My Resume, Emotionally

The purpose of a resume is to outline for a potential future employer the vast array of skills one has gained from past work experience.  I’d like to think that I’ve successfully worked this information into my own resume, but when examined more honestly, what it really outlines is a list of places at which I’m pleased not to be working.  In honour of my two-year anniversary at my (happy) job, I give you several excerpts from my resume, emotionally.

 

Paper Girl

Most people commonly give this one a go when they are children, in order to start making a little extra money to buy gummy worms at the corner store.  I, however, waited until I was 15 to become a paper girl.  Or rather, my mother waited until I was 15 to sign me up.  I was paid a whopping 1.5 cents per paper on a modest route of about 70 houses; I did this every Wednesday and Friday.  Yes, that’s right, my income from my first job was $2.10 a week.  Given that most people would probably PAY $2.10 a week NOT to deliver newspapers, The Guelph Tribune made it possible for paper boys and girls to supplement their incomes by collecting voluntary pay.  Even though most people don’t really want to donate money for a free newspaper, this was my favourite part of the job.  It was physically less demanding, I always liked interrupting people during dinner and looking into their houses, and I was able to at least double my revenue.  I also increased my profits by being innovative and trying to find faster, easier, and more cost effective ways of doing things.  My strategy as a paper girl was to have my kindly younger brother do my deliveries for me, without pay.  Dan, if you’re out there reading this, I probably owe you about $25.

 

Meat Girl

When I grew out of paper-girling and got my driver’s license, my mom made me a list of places and told me to go to each one and apply for jobs.  The first place I went was Ed’s Food Basics, and by the time I got home, Ed’s wife Gerry had called me for an interview.  I imagined myself being a grocery store cashier, and was a little bit surprised when my interview turned out to be in the meat department.  The interview consisted of two questions, and luckily I got them both right.  I definitely aced both “Can you work alone?” and “What time can you start?”  The immediacy with which I was hired led me to believe that I possessed some special skill in obtaining employment, and that finding jobs would thereafter be easy for me.  It never occurred to me to think that I was applying for a position that required no special skills and I happened to be the first one to come along.

I learned many valuable lessons as a meat girl; trotters are pig feet, tripe is stomach, and headcheese is jellied cow brain.  I don’t like the smell of burning blood.  While frozen fish may come in bags, the bags will likely not be tied or sealed.  Never pick up a frozen turkey by the attached paper price tag because someone probably got frostbite fastening it on.  Look the other way when strange men stroke packages of bacon whilst muttering, “Poooooor little piggies.”  Shelves should never be left “higglety-pigglety” at nighttime.  When you can’t find anything to do, clean.  It bears mentioning that by the time my brother applied to join me as meat boy, Gerry had added a new question to her interview repertoire.  When she asked Dan to tell her a little bit about himself, “I like meat” was his answer and he got the job on the spot.

 

Water Girl

I held steadfastly to my position as meat girl until I went away to university and I needed to make more money.  Thus I became an employee of Aberfoyle Springs, which, at some point during my four summers there was bought by and became Nestle Waters.  Working at this job, I coined the term “The Pit.”  The Pit is that feeling you get on Sunday evening when you start thinking about going back to work, and suddenly you feel as though you’ve swallowed a cinderblock.

When I arrived at 6:00 am for my first of 7 12-hour shifts in a row, it was like being thrown in the deep end of a swimming pool.  Only, in this pool, the water is in bottles and there’s a lot of heavy machinery at the bottom.  The arrival of a new staff member (me) seemed to be a bit of a surprise, and so I was made Bottle Marshall.  I later learned that this is the job for people who don’t actually have a job.  You are given a long pole and made to look up at a conveyor of empty bottles running along the ceiling.  If a bottle were to get stuck, you would tap it with the pole.  They didn’t actually NEED a person to do this job, as the bottles would usually un-stick themselves; the position was more of a staging area so that new employees could feel useful while the supervisor figured out what in the world to do with them.  By about 9:00, as I was imagining most regular people starting work, I was taken to another part of the factory where the line had been shut down for sanitation.  I was made to put on a full rubber suit and a sort of protective mask/helmety thing that seemed appropriate for welding.  I was then given a hose and told to spray everything.  I was part way through spraying when someone said, “Oh, by the way, that’s acid.  Be careful.”  At some point during the day, a woman quit.  That woman could never have imagined that her decision to seek other employment sealed my fate for the remainder of my years there.  On that day, I became the CPA girl.

CPA (Central Palletizing Area) is a lonely place in the far reaches of the factory.  The pros of working there: it was cold, I was alone, and I wouldn’t have to wear the rubber suit or spray acid again.  The cons: it was cold and I was alone.  My job was to watch over a collection of palletizing machines, and if anything got jammed, I would un-jam it.  There rarely seemed to be an in between kind of day.  It was either 12 hours of jams and alarms and nobody was there to help me fix them, or 12 hours of nothingness, and nobody was there to keep me company.  On those days, I used what little resources I had available to me to create my own entertainment.  I spent an entire summer weaving a 100-meter long paper chain, which my mother now uses as a garland on her Christmas tree.  Another year, I made head-sized balls out of plastic wrap and then covered the balls in different coloured labels.  I then drew faces on those coloured balls and played hide-and-seek with them.  I grew rather attached.  They were sort of my friends.  Another year I swept the floor every day.  And another year I couldn’t be bothered, so all I did was think.  The biting memory of the monotony has dulled over time, but I still feel The Pit faintly when it happens that I have to drive past.  And it goes without saying that I’ll never look at a bottle of water the same way again.

 

Advertising Girl

What I thought was going to be my life calling turned out to be the worst job in my employment history.  I applied for a writing job at a small magazine publishing house in my hometown.  The interview was going smashingly, until the interviewers noticed that little bit on my resume that says I can speak French.  Because of this, when they offered me a job, they decided to make up a new position instead of hiring me for the one I wanted.  I was in desperate need of a job, and I’m not one to shy away from a challenge, and so I became responsible for selling advertisements to hotels, inns, and B&Bs in Quebec.

As it turns out, I’m horrible at selling advertisements, and I’m even worse in French.  Days and weeks dragged on without my having sold a thing.  I had The Pit so badly I couldn’t sleep at night.  As I walked to work every morning, I often delayed my arrival by walking around the block several times, praying that the door would be locked when I got there, or better yet, that they would decide to fire me.  Alas, neither of these ever came true and for the first time in my life I had to quit a job simply because I was doing terribly at it.  My consolation: I definitely left with my dignity intact by quitting before I got fired.  When I got home and started the tedious task of job searching yet again, I saw that my position had been posted a few days before I quit.

 

I count myself fortunate to work at a job where two years have flown by, and the only reason I get The Pit is because I have so many fun things to do on the weekends!

An entire summer’s work: my paper chain on the family tree

 

Oh Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

(Hello, Blog, it’s been a while!)

Here comes another set of memories from the vault of my child mind.  Let’s talk about the neighbors I had as a wee one at 53 Boullee Street, London, Ontario.

 

Mike and Cheryl

My only recollection of Mike is as follows.  I was riding my bike around and around in circles in his driveway on an afternoon when nobody was at home.  The benefit to doing this in the neighbor’s driveway as opposed to my own simply comes down to gravel versus paving.  Intent as I was on my circling, imagine my surprise when Mike pulled into the driveway in his pickup truck.  I peddled away as fast as my two wheels would carry me because I was afraid that he would be angry and run me over.  Yes, that’s right, I really thought he was going to hit me with his car.  Actually, that was a pretty common fear for me.  I usually paused for great lengths of time on street corners whilst adults, becoming increasingly frustrated, tried to wave me across the street.  But I always stood my ground, certain that as soon as I stepped a tippie-toe onto the asphalt, they would somehow change their minds and decide to plow me down.  Somehow I managed to overlook the fact that it’s generally frowned upon to hit children with cars.  All that to say, I got away from Mike quickly, and thank goodness for that.  Cheryl, his wife, didn’t alarm me quite so badly.  She once let my brother and me (henceforward referred to as “us”) eat chives from her garden and my mother smelled them on our breath.

 

Anne and Henry

Anne and Henry were shacking up, and for some reason I thought this was illegal.  In the back of my mind, I was continually waiting for the day when the police would show up to arrest them for their crimes.  Not surprisingly, that failed to occur.  Despite his criminal nature, Henry was intriguing to watch from the secrecy of our tree house.  The most impressive sight we ever witnessed was Henry, thinking he was alone, stabbing an oversized sausage with a fork and eating it in no less than three mouthfuls.  Whenever we ate hotdogs after that, we nearly died of laughter playing Henry eating the sausage.  Once, Anne and Henry had a yard sale, at which my brother acquired quite a treasure.  It was a greasy, yellow mirror, and on it was a cartoon picture of a revealingly dressed woman.  The speech bubble coming out of her red lips said, “Hello, Sexy.”  He gave it to our mother as a gift, and we could never quite understand why she was reluctant to hang it up.

 

Cindy and Ray

Cindy and Ray had a kind of outdoor kitchen in their backyard, which I thought was really cool.  Cindy also appeared to me to be a very glamorous lady, the kind who cuts the grass in short shorts and high heels.  Any woman in pumps was an idol for me, and Ray was quite a friendly man, so it’s no big surprise that, just as we wanted to play Henry eating the sausage, we also wanted to play Cindy and Ray.  Only, our mother wasn’t quite sure what to say about it all because it turns out that Cindy was a stripper and Ray was her gay protector.  Still, we thought they were lovely.

 

Marg and John

I once saw them when they were on their way to a Halloween party, and because of this they are cemented in my mind wearing coordinating Star Trek costumes.  Their daughter was my sister’s childhood best friend, and together they did such atrocious things as open every dresser drawer in a bedroom (mine) and spread the contents hither and thither.  They also coloured faces (theirs) with black permanent marker and cried when they saw the results.

 

The Yucky Green Guy

He was yucky and he was green.  He was a kind of biker-ish looking man with yucky long hair and many green tattoos, hence the name Yucky Green Guy.  We found him frightening, and we played Yucky Green Guy when we wanted to frighten each other.

 

KGB Spies

Now, if the Yucky Green Guy frightened us, this couple was out and out terrifying.  My mother is convinced that they were Russian spies, a concept that was beyond my child mind’s understanding.  However, they were still pretty scary.  Whenever I saw them, I would liken my reaction to Kevin McCallister’s in Home Alone when he comes face to face with Old Man Marley on the sidewalk.  I wanted to turn around and run.  We always tried as hard as we could not to look at their house when we walked past, for fear that we’d see them peering at us through darkened windows and tightly closed blinds.  Once when, for some reason, I was walking home alone, the old man beckoned me with a curled claw finger and said, “Heeeeeellllloooo, little boy.”  I ran out of fear, and I ran faster out of perturbation, because clearly I was NOT a little boy (or maybe not so clearly, thanks to the imposition of a mushroom cut by my mother).  Another time, as we walked past with our new snow shovels in hand, they chased us down the sidewalk, cursing us, saying, “Go get your OWN snow!”  And finally, when I tried to set up a small business selling hand made artisan bookmarks on the street, the matron told me they were ugly.  The natural conclusion is, therefore, that they were spies.

 

I hope you’ve enjoyed this latest installment of little Lynnie as a child.

 

Information

Come and enjoy the best conversation and snacks with Vancouver’s cutest English teachers!

When: Every Friday afternoon from 1:30 until 3:00

Where: Our classroom at 668 Citadel Parade  (downtown, near Stadium-Chinatown Skytrain station)

What: Super-fun and useful English classes for small groups

How much!?!?!?  Just $20 per class.  What a bargain!!!

 

Young Me

Flashback to Christmas, 1995.  Mimi and Pawpaw, my great grandparents, give me a diary.  It’s green with poppies and a profile drawing of a forlorn looking black and white cat, gazing thoughtfully into the unknown.  Its most important feature is the lock.  The inside cover holds a note from Mimi in her curly script: “This diary belongs to Lynn Anne Harris.  From Mimi and Pawpaw.  “Happy teen years.”  1995.

Why did she put the “Happy teen years” part in quotation marks?  Did she realize that maybe “happy” is not the best way to describe ages 12-19?  Had she written, “Let loose your inner angst,” I may not have responded to this gift with so much enthusiasm.  As it turned out, I spent the next seven years recording the heights of joy and the depths of misery in enough journals to fill a small suitcase.

But, back to the beginning.  The feline on the front of the diary reminded me of my own dear pet, and so I did what any logical pre-teen girl would do: every day I wrote a letter to my cat.

I started my life story on the day when most people undertake new projects: New Year’s Day.  I honestly believed that I was a really interesting person and that the things I had to say would someday be published and end up as required reading in high school classes across the country.  In hindsight I can see that, at the age of 12, I was lacking in literary skills, my spelling was mediocre, and grammatical errors were abundant.  However, I have come to see the teen diary as a vehicle for humor, and maybe my desire to share my feelings with the world was not so outlandish after all.  I just need to take myself a little less seriously.

The first entry is as follows:

“Monday January 1^st, 1996

Dear Kirby,

Today was a wonderful day.  I talked to CLT on my new turquoise phone!  For most of the day I did my new latch hook pillow.  It is fun.  At 4:00, we went to M’s.  BM and I had loads of fun.  I got caught under the mistletoe by Penelope!”

While it is not insightful at all, and certainly not interesting, these seven sentences sum up a lot of who I was in the month before my 13^th birthday.  An excellent day consisted of making as much use of the telephone as possible.  I liked crafts.  I liked boys.  Things were described as either “fun” or “boring.”

My friends and I developed code names for all of the boys in our lives, so that we could talk freely about our love in front of those implicated.  Penelope was the older brother of BM, one of my best friends, and for quite some time I firmly believed that no matter how many other boys I liked, in the end I would marry him.  Alas, we didn’t kiss on that night, or ever.  When I wrote “caught under the mistletoe,” I’m sure it chanced to happen that we were walking in opposite directions through a doorway at the same time.  Still, in the life of young me, that was big news.

 

Moment of Truth

I like the idea of baking.  I like the final product achieved by most attempts at baking.  But it’s time to admit that I do not especially enjoy baking itself.  I always thought my middle name was Martha Stewart, but it turns out that it’s actually Duncan Hines.  To be fair, I’ve created some extremely satisfying goods in my time, but I’m pretty sure I’ve produced an equal number of failures.

 

My first baking mishap remains etched in my mind.  I was 12 years old, and was trying to make a simple Oreo cookie-crumb pie-crust.  Who can blame a pre-teen for adding 3 cups of sugar to the mix instead of 3 tablespoons?  Turns out the crust isn’t supposed to be made from pure sugar.  Oops.

 

Have you ever tried to do your Christmas baking in a foreign country without an oven?  Well, don’t.  It will only make you curl up on the floor and cry like a baby.  And when you finally manage to eke out a few tastes of home, someone will steal your treats from outside your apartment door while they are cooling.  Just buy yourself a ChocoPie and get over it.

 

Did you know that the custard in a lemon meringue pie has to come to a boil before it is poured into the pie shell?  Bevelyn Blaire, the author of “Everyday Pies” forgot to mention that, and I served my husband and his guests lemon soup in a pastry shell for his birthday dessert.  I’m so sorry Bev, but I’m just not an everyday pie kinda gal.

 

Things can get kind of tricky when you think you’re more talented than you are and you try to make a chocolate cake and a vanilla cake at the same time.  They’re the same, only one’s chocolate and one’s not, right?  Not so.  Who knew?  One needs baking soda only, while the other requires baking soda and baking powder.  Realized that one too late.

 

And witness tonight’s baking disaster: peach tarts fail.  Honestly, the only things that come to my mind are expletives.  I spent two hours rolling out those dainty little tart shells.  Why didn’t that scrumptious peach filling stay inside?  Why do I have a baking curse?

 

 

After perusing through the mental files of my fiascos, and providing you with a sampling of them here, I would like to announce that I am giving up baking.  Cake plates and mini muffin tins, say your farewells!  If it doesn’t come in a box, I’m not making it.  So long to oven mitts, and timers, and pans.  Math and science are not welcome in my kitchen!

 

Goodbye to baking forever!!!  Or, until I fail at saying goodbye as well, and give the old mixer just one more shot.  Fondant icing, anyone?

 

Hockey From the Point of View of a Recently Converted Cynic

I gave up sports at a young age.  My career as a ballerina fell by the wayside when prancing around in a frilly pink tutu ceased to be the central focus of the weekly classes and actual, hard work was demanded of attendees.  I didn’t make it as a soccer player because it turns out that in fact, one must attempt to kick the ball and score goals.  When tee-ball threatened to lose the tee, I quit that as well.  As it turns out, I’m not so keen on teams.

I’ve dabbled briefly in various solo sports such as rock climbing (too expensive), swimming (ruined my hair), and running (just not fun).  I find most of my attempts at engaging in regular, physical activity are sustainable only when I’m unemployed and there is absolutely no more cleaning or laundry to be done.  Hard work of a bodily nature just doesn’t do anything for me, figuratively speaking.  I’ve never stuck with anything long enough to realize the literal benefits.

It comes as no surprise, then, that not being anything of a sports person, I’ve never had much interest in following professional sports.  Actually, I’d say that I was somewhat of a cynic.  The finances are ridiculous, the politics are boring, and of all possible things that I could do with my free time, watching grown men play games on TV has always been just about the last thing on my list.

But, it’s difficult to live in Vancouver without becoming a Canucks fan.  I’ve spent the past year-and-a-half listening to the pre-game saxophonist busker repeat the “Hockey Night in Canada” theme song below my balcony.  I’ve often been met with indignant surprise upon revealing to new acquaintances that I actually didn’t watch the game last night.  Oblivious to the hockey schedule, Ian and I held his birthday party at our local pub on a game night and were forced to squeeze 15 people into eight seats.  And after many evenings of walking against a crowd dressed in blue and green, I wondered if maybe I was the one going the wrong way.

So, when my hockey-loving friends ordered cable specifically to watch the play-offs, I found myself swept up in the madness.  I bought a t-shirt, tied a blue bow in my hair, and spent hours with friends meticulously icing our “Canupcakes,” to serve as sustenance during the play-off parties.

There’s a lot that I still don’t understand about hockey.  When one player stops really fast and sprays ice up into another player’s face, that’s not “icing.”  I’m not sure what “icing” is, exactly, but I’ll figure that out next year.  The thing that really sold me on the hockey experience in Vancouver was the way that it brought people together in a sea of positive energy.  For a few hours, a couple times a week, people in the city were united in one purpose.  In a world where it’s weird to look strangers in the eye, it was suddenly okay to hug and high-five everyone in the street.  The city’s willingness to facilitate such an event was awesome, and the generosity and hospitality displayed by my friends is unmatched.  I really felt, as I watched the play-offs unfold, that this hockey experience brought out the best in people.

What about that little riot, then, you might ask?  That night most certainly brought out the worst in people, but I’m not writing this to discuss that event.  It was sad and disappointing, but in the aftermath of the riot, I witnessed precisely what attracted me to hockey in the first place.  Everyone in this city was united in a common goal to erase the mistakes of the night before.  In true Canucks spirit, the city was cleaned and covered in messages of hope in fewer than 24 hours.  I’ve forgotten about the destruction caused in the riot in light of the grace and love that followed.

I won’t then, fold my t-shirt away in shame!  Though I am a new fan, I am a Canucks fan nonetheless.  I have all summer to study the rules, and I will be back next year to watch the team battle for that giant, silver, cuppy thing!

 

Suspicious Architecture

On a recent trip to the Vancouver Art Gallery, I found myself face to face with a rather un-compelling set of photographs.  Little did I know upon first glance that they would change the way I see the world.  They looked like a high school acquaintance’s Facebook album from a night out at a fairly nice club.  They were filled with girls in cocktail dresses stumbling about, pretty drinks in hand, and leering males who had somehow managed to find themselves lurking clumsily around the periphery of the frame.  The only intriguing part of the photos was that each one contained an individual, seemingly intoxicated, sprawled out on the floor.

Initially, I gave a half-hearted chuckle, assuming that the photos were merely meant to mock those who were unable to behave with decorum at a classy social event.  However, the write-up beside the photos set me straight and opened my eyes.  Read on as I relate to you the deeper, more artistic, socially aware, politically savvy, personally challenging true meaning of these images.

The photos were staged at gallery openings and depicted attendees fake falling in the middle of these soirees.  The artist was not attempting to draw attention to the intoxication of the fallen people, but rather to cause the viewer to question the legitimacy and trustworthiness of the art institute.  Obviously.  Those people fell down because the very architecture of the gallery is suspect.

I know that’s what I usually think when I happen upon people lying in a heap on the ground.  “Shoot, you just can’t trust sidewalks anymore.”  Or, “I REALLY need to get someone in to have a look at these stairs.  I swear they’re plotting against me.”  Or, “Did you see how that floorboard purposely tripped me as I walked by?”

Now, I know that most of you are probably not aware of this fact, so I want to you pay close attention to it now.  THE BUILDINGS ARE OUT TO GET YOU!!!  I urge you friends, the next time you feel yourself even so much as stumble a little bit, do not blame it on your poor choice of footwear, your state of inebriation, or the ungainly person who collided with you as they walked by.  It is important that we recognize the true nature of the suspicious architecture that surrounds us so that we can wage war against it.  Please, fight for the rights of those who are unable to stand without falling down sometimes.

 

I Am an Adult

I have recently made a startling discovery.  I am an adult.  Though I have been legally considered as such since turning 18, I have rarely displayed the characteristics of adulthood and therefore never defined myself in this way.  It has taken a full ten years for the symptoms to manifest themselves, but at this point, they are becoming difficult to ignore.

I know I am an adult because:

• I see the value in sweeping under my couch, dusting the baseboards, and vacuuming under the bed.  Not only do I approve of this activity, but I engage in it wholeheartedly.  Gone are the days of snickering with my friends behind the backs of our mothers.  I will be that mother, enduring the snickers while I pursue a cause that I believe to be noble.

• Recently, I went to Home Depot on a Sunday afternoon and bought a bag of dirt.  That’s right.  I paid money to be the owner of something that people kick off of their shoes and sweep out of their homes.

• I wake up early on Saturdays.  It’s a choice that my body has made without me, but truthfully, I’m not against it.  You see, waking up early on Saturdays means that I have time to get stuff done!  Nothing makes me feel grown up quite like the swell of pride in my heart that comes from being productive in the morning.

• The flesh on my upper arms jiggles.  It’s not a matter of weight gain.  It’s just that parts, which were once tight, simply aren’t anymore.

• I have bank accounts at several different banks.  As a child I thought it meant my parents had a lot of money.  Now I know it means that the debt is spread around in varying locations.

• I filled out a census.  Knowing that the government wants me to fill out paperwork really makes me feel like I count as a human being.

• I’ve cooked big meats and had moderate success in baking pies.  The meals I cooked in my adolescence were dominated by small meats along the lines of chicken breasts, pork chops and ground beef.  Becoming an adult has necessitated the purchase of a roasting pan in which large items such as turkeys, hams, and roasts are brought into culinary existence.  I’ve also baked a plentitude of pies in each of three types of pie plates.

• Miniature, single serving cereals no longer come in boxes, but are packaged in small cups with foil lids.  I’m beginning to see changes in the world that make one thing clear.  I’m no longer a child.

As you can see, the evidence is overwhelming and the facts cannot be ignored.  I am adult.

 

I Could Write a Sonnet

It’s hard to tell sometimes, with memories, what is accurate and what is embellished.  Memories are the stories of our past, but often with chapters missing, and pages added, names changed, and chronologies jumbled.  I know that I certainly delete the bits that I find displeasing, and paint hearts and rainbows around the parts I like best.  Some of my happiest memories, and they are only happy, are of my childhood Easters in Kentucky.  I don’t know absolutely what parts are real and what parts are the imaginings of a child’s mind, but this is the way I remember those most wonderful of days.

We would make the ever-long drive from the great white north, as it so often is at Easter time in Canada, through Michigan and Ohio until we arrived in Kentucky.  It was a place where gentler breezes blew, tulips were already in bloom, and I would surely be warm enough to wear my new Easter dress.  When we finally turned from the highway onto the long gravel driveway, I think that sometimes we were allowed to get out of the car and run ahead, over the hill, and down to the house.

Mimi, my great grandmother, would hear the crunch of the gravel under the tires, and come out of her green wooden house to meet us, screen door clattering shut behind her.  She used to give us love pats so strong that, falling asleep at night, we would joke about how much it would hurt if she were ever to spank us.  Best just to behave and avoid finding out.

There was an uncle who called us the “Under the Table Gang,” because that was where we slept, in sleeping bags rolled out on a big Persian rug under the wooden dining room table.  I can remember tracing the patterns of the rug with my fingers in the early morning hours when I was too excited to go back to sleep, but knew the grown-ups would be upset if I started into the mini cereal boxes at such a young hour.

The cousins would all dye Easter eggs around the big kitchen table.  Vividly colored dyes were spread around in aqua and olive striped mugs, and one year my brother took a swig from a mug of blue.  We covered the table with an upside-down vinyl tablecloth so that the spills and drips made lovely patterns on the fuzzy white underside.  When all of the eggs were gone, it was just as much fun to splash colors down the side of the mugs onto the table until the adults poured the dye down the sink.

On Easter morning, that same table would be covered with wicker Easter baskets lined with pastel grass and softly colored candies.  Malt eggs, egg gums, chocolate rabbits and peeps.  Always a storybook about rabbits, and a hardboiled egg with my name written on it in crayon.  We would suck on the malt eggs to make our lips turn white, and then the trading would begin.  As the older sister, I always knew my brother was getting a bum deal when I gave him all of my black jellybeans (or jack bellybeans, as we called them) in exchange for all of his Cadbury cream eggs.

Somehow, in the excitement of the morning, we were made to eat something that wasn’t a sweet, then washed and dressed in Easter’s finest.  Oh the dresses with flowers and frills!  White shoes and a hat, white gloves and a tiny purse.  Never did a little girl feel so lovely as in her Easter ensemble.

Then, whisked away to church, a little white church in the countryside.  Or maybe not.  I don’t know for sure.  Hidden behind wooden pews, sneaking chocolates out of the ever-useful purse, my brother and I would giggle at the white-haired ladies warbling out the notes of “Up From the Grave,” and “He Lives.”  At the cheekiest of times, he would warble a little bit too.

After church there were pictures on the porch swing, and then waiting in the house with terrific anticipation while the adults hid eggs outside.  Then, baskets in hand, bursting through the screen door, the hunt would begin.  We scrambled up trees, and peered under flower petals, looking for yesterday’s dyed eggs and the plastic variety that jingled with the promise of pocket money inside.  When we thought everything had been found, the aunties watching from the porch would holler out, “Aaaaih spaaaaih,” and play games of hot and cold in order to lead us to the next find.  When all of the treasures had been uncovered, Mom would arrange all of the eggs into the shape of the year and we would gather around for a photo.

After the Easter feast, when dark had fallen and dresses had been traded for jeans, the cousins would head out into the yard to play “Skunk in the Barnyard.”  We would stand in a circle, and say the rhyme, pointing around the circle to the beat: “Skunk in the barnyard, PU!  Somebody smelled it, not you!  Whoever was “you” had to run and hide, and the last one in the circle had the incredible task of finding the missing cousins.  I was always a little bit scared and very thrilled to run off into the night in search of the darkest corner to hide in.

Finally, when there was a hint of a bite in the air, when every cousin had been found, and every belly had been sated with chocolates and treats, it was time to crawl under the table and into the sleeping bag.  Drifting off to sleep, the happiness of the day was filed away into the land of memories, so that 20 years later, on a rainy Easter Sunday in Vancouver, they are there to keep me warm.

 

An Inventory of My Unusual Afflictions

All harmless, but strange and true.

Migrating Hand Rash: A small red rash, about the size of a quarter, that migrates across the back of my left hand.  It has been known to jump over to the right hand for short periods of time, and occasionally it dips in between the fingers, as it is doing now.  Currently, it resides mostly on the back of my pinkie finger.  It is characterized by inconsistent behavior, sometimes peacefully acquiescing to the cream with which I smother it, but other times making itself itch so violently that I am unable to sleep.  It thrives in places with particularly dry air, like the bookshop where I work.

 

Tonsil Stones: Prepare yourself, because this is a little bit gross.  Sometimes when I eat, food gets stuck in my tonsils and I am unable to remove it with my tongue.  I can always feel it scratching in the back of my throat, but if I’m out, I just have to let the food fester back there until I arrive at home to do a proper extraction.  Removal involves clipping a book light onto a mirror so that it shines down my throat, and using one hand to press my tongue out of the way with a Q-tip, while the other hand jabs at the lodged specimen with a toothpick.  It always turns into a hard, white ball, so identification is impossible.

 

Flaky Eyelids: I wore pink eye shadow for about one week, but was plagued with flaky eyelids for months to follow.  I went without makeup for weeks on end, used various prescription creams, but my eyelids continued to come off in large flecks of skin.  Finally, after about one year, steroid cream solved the flake problem, but was in turn responsible for the next issue.

 

Eyelid/Eyebrow Pustules: Continued use of steroid cream to ward off eyelid flakes led to what I can only call pustules.  They had the appearance of whiteheads, but contained something hard inside that was impossible to pop.  Finally, I dug them all out of my face in a moment of painful frustration, dealt with the subsequent scarring, and eventually returned to normal.  Eyelids are devoid of any known issues at present.

 

Abscess: Located in the middle of my torso is a small abscess.  What makes this affliction particularly humorous is that Ian and I both got abscesses at the same time, his taking place on his foot.  Every night we slept with potato poultices and salt water compresses taped to our wounds in hopes that whatever was inside the abscesses would be drawn out.  Eventually his went away completely, but mine remains small-ish in size.  Since it causes no concern to my doctor, I try not to let it bother me.