget to open the blinds in the morning, shutting out the daylight longer than the plant wanted. And there were weeks when everybody would just stay home. And other weeks where no one would be around except a stranger who would come in once a day to care for the plants. But on the whole, things went as they should.

The plant's favourite time of day was late afternoon. That's when the family would one-by-one return home, the sun would be shining into the family room at just the right angle, and the plant would be given a cool, refreshing drink of water. The other plants never talked about it, but the plant knew they loved the late afternoon too; there was an air of contentment that would descend on the family room each day at that time.

Once a month, cleaning people would come into the house when the rest of the family was out. They'd dust the coffee table and the side table, wipe the mantle, and vacuum the floor. It was an exciting day for all of the plants because the cleaning people would move them to the side for a few minutes while they cleaned the surface they usually occupied, and then carefully move them back to where they were. Sometimes, they would even wipe their leaves and their pots.

One day the house exploded and the plant was lifted high into the sky on a wave of blistering heat.

In the few moments that its flight lasted, the plant saw many houses and cars and people it had never seen before, a distant forest, a park, a glass house full of other plants, and a vast sky that stretched over everything. It was scared, but it was also exhilarated to discover so much of the world around it.

Alas, the brief flight came to a painful end, the plant's pot shattered, all but a small portion of its precious soil was lost, and the plant lay on its side, cushioned only by a carpet of brown grass and fallen leaves and the soil beneath it. None of its plant friends were anywhere to be seen.

Then it started to lightly snow.

As the plant lay there, it was surprisingly content. It thought about all the days that the house had not exploded. It thought about the family who had cared for it for so long and the comfort of the other plants' silent companionship. It thought about how shiny its pot had been. It thought about the joy of late afternoons, the cool refreshing water it had so enjoyed, and the occasional tender cleansing wipe it received.  And it thought about how lucky it had been to see so much of the world, even if it was only for a moment. It quietly gave thanks for all of those things, and for having landed in such a nice place.

The End.

(Epilogue: Authorities would later determine that the house exploded because one of the cleaning people had accidentally turned on the gas stove while cleaning it and hadn't noticed the resulting leak. Fortunately, they had safely finished their cleaning and left the house before the explosion. The family was also spared because the explosion happened before they returned home for the day. Their insurance enabled them to quickly relocate and get back on their feet. They bought an electric stove for their new house and did all their own cleaning. Their prized houseplants were never recovered, so they bought some new ones).  

Take My Hyper-Competitiveness (h-c) Gene Test

For those of you who know me and the rest of my family (my children, my sisters, my parents), you might be surprised to hear that we are the most competitive family ever. Bar none. Unbeaten, unrivalled, unchallenged. The Gold Medal winners.

While you might expect that hyper-competitiveness tendencies are somehow tied to participation in sports, in this case we're talking about a family that is virtually devoid of anything resembling athletic prowess.

I have no doubt that the h-c gene comes from my father's side and has been passed on to my children through me: My wife and my mother don't exhibit this trait, or at least it's so muted in them that it's virtually undetectable when they're around the rest of us. I think all three of my sisters got it (but to be fair, I'm not sure about one of them - only she and her family can comment on that.)

Now, rather than continue on and try to convince you that we're the most hyper-competitive people in the universe, I instead offer you the following h-c gene test. Do you or your loved ones carry it? Can you beat my family's high score? Go ahead and try:

1. When you aren't getting good dice rolls in Risk and it seems like that's all your opponent is getting, do you:

a) Not even notice?

b) Chuckle about your bad luck and keep hoping for better?

c) Carefully explain that you are actually winning because you are following the better strategy, even if the dice are doing their best to conspire against you?

d) "Accidentally" bump the board so that the pieces are irreparably misplaced and the game must end?

e) Carefully slide your fingers under the board, flip it in the air, shout obscenities and stomp off?

f) Nobody plays Risk with me anymore because they know they can't beat me (although they'd tell you it's because of c), d), or e) above) 

2. As a parent, when you are playing a game with one or more of your children, do you:

a) Choose games that are age-appropriate, then make sure that your children experience a happy balance of winning and losing so they learn that both are okay?

b) Put an honest effort into every game you play so that your children learn that it's okay to lose if that's what happens (and it usually does) and that it feels great to win (if and when that ever happens, which it doesn't)?

c) Put an honest effort into every game you play so that your children learn that it's okay to lose, and then celebrate your victories by stabbing your index finger at them while shouting "in your face" repeatedly?

d) Cheat, if you have to, to win?

e) Win constantly, until the first time you lose (e.g. at Ping Pong), then immediately announce that you're now too old to play the game (e.g. Ping Pong) anymore and never play again?

f) None of my children will play games with me anymore because they know they can't beat me (although they'd tell you it's because of c), d), or e) above).

3. When your favourite sports team is in the midst of screwing up the game you're watching, do you:

a) Feel mildly disappointed, but think "We'll get 'em next time guys...way to go"?

b) Without waiting for the inevitable conclusion of the game, change the channel, go outside for a walk, go to bed, or otherwise remove yourself from the situation before you yell at someone who doesn't deserve it?

c) Yell at your spouse and/or kids if they happen to ask you how it's going, then find another way to justify your behaviour without admitting that it's just the frustration related to your team's failure?

d) Yell in fury at the screen, spouting profanity even if young children are present?

e) Throw things, including a tantrum?

f) I don't really have a favourite sports team anymore. And I won't until my former favourite sports team is competitive again, or my Doctor says it okay. 

4. When you and your spouse partner up to play Euchre against superior opponents (e.g. your brother and sister-in-law), and you're in the midst of a lengthy losing streak stretching back to a game you won only because you had 2 loner-hands that "coincidentally" appeared on both of your deals, do you:

a) Enjoy the game and the company, not worrying about inevitably extending the losing streak? ("We all win when we're having fun!")

b) Celebrate small moments during the game (like coming close to euchring your superior opponents, or almost getting a chance to call trump) and find solace in moral victories?

c) Inadvertently reveal what's in every hand you're dealt because you can't hide your growing anger at how bad your cards continue to be, or (very occasionally) your glee when they're good?

d) Blame the cards. I mean, actually accuse the cards - out loud - of choosing to be bad just for you and no one else.

e) When your fatigued opponents try to end the game so they can sleep at last, say in your best Clint Eastwood voice: "Nobody leaves until I get some f***ing cards"?

f) I don't play Euchre because it's mostly a game of luck and I'm the kind of person who would win every game if it was about strategy, but when there's luck involved it always seems to conspire against me. 

Scoring the Quiz

Give yourself 0 points for any a) answer, 1 point for any b) answer, 2 points for any c) answer, and so on up to e). For each f) answer, give yourself 1,000 points.

0-2                 You do not carry the h-c gene.
3-5                 The h-c gene is present, but you are a big enough person to suppress its impact.
5-16               The h-c gene is dominating your behaviour in unhealthy ways. Seek help.
1,000+           Thanks for taking the time to read my blog Daddy.

Sombre Thoughts on Remembrance Day

I am lucky to live where I live and when I live.

I read about war. I watch war movies. I see images of war on the news, involving other places and other people. But in my lifetime, so far, I don't have a personal connection to war. And I smugly assume that I never will.

I can't fathom the courage that it took - it takes - for people to go to war, fighting for something that they believe in. People fought for me to have a place and time where I can live a lifetime without a personal connection to war. The peaceful bubble that I live in is the realization of their dreams for their descendants. I am the tree that grew because years ago they planted a seed they knew they wouldn't see grow in their lifetime.

And here are the problems that weigh me down, decades later:

• My leg is still hurting after running my half marathon a week ago.
• The Leafs lost to the Bruins.
• I still haven't found time to get my flu shot.
• My car needs new tires and brakes.
• And so on.

I live in a generation of weakness, selfishness, pettiness, and entitlement. We walk past people on the street as if they've chosen to be where they are. We read about people suffering and dying around the world, and maybe we send them a little something. We wave our fists at the guy who cut us off turning into the mall. We fly into a rage when the cable companies or the phone companies overcharge us.

And once a year, we are asked to take a few minutes and remember the people who gave their lives so we could have it this way. But I don't remember any of these people and their names mean nothing to me. I am asked to remember people I never knew. I feel obliged to try, but there's nothing emotional to draw on.

So maybe, for me, the best I can do is to Realize rather than to Remember: To spend a few minutes today thinking about the price that others paid so that I can feel "lucky" to live where I live when I live. To Realize that almost nothing about the fact that I am here, living a great life, is a result of anything I've done. To Realize that I am standing on the actions and decisions and sacrifices of people I will never know. To Realize that it is wrong to behave as if the world owes this to me.

In his introduction to "A Short History of Nearly Everything" Bill Bryson says:

Welcome. And congratulations. I am delighted that you could make it. Getting here wasn't easy, I know. In fact, I suspect it was a little tougher than you realize.
...  

Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time immemorial to a favored evolutionary line, but you have also been extremely-make that miraculously-fortunate in your personal ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result-eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly-in you.

When I first read the book, those words blew me away. Talk about a profound Realization.

And later, those same words led me to the obvious, but not-so-obvious Realization that if I could travel back to any point in time, there would be at least one of my ancestors alive with whom I could sit down and have a tea and chat (or whatever the time, place, and species equivalent would be).

What would they think of me living in a place and at a time that so closely resembles the dreams they had for me? What would they think of me? Am I worthy of the sacrifices they made?

Not yet.

Time, once again, to try harder...

A Father and Child Discuss the News

A Father and Child discussing the news over breakfast...

C: "Daddy, what's crack?"

F: "Crack is a kind of cocaine."

C: "Daddy, what's cocaine?"

F: "Cocaine is an illegal drug that some grownups use because it makes them feel good."

C: "Does illegal mean that it's against the law, and if you use it you will go to jail?"

F: "Well...yes. But only if you get caught and the police decide that it's the right thing to do to send you to jail. Like if you do it a lot, or if you were doing something else bad when you were caught."

C: "Was our Mayor caught using crack?"

F: "Well...sort of. There's a movie that the police found where it looks like he might be using crack. And the Mayor said that the movie does show him using crack. So yes, I guess he was caught."

C: "So he should go to jail, right?"

F: "Well...no. You see, the Mayor says he was very, very drunk when he used the crack. In fact, he was in a drunken stupor."

C: "What's a 'drunk and stupid'?"

F: (Mussing his child's hair and chuckling with paternal affection) "I said 'drunken stupor' not 'drunk and stupid'. A drunken stupor is when a grownup gets very, very drunk and does stupid things."

C: "Like using crack?"

F: "Exactly."

C: "And what is drunk?"

F: "Drunk is when a grownup has too much alcohol and loses control and responsibility."

C: "So it's okay that the Mayor was caught using crack because he was in a drunken stupor?"

F: "Yes."

C: "And that's why he's not going to jail?"

F: "Yes. Well...sort of. He's not going to jail because it was all a mistake."

C: "He was drunk and stupid by mistake and then used crack and even though he was caught, it's okay?"

F: "Well it's not okay, but the Mayor is a very important man who does lots of good things for the city and he didn't really hurt anyone and he says he will never ever do it again so it's kind of okay."

C: "But I thought he said some mean things about people when he was in a drunken stupor using crack. And you told me that sometimes words can hurt people a lot."

F: "That's true."

C: (Long pause) "So the Mayor should go to jail, right?"

F: "No, because the Mayor said that it was a mistake and that he is very, very sorry."

C: "And that makes it okay?"

F: "Yes."

C: "How do we know he's sorry?"

F: "Because the Mayor said he's sorry, and Mayors don't lie."

C: "But I thought that before he said he did use crack, he said that he never used crack. Isn't that a lie? Or did the Mayor say he was sorry for lying too, so it's okay?"

F: "The lying was part of the mistake so I guess he sort of said sorry for that too."

C: "And he wasn't lying when he said sorry."

F: "Right."

C: (Longer pause) "Daddy, have you ever used crack when you were in a drunken stupor and then said mean things about people and then lied about it by mistake?"

F: "No, because I would never do something bad like that."

C: "But the Mayor did, and that's okay."

F: "Yes."

C: "Oh."

A Parable: The People's King

A Kingdom, years ago and far, far away, found itself without a King (for reasons too obscure and unimportant to explain) and after years of bitter debate and innumerable impasses, its Senior Council conceded defeat and unanimously decided that the People would have to choose their next ruler.

Many candidates emerged and made their case to the People, arguing why they would make a good King (or Queen) - but they all sounded too much like past Kings and Council Members, and the People wanted change. The People liked the idea of choosing their own ruler and wanted someone who spoke for them, who wanted what they wanted, who represented the Common Folk and would remain Common even with a Crown perched on his or her head.

Finally a Common Man came forward and said "If someone must wear the Crown, let it be me. I'm as Common as they come, I know what the Common Folk want, and I will change the Kingdom to reflect the spirit of the People."

Finally the People had found their man and with One Voice they proclaimed him King.

True to his word, the new King didn't behave like other Kings and didn't turn his back on the People. In fact, he became even more endearing to the Common Man as he made change after change as he had promised. Some of the Senior Councillors tried to stop him when they felt he was going too far, but others understood in which direction the winds of popular opinion blew, and put their own misgivings aside to support the new King.

The People loved their King. Many Councillors supported him. And the King ruled for many years.

During his reign, the King - being a Common Man - occasionally got caught breaking the rules, behaving immorally, and even treating others unfairly. But such was the love of the People for their King, that each new report only strengthened their affection: "He's one of us - warts and all."

But there came a time when the Senior Councillors had had enough of the un-kingly behaviour, and some of them began to speak out: "He is the face of our Land and he is shaming us." Others joined the wave of criticism - Philosophers, Chroniclers, Historians, and Moralists added their voices - and soon the quiet dissent became a vocal outcry. Evidence of wrong-doings was gathered and presented in Public Forums. (Note: spellcheck doesn't like the word "fora" so I've gone with the wrong word in the spirit of speaking for the common people).

The King shrugged his shoulders and said: "I am who I am. I am imperfect. And that's why I was chosen by the People." And then, just to be sure, he surrounded himself with Local Toughs who pressured the Philosophers, Chroniclers, Historians, Moralists and Dissenting Councillors to stop causing trouble. Those who didn't stop, were vilified, bullied, and ultimately exiled from the land.

Finally, the King was caught doing something that everyone knew could not be tolerated. There was no doubt anymore that the King's reign should end. His loyal Councillors joined the ranks of those calling for his removal. His Toughs fell under heavy scrutiny and disappeared into the shadows. Until finally - with the exception of some members of his family and a few of the People - the King found himself alone.

Confronting the bitter truth, the King spoke to the People, saying "I am sorry that I let you down. I tried to be the King you wanted. I was imperfect, as you always knew. But you deserve a better Ruler."

And with that, he exiled everyone from the Kingdom so they could have a better King elsewhere.

He ruled the more-or-less empty Kingdom for years more, until he tripped over an anvil and broke his collarbone.

The End.

Halloween 2013 - Your Bedroom's a Hellhole!

For Halloween 2013, I was inspired to turn my garage into a warm and comfortable child's bedroom with the unfortunate and uninvited addition of one standard-issue hell mouth.

 

----

 

Imagine it's Halloween and you've gone to sleep after a satisfying night of trick-or-treating. Around midnight, your clock radio suddenly turns on... as does your bedside lamp, now flickering. Is that the sound of something moving behind your walls, straining to get out?

 

Covered in goose bumps, you pull your pillow over your head. But that doesn't stop you from hearing your horrid wallpaper being ripped open (from the inside), skittering insects crossing your floor, and a moan of pure evil.

 

In a moment of foolish bravery, you hazard a peek and see a hell mouth has opened in the corner, oozing hot lava and filling your bedroom with a fiery glow, wispy smoke, and hosts of creepy crawlies. Is that something under your bed? Is that something on your bed? 

 

Up comes the pillow once more. In shock and fear you try to wake yourself up. Is this a dream? It has to be a dream? Wake up! Wake up!

 

 



----

Well, that's what I was going for.

The neighbours loved it. We had people driving up and letting their kids out just so they could see our house (and take our candy, of course). The biggest compliment I got was on the hell mouth itself. Nobody - including the sister with whom I grew up - believed that I built it from scratch.

And despite all of my work, the last minute addition of a jumping spider was the biggest hit. As I mentioned on Facebook, it scared a Boxer out of his wits. Another canine visitor - this one more like a small horse than a big dog - arched his back and nearly jumped over the fence to take on the spider. But it was the teenagers who were the most impressed. One 14 year old boy said: "You scared a 14-year old boy. Congratulations". Another teen said "I'm so happy people still do this kind of stuff. Thank you so much" (like he was hearkening back to the good old days - when he was 9 - and life was so much simpler).

(In case you're wondering about the spider...in front of the garage door was a mat for people to stand on as they looked in. The trigger for the spider was under the mat. For some, the sudden jump of the spider was a complete shock. Other, more savvy trick-or-treaters knew there was a trigger under the mat but thought - for sure - that it would make the person in the bed rise up. So they were looking to their right when suddenly a spider lurched at them from their left. Got them too.)


  






Much fun was had by all. Thanks for all of your great suggestions for this year's garage theme...I used none of them, but was inspired by...none of them. Better luck next year. And thanks for all the help from my wife and three daughters. I couldn't have done it without you. (My youngest positioned the cat, my wife otherwise kept her out of my hair, and the older two daughters encouraged me from afar - so yes, I was being sarcastic).