March 18th
On BACKYARD
In 1989, when I was nine years old, my family moved from the house where I had lived since I was one to another house a kilometer away. My old house, 1013 Vanier Drive, was closer to the highway, and had a great backyard. There was a big hill with a tree at the top, and the tree was divided between us and our backdoor neighbours. My sisters and I used to roll down this hill a lot – I remember drawing a picture of rolling down the hill in Grade One. I drew myself rolling down the hill from a side perspective, as three concentric circles: a small blond one representing my head, a larger red one representing a red shirt, and then the largest blue circle representing my pants. It almost makes sense if you see it, and I think really captures the whirlwind feeling of tumbling down a hillside.
The best part about the backyard, though, was the sandbox. I really loved my sandbox. Sometimes I would break through the plastic on the bottom of the sandbox to the soil below, and eventually worms would come up through the bottom and interact with our sandscapes. One time we had a whole nest of worms in our sandbox. It was super gross, but it lent an element of danger to the sandbox experience.
We moved to 1423 Tecumseh Park Drive. I wasn’t happy about the move because the new backyard did not have a sandbox. My mom likes to tell the story of how upset I was about the lack of sandbox at the new house. It had a big stepped garden, two levels of soil held up by railway ties. No hill to roll down, no sandbox. But, there were lots of places to get lost, and our dog, Crackers, used to have a good time running around the different levels. I used to spend hours in the winter trying to get my mittens back from Crackers as he would race back and forth on the different levels of our backyard. In the first summer in the new house, I spent hours in the yard recreating the 1989 American League Championship Series with a baseball bat and a tennis ball.
Krista and I are thinking of buying a house in the next year or so. I really haven’t concerned myslf with the backyards of all the places I’ve rented in the last nine years, but if I own a house, I’m gonna have to mow the lawn, and maybe someday have kids that will play in that yard, a yard which will be sort of an arbitrary decision on our part, but if we have a kid, it’s gonna be that kid’s whole world. Maybe I will make a sandbox, and look for a backyard with a hill. It makes me wonder what my parents thought when they had me and my sisters, and if they knew what it was going to be like, and whether they felt like they were prepared.
Showing posts with label Non-Fictionalized Childhood Memories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Non-Fictionalized Childhood Memories. Show all posts
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
On SNOWFLAKE
February 26th
On SNOWFLAKE
Whenever I think of my childhood, I feel sad. I didn’t have bad parents or live in a harsh environment – quite the opposite. We had everything we needed, but weren’t too spoiled. Some of the time I had few friends, and that made me sad, bitter and alone, especially in grade six and grade eight. When I think of me as a kid, though, I think of unfulfilled potential and feel ashamed.
When I was very young, my parents took me skating at the skating rink at Mississauga City Hall. Mississauga doesn’t have a real downtown, being a collection of suburban developments clustered around villages, like Port Credit, Clarkson, or Streetsville. City Hall is right beside Square One, the biggest mall in Mississauga and the biggest in Ontario. When it was built in the early 70s, before Mississauga existed, it was the second shopping centre in Canada, and it was surrounded by farmers fields. Then they formed Mississauga in 1974, and put City Hall, the Central Library and the Living Arts Centre next to the mall, Mississauga’s raison d’etre.
I didn’t last long skating. It was hard, and I wasn’t getting anywhere fast. Instead I went and played in the nearby snowbanks, imagining them to be castles that I ruled by tromping around the parapets in my boots, making tunnels
My mother later related this story as the reason se never enrolled me in hockey. When I was 13, I was struck with Maple Leafs fever and an idolization of Felix Potvin. I decided one day to make a last ditch attempt at becoming a hockey player, a goalie specifically. My mom suggested I start by taking skating lessons. I bought a Cooper hockey helmet, which I thought looked atrocious on me (I don’t know why, it was a normal hockey helmet). A lot of the other kids in the beginner’s skating class I took at the local arena didn’t speak English, and wore bicycle helmets. I was never completely satisfied with how tight my skates were, and my feet hurt a lot when I skated. I think I stuck it out for the whole class, but then I hung up my helmet. It was too scary, and all my hockey-playing friends were years and years ahead of me. I was never going to win the Stanley Cup, and play goal for the Leafs.
If I had consistently played and just wasn’t good enough, or had no interest at all in the sport, I would have felt better about it. It was just that I barely tried, and turned back at the first sign of adversity, that makes me sad. It makes me doubt (not all the time, but sometimes) whether I have what it takes to stick it out and follow my dreams.
I conclusion, I grew up in an extremely suburban setting, with suburban Canadian dreams, which I barely pursued. Another interpretation of the story, though, is that my real destiny is making snow castles, and that my mom was right to think I wasn’t a hockey player. That in a cookie cutter world, I, Dave, was a completely individual individual, who danced to the beat of a different drummer, and was my own unique snowflake. That’s why I am a comedian now, an outsider, laughing at the world, and using my pain for good. It’s open to interpretation.
On SNOWFLAKE
Whenever I think of my childhood, I feel sad. I didn’t have bad parents or live in a harsh environment – quite the opposite. We had everything we needed, but weren’t too spoiled. Some of the time I had few friends, and that made me sad, bitter and alone, especially in grade six and grade eight. When I think of me as a kid, though, I think of unfulfilled potential and feel ashamed.
When I was very young, my parents took me skating at the skating rink at Mississauga City Hall. Mississauga doesn’t have a real downtown, being a collection of suburban developments clustered around villages, like Port Credit, Clarkson, or Streetsville. City Hall is right beside Square One, the biggest mall in Mississauga and the biggest in Ontario. When it was built in the early 70s, before Mississauga existed, it was the second shopping centre in Canada, and it was surrounded by farmers fields. Then they formed Mississauga in 1974, and put City Hall, the Central Library and the Living Arts Centre next to the mall, Mississauga’s raison d’etre.
I didn’t last long skating. It was hard, and I wasn’t getting anywhere fast. Instead I went and played in the nearby snowbanks, imagining them to be castles that I ruled by tromping around the parapets in my boots, making tunnels
My mother later related this story as the reason se never enrolled me in hockey. When I was 13, I was struck with Maple Leafs fever and an idolization of Felix Potvin. I decided one day to make a last ditch attempt at becoming a hockey player, a goalie specifically. My mom suggested I start by taking skating lessons. I bought a Cooper hockey helmet, which I thought looked atrocious on me (I don’t know why, it was a normal hockey helmet). A lot of the other kids in the beginner’s skating class I took at the local arena didn’t speak English, and wore bicycle helmets. I was never completely satisfied with how tight my skates were, and my feet hurt a lot when I skated. I think I stuck it out for the whole class, but then I hung up my helmet. It was too scary, and all my hockey-playing friends were years and years ahead of me. I was never going to win the Stanley Cup, and play goal for the Leafs.
If I had consistently played and just wasn’t good enough, or had no interest at all in the sport, I would have felt better about it. It was just that I barely tried, and turned back at the first sign of adversity, that makes me sad. It makes me doubt (not all the time, but sometimes) whether I have what it takes to stick it out and follow my dreams.
I conclusion, I grew up in an extremely suburban setting, with suburban Canadian dreams, which I barely pursued. Another interpretation of the story, though, is that my real destiny is making snow castles, and that my mom was right to think I wasn’t a hockey player. That in a cookie cutter world, I, Dave, was a completely individual individual, who danced to the beat of a different drummer, and was my own unique snowflake. That’s why I am a comedian now, an outsider, laughing at the world, and using my pain for good. It’s open to interpretation.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
