July 5: Reminiscing

 So my dad, who turns 78 today, gives me "reminiscing" as a title. This is like handing candy to a baby. Pretty much all I do on this blog is reminisce. I reminisce too much. In fact, it's one of my biggest character flaws. My best friend, God rest his soul, hated it when I insisted on reliving the past all the time. He probably would have welcomed this blog. It gives me an outlet to reminisce so he wouldn't have to put up with me.

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My dad, like most dads, likes to reminisce about when his kids were younger (my mom doesn't do that a whole lot.) I do that too but I had the advantage of becoming a parent during the prevalence of social media. My kid had his first picture taken when he was less than five seconds old. Later that day, his first day, he starred in his very own movie, like it or not (I'm sure he was indifferent.) Now, whenever I want to reminisce about my kid going down a waterslide or swimming in the lake or playing in a splash pad or saying "dada" 50 times in the space of five minutes or having a bubble bath or just being adorable, all I have to do is fire up my personal movie collection.

Word up to new parents: If someone tells you to grab your video camera because your kid is doing something cute, grab it. You can never have too many memories.

 

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So I guess that happens in life. You get to the point when you stop reliving your own glory days and start looking forward to your kids' glory days. Yesterday, my kid was snuggling me on the day bed. He had his head on my belly, which he likes to use as a pillow, and was watching a vacuum cleaner video on his iPad. At one point, he looked at me and said: "Water." His voice was cracked; it remains unbroken by puberty. It is selfish of me to say I don't want my kid to grow up. I want him to be young and innocent forever. This can never happen.

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Tonight I cannot spend much time reminiscing. I have to do newspaper things instead. Doing newspaper things occupies much of my life.

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Today, while walking up Main Street, I saw a car for sale. It made me reminisce about being a young man and suddenly deciding that I wanted a car of my own. What decided it for me was that I was working as a driver for a company that sold roses in various nightclubs. My job was to drive the salesgirl, who had won the right to sashay through a dozen or so Calgary nightclubs and sell roses to guys who were hoping to get lucky. I fancied that girl something fierce but she dismissed me pretty quickly when she learned that the car I was driving was mom and dad's.

So I started saving my pennies and then, when that girl quit to get a job selling beer at a rock and roll nightclub on Calgary's Electric Avenue, I decided that I was going to make my money doing magic tricks on that same Electric Avenue. So I set up a magic stand and I took out my deck of cards and I waited for strangers to stop at my magic table to see a trick. I didn't think I would do very well. I was wrong. I made at least $50 every night (four times that sometimes during the Calgary Stampede) and, in time, I was able to save up about $1,500. On St. Patrick's Day of 1993, I bought a used 1981 Mazda GLC from a guy named Trevor Marx in southwest Calgary. I loved that car, even though I only had it for a few years, but did it ever give me a feeling of freedom.

That's all the reminiscing I can afford to do today.