Well, we’re here! Now let us never speak of the shortcut again.”— Homer,  The Simpsons 

Since my feet are my main source of transportation, I’m a big fan of the shortcut. In movies and TV shows whenever someone takes a shortcut, bad, scary, deadly and/or hilarious things always happen to them. In real life, shortcuts are just a more efficient way to get around a city… most of the time.

Halifax was the best city ever for shortcuts. In my 20-minute walk to and from work, I could go the whole way with only ever having to hit sidewalks for the last couple of minutes.  Halifax has shortcuts bisecting the city in all directions. Some of the shortcuts get so popular that the city paves them and turns them into official walking paths.

Aside from the time-saving aspect of shortcuts, the best thing about them is that you’re away from traffic and get to see some extraordinary parts of the city – the backs of buildings, wooded areas, hidden community gardens, broken-down and abandoned stuff. And, you often meet the most interesting people clambering over railroad ties, under fences, through parks or over and through structures. (Such as Parkour kids [traceurs], which I blogged about in one of my very first blog posts ever, in Halifax, back before I was XUP. I’ve never seen a traceur in Ottawa, though I suppose they must exist — probably downtown where I don’t spend that much time.)

Anyway, Toronto is also a good short-cut (and Parkour) city. Although there’s not a lot of green-space to cut through, there are a lot of good back-streets, city squares, parking lots and other accessible spaces to shorten and enliven your walk.

In fact, the only place I’ve ever lived where shortcuts are few and far between is Ottawa. Ottawa is a very, very car-centered city. Shortcuts are rare. Pedestrians are barely allowed to have sidewalks to walk on. Sometimes a bit of sidewalk gets slapped alongside a road if the road construction guys have some leftover asphalt or something; but the sidewalk never lasts very long and suddenly you find yourself in the middle of traffic with motorists honking and yelling at you.

Ottawa has the much-touted Riverside bicycle paths, which could be considered as sort of city-designated and sanctioned shortcuts. They’re really for bicycles, but pedestrians are tolerated as long as they can figure out which side they’re supposed to walk on – which is not the side facing traffic, interestingly enough. Which means pedestrians that walk on the correct side are constantly being surprised/scared by cyclists whizzing past from behind them. Also, the Riverside paths are actually take longer than just walking on the side of the road, so they’re not much good as shortcuts. They’re probably great for cyclists, but for pedestrians they’re really only good as scenic strolling areas.

Walking through the Experimental Farm is a pretty good shortcut, if you happen to live near it, which I don’t.

I’ve tried a bunch of different routes to work. If there were shortcuts it would only take me about half an hour to walk there. But there are no shortcuts. Ninety percent of the trip is alongside a frantically busy 4-lane street. So it takes 50 minutes at best.  I don’t often walk all the way to work.

 I have found a few parking lots and fields to walk through in the city that cut my walking time. It’s always fun to find and follow a winding footpath through the snow or through a grassy area.

I’ve always wondered why exactly these paths are winding? You’d think if someone was trying to get from point A to point B by the most direct and shortest route, they would forge a straight line. But that’s never the case. Shortcuts always meander. Is there something about humans that disallows them to walk in a straight line?

Maybe they’re walking and then their mind wanders and suddenly they look up and see they’re too far over to the right, so they veer left and lose focus again until they realize they’re too far over to the left, correct themselves again, and so on and so on??? It’s the only thing I can figure.

Anyway, the only time I’ve ever had a zany or hair-raising adventure whilst shortcutting was when I was about 8. I’d gone to town with my mum because she was going to the hairdresser. After a while I got bored and so, while she was under the dryer, I yelled at her that I was going outside. “Do NOT leave this block!” She yelled back.

Being a farm kid, I didn’t know what a block was, so I just wandered through the small town, cutting through shops and playgrounds and back alleys. I was about to turn into one of those alleys when I saw two guys having a knife fight. One was stabbing the other in the arm – not very hard. They were both pretty bloody and there was some blood on the ground, so probably this was not the first stab.

They didn’t notice me, but I decided not to cut through that alley afterall. I just made my way back to the hairdressers. I don’t know if the whole fight thing  didn’t seem real or what, but I forgot all about the knife fight as soon as I left the alley. I didn’t think of it again until later that day when I was home eating supper with the family. “Hey, you guys!” I yelled over the general din, all squirmy with excitement. “Guess what I saw today?”  So I told them my story and, if I know young me (and I think I do), I told it with plenty of gory detail and a with a tad of embellishment. Of course no one believed me.

However! The following Wednesday, when the town’s weekly paper came out, right there on the front page was a story about the very knife fight. “See!” I said, proudly vindicated. 

Then I got big, long heck from both my parents, not only for leaving the block but also for a bunch of other quasi-related stuff.

It wasn’t until I was 12 that I found out what a block was.

Louise recently did a post questioning how vegans know for sure that they’re not accidentally consuming animal products in some way. She points out that the H1N1 vaccine contains squalene, which is derived from shark livers. She later asks:

But can you really call yourself a vegan if you knowingly use or eat something that is made using animal products?

It’s an interesting question. 

I actually wonder how many people no longer label themselves vegan or vegetarian in order to avoid challenges like this.

I usually just say, “I don’t eat meat.” “So, you’re a vegetarian?” people then ask. “Well, more or less.” I say. “I occasionally eat fish.”  Then people get very excited, point at me and gleefully say, “You’re not a REAL vegetarian if you eat fish!” Like they’ve caught me committing a crime of some sort.

Or if we’re out at a restaurant, they make a big show of cutting into their bloody steak and waving a forkful of it in my face saying “Yum, yum…dead cow.” And I guess they expect me to hurl all over the table or something. But really, I don’t care what you eat. You’re a grown-up; you make your own food choices. And no, I’m not all that concerned if my veggie burger is cooked on the same grill as your sirloin burger

Some people are afraid to invite me for a meal because they think that if I don’t eat meat, I don’t eat anything. “But what do you eat?” they ask, befuddled, as if there were no food available on the planet that doesn’t involve meat.

I guess if you’re going to do anything against the mainstream, you’d better have a clearly defined and publicly-posted mission statement and stick to it like Krazy Glue or people are going to get really confused and even angry. “You’re a hypocrite!” they exclaim. “You’re not adhering to your principles!”

As far as I know there is no vegan/vegetarian manifesto to which anyone wanting to call themselves vegan or vegetarian must swear an oath of allegiance. There are no rules, except the rules of common decency:

• If you’re invited somewhere for dinner don’t expect your hosts to cater to your dietary choices. Bring along a nice protein dish to share if you’re not sure of the menu. By the same token, if you’re hosting the dinner, it’s okay for you to not cook meat
• If you’re dining with omnivores, don’t point out to them exactly how their delicious chicken was slaughtered. That’s just as rude as the guy mentioned above who’s waving the bloody steak in the veggie’s face.
• And speaking of steaks, don’t go to a steak house and make a big scene if they don’t have a vegetarian option for you.  That’s just as ludicrous as an omnivore making a scene at a veggie restaurant for not being able to rustle him up a pork chop.

 I think that’s about it for rules per se.

 But still, if you avoid consuming animal products, but wear a woolly hat in the winter, you will be sneered at as some sort of vegan pretender. Wearing that woolly hat seems to negate all your professed concern for animal welfare. You are now no longer worthy of the vegan label and might as well dive into a vat of offal.

And yes, there are some vegans who will not wear a woolly hat or use Burt’s Bees Lip Balm because both of these things involve taking something from living creatures. And there are some who will scream at you for holding your pants up with a leather belt. But I think such strictly principled people are rare.

I think most of the people who are doing what they can to live a healthier lifestyle or one more earth friendly are pretty flexible. It can’t be emotionally or physically healthy to be too extreme about anything.

The fish thing, for instance. While I’m all in favour of eating as far down the food chain as possible and not killing anything just to fill my belly, I happen to think that the health benefits of fish outweigh my general objection to killing things.

And I would wear woolly things if they weren’t so itchy. And I like leather because it lasts forever. Because when you think about it maybe buying one leather sofa that lasts 40 years must be more economically and ecologically sound than buying 5 or 6 fabric sofas in that time, right?

And those uncompromising vegans may think that eating soy products are more cruelty-free than eating eggs, but if you’ve ever lived on a farm you’ll know there are probably a million critters living in a soy field – many of whom will get mangled in combines at harvest time.

And probably a lot of vegans will have the H1N1 vaccine despite the squalene and many vegetarians will eat cheese in a restaurant even though was probably made with rennet.

So, really, most non-PETA vegans/vegetarians don’t go around beating people over the head with their beliefs and probably don’t even make a point of calling themselves vegans or vegetarians. Because they know compromise is knowingly or unknowingly necessary all the time and you can’t get too mental about it. If you want people to think your lifestyle choices are sound, acting like a crazy person isn’t going to be very convincing.

Is there anything worse than having to go back to work after a two-week Christmas holiday?

Okay, I know there are probably at least 53 things that are much worse than having a pretty good job and having had 2 weeks of paid holidays off from that job and that I and my loved ones have made it safely into 2010.

And I’m grateful for all that stuff, I really am, but I’ve had 2 weeks of lovely freedom. I’ve slept long enough in the mornings to wake up to daylight. I’ve stayed up long enough in the evenings to be able to do a little socializing. I’ve spent time with people I almost never get to spend much time with – including my own daughter.

I’ve had gorgeous things to eat and drink and not necessarily at times dictated to be my “lunch hour.” I’ve spent time outdoors whenever I felt like it – not just when I had to race to work in the cold dark morning, or race home in the cold dark evening. And, I didn’t have to attend one single meeting in 16 days!!

I puttered around the house a bit, organized some things, cleaned some things and did little things I never get around to, normally. And, I lounged my ass off. I read for hours. I sat and just talked with people for hours. I even wound down enough to watch a couple of DVDs.

But that’s all over now. There are weeks – months — between me and my next holiday. Cold, dark, snowy weeks. Weeks filled with meetings. Aarggghhh. (And, looking outside right now at the 4^th straight day of snowfall (we’re at around 39 cm/15 and counting) with a minus 13 temperature (8^o F) and 45 km/hr winds doesn’t help.

However, it needs to be done. The bills need to be paid. University tuition needs to be saved for. So, I’m going to do my best to not make it too horrible. How? 

• I’ve already scheduled my next vacation and will spend a little time each day making plans for that.
• My home is clean and stocked with food, my laundry is done and clothes are ironed for the week so I have no nasty chores to await me when I get home in the evenings and no frantic scrabbling in the mornings.
• I cleverly booked myself for several training periods over the next 3 months. They’re 2 or 3 day sessions, learning something I’ll enjoy and that will be useful to me in my job. Most importantly, they will get me out of the office for a few days.
• I will NOT  attempt to get through all my emails my first day back.
• I WILL spend a bit of time each day chatting with co-workers about the last 2 weeks of fun and will avoid anyone who didn’t take any time off over the holidays and tries to convince me that I have “a lot of catching up to do.”
• Whatever the weather, I will leave my desk for one hour at lunch time and go outside – maybe duck into some shops in between and browse around if it’s too nasty out and take advantage of deeply discounted junk left over from Christmas.
• I will schedule something fun/interesting for the weekend so I have that to look forward to.
• And, it’s a new year so there’s no better time to make some big career changes. I just made a couple of changes, however, so I don’t anticipate anything major for a while, but I will still keep the CV current and fresh and will still keep an eye on the job postings. I may even look into taking on a bit of freelance work again, just for fun.
• Finally, I will do my very best to avoid meetings for at least the first 3 days back.  [Why do workplaces even still have meetings? Have you ever been to a meeting that was productive and relevant? There are always too many people at meetings – most of whom aren’t even involved in the topic(s) being discussed. The discussion ambles all over the place. The room gets hot and stuffy really quickly. I get twitchy from sitting too long. And when it’s all over, a big chunk of the day is gone and nothing has been accomplished and you’re that much further behind in your work.]

And, really it’s the first day that’s the hardest. By the time you’ve gotten through that first day it will already seem like you never had a holiday at all. You will be once again fully entrenched in the robotic, day-to-day, soul-sucking grind of subverting your humanity for the sake of a few miserable dollars.

Enjoy.

It’s a new year, so I thought it only fitting that I complain about Hollywood remakes. Do they no longer have money to hire writers who can come up with an original script? Does it always have to be a movie based on a 1970s TV show or on a book or on a movie from 20 years ago?

For instance, my daughter loves The Poseidon Adventure  for some reason – the original with a hearty Shelley Winters saving everyone for a little while with her mad underwater swimming skills. We haven’t seen that one on DVD, so she bought the new Poseidon with Kurt (Disney) Russell and Richard (Whackjob) Dreyfuss.  Who knows what she was thinking. Not surprisingly, the whole thing sucked goats from beginning to end.

So, I was very excited to see a cover-free copy of Poseidon Adventure in the discount bin at a local video store the other day. “This is the old version, right? Not the new one?” I asked the helpful sales associate. They assured me it was. They confirmed that the new version sucked goats and was no longer an adventure as it was only called, Poseidon.

I brought it home all excited and XUP Jr. couldn’t wait to watch it. Some of you are already way ahead of me, so you won’t be surprised to learn that the “old” Poseidon Adventure they sold me, was actually another remake starring Adam (The Least Known) Baldwin and Steve (Ye Gods and Fishes) Guttenberg. This time terrorists turn the boat upside down. The whole thing was a mess.

Okay, so they screwed around with Poseidon Adventure a few times. Big deal. Not a great movie to begin with.  However, should they be allowed to screw around with the classics? There’s been a lot of talk over the years of remaking Casablanca, for instance.

Remember that famous final scene where Rick helps Laszlo to escape telling his true love, Ilsa, she cannot stay in Casablanca, but must go to Lisbon with Laszlo? There they are – the three of them on the tarmac while the propellers of a 1930s airplane spin in the distance waiting to take off. Laszlo is already on board and Rick and Ilsa have a heated, last minute discussion about why she must leave. Here’s a short (colourized)excerpt:

The most recent version of Casablanca just doesn’t have that same magic. How could it? Here, for instance is a bit of the script from the remake of that final scene.

Rick is standing in a line at a modern airport along with about 700 other people. Ilsa comes running up, breathless, with a cart full of of luggage. She stands with her face about 1/2 inch from his.

Rick: What the hell are you doing Ilsa? A steamer trunk? You can’t take a steamer trunk on an airplane. Do you know how much that would cost?  Dammit! The taxes and fuel surcharges have already blown your travel budget for the year… sweatheart.

Ilsa: But, Rick.

Rick: But nothing kid. Choose one bag to check and one bag for carry-on.

Ilsa: Oh Rick. No!

Rick: Yes, Ilsa, you must. What have you got in this carry-on anyway? Lipstick? Are you insane? An emery board?  A book in French? Why don’t you just turn yourself in as a terrorist right now? Get rid of all this stuff and now or you’ll regret it. Maybe not while we’re standing in line, but later, much later when we get to security.

Ilsa: Oh Rick.

Rick: And where’s your lunch sweetheart? Do you know how much airplane food costs? Do you know what airplane food is made of? If you eat that crap you’ll regret it. Maybe not right away, but soon and for the rest of your life.  All you should have in this carry-on bag is a plain, white bread sandwich, no pointy condiments like lettuce, no sharp toasted edges. And above all, no beverages! Remember to put the bag in the overhead compartment, Ilsa! For god’s sake don’t hold it in your lap. And get your hands out of your pockets. And take off that hat. You look suspicious.

Ilsa: (weeping a little) Oh Rick, Rick.

Rick: Oh Rick indeed. I’m sorry sweetheart, but this is no vacation you’re on here. This is an Airplane Trip!!! ……HEY! What are you doing with that martini? Get rid of it. Are you crazy? You won’t be able to leave your seat to pee. Lisbon’s a long trip….kid. And we haven’t even gotten to the baggage check yet. It’ll be hours before you even get on the plane by the time you’ve been through the security probes, scans, x-rays, shoe inspections and various levels of interrogation….why your bladder will be bursting.

Ilsa: Yes, Rick. Okay, Rick.

Rick: Okay, good. Now act natural. The CCTVs are looking at you, kid.

Attention Passengers! Flight 359 to Lisbon will be delayed 4 hours due to poor planning. Leaving your place in the corral queue will automatically render your flight ticket invalid. Meanwhile enjoy this airport muzak version of As Time Goes By.

New Year’s is the strangest of all the strange days we celebrate. Our system of marking days, weeks, months, years seems so completely random and arbitrary to me. What was that Pope Gregory the 13^th thinking anyway?

Other calendars, like the Islamic calendar follow the phases of the moon. The Persian calendar follows the solar cycle. Traditional Chinese and Hindu calendars follow a luni-solar cycle. Those all kind of makes sense.

I don’t know what the Gregorian calendar follows. Nothing, I think. It would make sense to me to have the year end maybe at the end of March because then it’s spring and everything starts anew. Instead our year just starts in the middle of winter – a week after the most hectic insanity of the year.

And if Christmas wasn’t enough of a stressor, New Year’s Eve is the ultimate high pressure event. First of all there are a lot of superstitions around how you ring in the New Year. Superstitions that imply that what you do as the year flips over, sets the scene for the entire next year:

•  Kissing at midnight —  kiss your loved ones at midnight to ward off relationship disaster in the coming year.
•  Full cupboards – your home must be well-stocked with food to ensure a year of plenty.
•  No debts – pay all bills and debts before midnight or you’ll face financial ruin in the new year.
•  First Footing – the first person to cross your threshold in the new year should, ideally be a dark-haired handsome male. Do not, whatever you do,  let a female cross your doorway first or disaster will follow all year. There are a whole list of other First Footing dos and don’t which you can find here.
•  Nothing leaves the house – do not allow anything to leave your home until something new is brought in (this includes taking out the garbage)
•  No washing – don’t do laundry, don’t do the dishes or clean anything on New Year’s or you’ll wash away all your luck. (Ya, this one is going to be tough)
•  Letting the old year out – fling open all your doors and windows at midnight to let the old year escape and the new year enter.
•   Wear New Clothes – on New Year’s to ensure lots of good luck – make them red for extra luck.
•  Dance outside – dancing outside at midnight around a tree will bring love and prosperity throughout the upcoming year.
• Make noise – Make lots and lots of noise at midnight to scare off all the evil spirits of the past year.

Aside from all these superstitions, there is also the expectation that we MUST do something special on New Year’s Eve or we’re a lame-oh. And,  that something special MUST be done with a date. Not to have a date on NYE is just  sadder than anything. (But not nearly as sad as having a date you don’t really like all that much and being stuck with him for the whole long, long, long night. And, damn if NYE isn’t the longest friggin’ night because you can’t just yawn and go home after dinner — NO, you have to stay until at least 12:01.)

One of my most memorable NYE’s was the year I was editor of my university’s student newspaper. There was a conference of all Canadian university student newspaper editors during the week between Christmas and New Year’s up in North Bay. The snow was over the top of our thighs and the temperatures hovered around minus 50. Around 7:00 pm on NYE, as we were all in our hotel rooms getting ready for dinner, a fire broke out in the hotel.

I helped evacuate people by walking the halls and knocking on doors. Everyone was sent to the golf club house at the extreme rear of the hotel’s property. By the time I’d worked my way through a few hallways, it was time to leave the hotel and I wasn’t allowed back to my room. I had no shoes or coat, so I grabbed a few table cloths from the dining room table and wrapped up in those. I knew I wouldn’t be able to walk all the way to the golf club house in table cloths, so the fire fighters parked me in the front seat of one of the  fire engines in the parking lot.

Meanwhile, all my peers back at the golf club house thought I’d perished in the fire and held a little memorial service for me. Being journalist types they really got into the tragic sensationalism of my untimely loss and kept themselves busy composing fantastic stories for their newspapers in their heads. So, of course they were mega pissed off when the firefighters later brought me to the golf club house completely uncharred — albeit shoeless.

Eventually, I was mostly forgiven for not getting burnt to a crisp and we all celebrated a succession of New Years as it turned midnight in the various time zones represented by the various delegates from across the country.

In the wee hours of the new year we were bussed to the only other hotel in town and ended up sleeping 4 and 5 to a room forcing us to share beds with people we’d only just met that week. (Hi Kevin. Rrrworrrrr!!!)

What was your most memorable New Year’s Eve? Are you planning anything spectacular this year?

XUP Jr. tells me that being madly in love is out of style; that it’s a Hollywood invention; something that people in the “olden days” bought into; but which today’s youth are too cool for.

I’m talking about that all-consuming passion that teenagers can (could?) do best, but which many adults are also able to fall into. I’m talking about that kind of “in-love’ where you can’t keep your hands off each other; where you want to be together every minute of every day; where you can stare at each other for hours; where all you can talk about is how amazing it is that you found each other and how much in love you are; where you’re only half alive when you’re apart. I’m talking about the kind of in-love that makes your friends sick  to be around you.

I’m talking about the kind of “in love” which is so intense that it can’t possibly sustain itself in the long term and which will either burn itself out or morph into something calmer, more comfortable and enduring. (Or, sometimes it can also turn into something ugly depending on circumstances).

I think it’s something everyone should experience at least once in their lifetime, don’t you?  

Is it possible for something like that to go out of style? Seems to me it’s been around forever, so why should just this generation suddenly become passionless? Please say it ain’t so.

But, the “relationships” my kid and her friends have all seem to be very …. whatever the opposite of intense is… very casual, passionless, unconsuming.

Maybe that’s a good thing?

Did you have a teenaged-madly-in-love relationship? Are they still around? Have you had an adult-madly-in-love relationship? Are they healthy? Or is a loving, mutually respectful, companionable relationship healthier? Can you have both at the same time? (With the same person?)

Just one of the many things we’re having long, heated discussions about here at the XUP household during our little winter holiday.

Happy Christmas, Hanukah,  Sharaf, Ashura, Tohji-taisai, Yule, Gahambar Maidyarem,  Kwanzaa and Happy Birthday, Mum. And if you’re not commemorating any of these, then there’s no reason why you still can’t have a pleasant day.

Wherever you are, the world has probably pretty much come to a standstill. Everything is shut down. It’s quiet. A lot of people are with friends and family because they want to be or against their will and/or better judgment. If you’re not, you might be imagining everyone else engaged in Rockwellian scenes of love and joy, but that ain’t necessarily so.

I’ve spent Christmases alone. I assembled a pile of movies or a really good book, a few of my favourite edibles and/or drinkables and had a lovely time luxuriating in the opportunity of having nothing to do but indulge myself.

It’s only one day among hundreds of others. Enjoy it for whatever it brings.

Today, December 23^rd, being the sacred day of Festivus, I am obliged by dictates of ritual to take part in the traditional Festivus Airing of Grievances. Orthodoxy states we must” lash out at others and the world about how one has been disappointed in the past year.”

This is going to be difficult because I haven’t really been disappointed by anyone or anything over the past 12 months. In fact, (and I almost don’t want to commit this to paper) I’ve had an exceptionally good year, personally. I will qualify that by saying that I don’t quite know how or why that should be so, since a good percentage of the people I know have had an exceptionally ungood year.

It never feels quite right to be enjoying good fortune or feeling happy when people close to you are suffering in some way. And yet, I know if someone else were writing this on their blog, I’d be the first to comment and tell them to savour the pleasant times because who knows what’s around the corner, carpe diem, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth and other platitudinal stuff like that.

It’s interesting that when you’re miserable, people will try to cheer you up by telling you how lucky you are that something even worse didn’t happen to you. “Oh, you’ve been demoted from Managing Director to Mail Room Clerk? Well, you should thank your lucky stars that you still have a job.”

Bullshit.

Nobody ever says, “Oh, you got promoted to Managing Director? Don’t be happy, just think how much happier Irwin is – he got promoted to CEO!”

Whatever is happening in your life, has to be the most important thing to you. Wallow in it. Let yourself feel miserable if it’s something crappy and, for this moment, to hell with all the zillions of people in the world who are worse off than you. And if you’re happy, by jiminy make the most of it. You can share your good fortune, which will only make you happier, but don’t pretend it doesn’t exist because that benefits no one.

So all this is totally not in keeping with the spirit of Festivus. And although I’m generally content at the moment, I do have some overall grievances that deserve some airing. I’ve probably mentioned these somewhere along the line before, but for the record, here they are:

1. Customer Service. Yes, the whole damn concept. I get that work sucks and that working with the public must suck squared, or even cubed, because the public sucks. However, this is where you’ve chosen to work and/or have been obligated to work, so why not make the most of it. It costs you nothing to smile and treat people like human beings and will probably make your day a little better because a few people might smile back. And business owners – why not put a little effort into keeping your staff sweet? Give them some training, a few perks, maybe a livable salary and you’ll be surprised how your profits suddenly and magically increase.
2. Motor Vehicle Operators who believe they are the center of the universe. Okay, you have a car and pay through the nose for it and for the insurance and maintenance and you think you pay too much for fuel although the rest of the world pays 5 times as much. Unfortunately, all that money you’ve forked out only buys you the vehicle – not the entire world and all those in it. You still have to share the roads with all us lame-assed pedestrians (and cyclists and motorcycles). And we’re going to slow you down and insist on crossing streets and not getting run over. Also, would it kill you to take one minute extra on your commute and not cut us off as we’re trying to negotiate a cross-walk during a blizzard? It means the difference between hypothermia and no hypothermia to us, FYI. Also, could you not park your car in the crosswalk, please? The light won’t get green any faster just because you’ve positioned yourself to bask in its glow. I really hate it when you do that and one day I might walk right across the hood of your car. (Or “bonnet” if I’m in the UK)
3. Keep Moving People. If you’ve decided to live in and/or visit a city there are a few things you need to know. First, there are a lot of people in a city. When they’re out and about it’s because they need to get places. They haven’t come out to stand and chat on the sidewalk. They haven’t come out to stand and chat in grocery aisles. They haven’t come out to stand in doorways and chat. And they sure as hell have not come out to ride mall elevators. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again – they’re stairs, ya’ll. But don’t listen to me. Rick Mercer says it so much better:

 Happy Festivus Every One!

Do/did you lie to your kids?

You’re going to say “no” right off the bat, but did you perpetuate the Santa myth? Do you keep bad news from them? Do you shelter them from unpleasantness?

I never believed in Santa as a kid, no matter how hard my parents tried to get me to. They even had our neighbour dress up once to try and ho-ho-ho his way into my heart. I was about four and this is one of my first memories. I distinctly remember feeling like they were trying to pull some kind of trick at my expense because I knew absolutely that it was the neighbour in that costume. I couldn’t figure out what was going on and felt really upset.

I don’t know what was wrong with me as a child that I had no capacity for fantasy. I wasn’t unimaginative, but my imagination didn’t run to princesses, monsters, fairies or wizards. I would never have been interested in Harry Potter or Twilight. I liked stories about real people doing real things.

 XUP Jr., on the other hand, wholeheartedly embraced the entire Santa thing; the tooth fairy thing; dragons, sprites, elves – you name it. I never did anything to encourage it. She picked it up from friends, TV, books, whatever and stubbornly believed, no matter what I said.

“Don’t you believe in Santa, Mummy?”

 “No.”

 “Why not? He’s so good and nice and brings you presents if you believe in him.”

 “I just don’t. But you can if you want to.”

I could never bring myself to be mean enough to flat out tell her she was delusional. So, she believed in Santa until the year she turned 13. Freaked me out.

“Shut UP! You still believe Santa is going to bring you presents?”

“Ya! All my friends say I’m a baby and that Santa isn’t real, but I know he is because he brought me those slippers that I really wanted when I was 7 and I know you’d never get them for me.” (XUP Jr. always had weird things like slippers and pencils and a rocking chair on her Christmas wish list.)

It was my mother who burst that bubble when she told XUP Jr. the story of how she found out that Santa wasn’t real. (Never imagining that a 13-year-old still believed in Santa). XUP Jr. was shattered and ran crying to me beating me on the chest with her fists, wailing that I’d been lying to her for years.

Anyway, the point of the story is that I’ve made it my policy never to lie or hide things from my daughter. If she asks me a question, I’ll always tell her the truth as I see it and in a way I think she’ll best understand it. If someone dies, I don’t tell her they’ve gone to heaven. I tell her some people might believe the dead person has gone to heaven and then I’ll tell her what I believe.

Once, when she was 5, there was a news story on the radio about a man who’d raped a 5-year-old child. Somehow this caught her attention and she asked me what rape was. I told her that the man had touched the child’s “nakie parts” and had really, really hurt her.  She asked why someone would want to do that to a child. I said because the man has something wrong with his brain and thought it was fun. She said, “If a man wants to have fun with a child, he should take her to a playground and push her on the swings or something.”

“Yes indeed,” I said, “But some people are not nice and don’t understand what’s fun and good and what’s wrong and bad.”

I don’t know if that was an appropriate conversation to have with a 5-year-old or not, but it seemed like the thing to do at the time. 

Do you shelter your kids from stuff – not including the obvious violent TV/movies/video games. Do you soften reality for them or avoid hard questions? Do you encourage them to believe in fantasy/magic? Why or why not?

Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but when it comes to superheroes, I still like Superman best. His back-story makes sense. He looks like a regular guy and not like some sort of mutant. And, he has a pretty damn fine collection of superpowers: flying, x-ray vision, he’s indestructible, he can run really fast, he can reverse time, he can burn things up with his eyes, and he can freeze things with his breath.

Wonderwoman is good, too. Great back-story. And she is really strong and can fly and can talk to animals and make them do her bidding. that would be pretty cool.

 Captain Marvel can do a lot of stuff too,  but I don’t really get his back-story. (He was a 12-year-old kid, right? And he’s turn into Captain Marvel by putting on tights or something?)

Batman, on the other hand, is just a regular guy with a lot of cool gadgets. Spiderman is some poor kid who got bit by a spider and can now make big spider webs. Except for the really garish costume,  Flash only has being extra-super-fast at everything;

There are a whole bunch of superheroes who only have one superpower. Some can turn green and gigantic; some are indestructible; some have invisibility powers; some can teleport; some have ESP or telekinesis; some can shoot lasers with their eyes; some are very stretchy or can turn themselves into other things; some are even really, really smart.

Some superheroes are just stupid. Like Aquaman. His superpower is that he can hold his breath underwater for a long time. Are there a lot of underwater villains? That’s a pretty useless superpower. Other useless superpowers include:

• Being able to see through glass
• Being able to tell time
• Being able to set oven mitts on fire
• Being able to talk to appliances
• Being able to laugh in the face of Danger, Keep Off signs
• Being able to sit still without fidgeting
• Being able to make your forearms bulge by eating spinach
• Being able to run with scissors
• Being able to clap-on and-clap off lamps

One good thing that a lot of superheroes have is the power to heal. If they get stabbed their wound disappears in an instant. If someone they know gets sick or injured, they touch them or squint at them with a piercing gaze and make them all better.

If I had to choose one superpower to have, I’d choose the power to heal (without having to go to medical school). I’d wear a sparkly white spandex body suit and a white cape and white patent leather knee-high boots and white latex gloves and and a white eyemask with silver sequins to hide my true identity. Also, I’d have one of those round reflector things on my forehead that old timey doctors used to have, except mine would be really hip and shiny.

I’d travel around healing people with the aid of my magical rectal thermometer. And I’d be called RXup. Or if that’s too hard to pronounce, maybe just “Incredible Doctor Woman”

Of course there would be some big drawbacks to that superpower. Could I heal everybody in the world? Should I? Would that mean no one would ever die? Do I charge people money for healing them or just the Americans?

I think a healing superpower would be a huge responsibility. I’m already feeling pretty stressed just thinking about it. Maybe I’d be better off being able to get animals to do my bidding. I’d get a lot more sleep, for sure.

You’re probably thinking superheroes only exist in comic books and that there’s no need for you to take any of this post seriously, right? Well, ha ha – not true. There are actual people – albeit a few of them with questionable mental faculties – who call themselves superheroes. They have a mission, a superhero name and even a costume. You can find them on the World Super-Hero Registry. Some of them have pretty good missions.

What kind of superhero would you be best suited for?