The Aardvark

When I'm at work, I need the radio to be playing.  When I first started the job, I went weeks without a radio and often found myself either distracted and unable to concentrate on the work in front of me.  Either that or I'd often find myself singing, under my breath, whatever song happened to grind it's way into the inner sanctum of my brain.  Eddie Grant's Electric Avenue was stuck in there a lot and I've come to dislike the song, somewhat.  That one and Don MacLean's American Pie.  "What?!?"  I'm sure someone is thinking, right now after reading that statement, but try getting it stuck in your head for weeks at a time.

Eventually, when I grew too tired of composing my own songs just to entertain myself when I was alone driving the bus, I got my self a radio, albeit a transistor radio at first, which only received a signal when I worked on the east side of the city.  Anything west of Idylwyld Drive, was met with constant static interruptions, which aggravated me as much as it annoyed me.  Next I got a small speaker from Visions which worked well, but only lasted about five, maybe six hours, if I was lucky.  So it was back to the ol' drawing board, one more time.  This time I didn't cheap out by purchasing something from the discontinued aisle.  Instead, I went to Costco and purchased a JBL speaker which, despite being dropped a handful of times, works like a motherf**king charm.

I spent my mornings listening to Clayton and Stacie on Cruz-FM and in the afternoons, I would either listen to Regina's The Wolf or Saskatoon's Rock 102 FM.  Especially after Cruz shit-canned their afternoon guy, the legendary Dave 'Muzik' Morgan.  His replacement sucks.  Then a few months later, I switched over to Rock 102 FM, exclusively, when Cruz went on another inexplicable firing tirade and fired the morning guy, Clayton Kroeker.   Stacie is awesome, but she doesn't have the chops to broadcast alone, so I deserted the radio station in favour of greener pastures and I'm glad I did.

I began listening to Whitney in the afternoons on Rock 102 FM and she's a blast to listen to.  Always in a jovial mood, I can only imagine the joy it must be to work with someone like this, who always seems to be in good spirits.  

One day Whitney was trying to help out this guy who'd called in.  He had two tickets to see his favourite band, but his dilemma was choosing who to go to the show with.  Either his wife or his daughter.  Whitney had all sorts of people calling in offering up ideas and so with a few minutes to spare on my route, I overcame the anxiety I have about placing phone calls (*I imagine there's a blog in there about that) and I called in to the radio station.  Whitney was a hoot to chat with and she played right along with the insanity that I offered up.  I simply stated, "He should take his daughter.  Wives come and go," I added, "But daughters are forever."  I don't know exactly why I stated it like that, I don't even have a daughter...., or a wife, for that matter, but Whitney got a helluva kick out of the statement and for several months that followed, I'd hear my raspy radio voice repeating that statement during some of the radio breaks.

Not long after that, Sully joined the Rock 102 crew and he fit in like a glove.  The two of them, Whitney and Sully, are like long lost siblings.  The way they tease each other, you can sense that there's a lot of love and respect shared between the two, but when Whitney is "bullying" Sully (for lack of a better term), the results are hilarious.  Sully being from Vancouver, originally, the radio station has been trying to "Saskatchewanize" Sully.  They did a question and answer portion on the show one day, in which poor Sully got an electric shock every time he answered a Saskatchewan question incorrectly, but truth be known, I've been here my entire life, minus a six month stint in Edmonton, Alberta, and I'm not familiar with a lot of the "Saskatchewan terminology" that Sully was failing to answer correctly.  I've often thought about challenging him to a Saskatchewan-off in a year's time.  See if this Vancouver transplant is more Saskatchewan than myself, who was born and bred in this province.

Long story short -- TOO LATE!!  I began calling in to the station on a semi-regular basis and in the meantime, managed to score a nice collection of goodies and prizes.  I'll spare the details, but one of the best items I received was two tickets to see Finger Eleven at the Ex, which I attended with my best bro, Dan, who I also brought with me, when I received a $50 gift certificate to Tapps Sports Lounge.  It got to the point where I was calling in so often that I felt I needed an identity.  I'd hear other people, regulars, calling in and they all had nifty nicknames, but all of the nicknames that I have, seem too silly to broadcast on local radio.  I love that online, I'm the one and only ToontownJuggalo, but people would react foolishly to that name, likely confusing the term "juggalo" for "gigolo" which would be greatly incorrect and mildly offensive, plus I get annoyed trying to repeatedly explain shit to people, so I avoided using that nickname.  Another nickname that I've adopted in the last few months is Aardvark, which again, requires some explanation which I'm unwilling to do.  So I stuck with who I am.  I'm Jeff.

I'm Jeff, but I'm not just any Jeff.  I'm The Jeff.

(Not actually a picture of me. I don't like sleeves
or turtle necks, but I'd kill for that hairline.)

I figured, any bumbling fool can be a Jeff.  It's really not that difficult. I'm living proof of that.  I've been stumbling through life for decades as Jeff and it's nothing spectacular.  However, only a precious few or one, can be The Jeff and folks, that one and only, is this guy.  Me.  I'm now The Jeff, at least as far as calling in to the radio station.  I needed something that would set me apart from everyone else and by Jove, I think I found it.

I could've went with That Jeff, but upon further retrospect, I decided that no one wants to That Jeff.  Why would you?  That guy is....  Well, That Jeff is one odd duck and as awesome as ducks go, the odd ones are just... weird.  Of course, referring to oneself as "The", is a little strange in and of itself, but that's why I'm the Aardvark.  Because I'm unique. 😁

Tap Dancing

Listening to the radio the other day, when a solo, Clayton spoke up about the person at his local Tim Horton's laughed at him when he produced his debit card to pay for his morning coffee, then proceeded to insert the chip and punch in his password and so on.  "You don't have tap?" she scoffed.  The situation caused nothing more than an uncomfortable situation and subject matter for the morning show.  Normally, Clayton has an announce partner, Stacie, who was absent this day, so Clayton had the listening audience weigh in. 

Clayton described that he did not have the TAP feature on his debit card, adding that he felt it wasn't a necessary feature. Plus, he mentioned, it's way too easy for someone to steal your wallet and go on a spending spree.  I can't say that I don't agree, as that last part never even entered my mind.  Thank you Clayton for adding to my list of presently existing paranoia's. 😄 

Like Clayton, I resisted the TAP feature on my debit card for a very long time, finally succumbing to peer pressure when I began getting stuck behind slowpokes in checkout lines, who'd leisurely punch buttons searching for the right bank account and yada yada yada.  It was impatience that finally tipped the scales for me, a decision that I've come to regret, although I continue to use the TAP feature on my card.

I recall being a young boy, in seventh or eighth grade when another classmate, Jimmy, presented a news article in class.  The short article described how in the future, cash money would no longer be required, going on to explain that we'd all have plastic cards that would access our money.  The article also mentioned that the Devil was behind the science to bring about easier access to our monies, a factor that had our young minds oohing and aahing, at the time, but in retrospect, seems far-fetched.  The news article being little more than the rantings of some bible-loving crackpot.  The whole thing sounded like fantasy, as if a practice featured on an episode of Star Trek.  

Not to date myself, I do remember that at that time, if you hadn't visited the bank by Friday afternoon, you didn't have money for the weekend.  However, Jimmy's news article eventually did come to fruition and the article he shared during that show and tell from my youth always played out in the back of my mind.

In the beginning, I remember having my card in hand and making frequent visits to my bank machine, which at the time would administer money in $5 increments.  We, as a society, no longer had to race to the bank by 5pm on a Friday if we wanted to do shit on a Saturday.  Plus, for a lazy guy like me, having to stop at any bank or bank machine to grab cash of any amount, was enough of a deterrent to prevent me from spending money, until...

Using our debit cards to access our bank accounts at stores, became a game changer.  No longer having to make an effort to stop, get out of the car, punch in my info a bank machine, getting charged a whopping $2.50 to access my own money,  just to grab a few bucks...  I began spending a little more money, as I imagine happened with a lot of people.

If anyone recalls this progressive step forward, there were a number of setbacks.  We'd swipe our card and often, nothing would happen, as the magnetic strip on the back of our cards would wear out, forcing clerks to improvise.  One method was cladding the card with a plastic bag.  The practice worked sometimes, but other times the clerk would then add a strip of scotch tape to the card, swipe it through the machine then tear away the tape like a band-aid on a scraped knee, taking the magnetic strip along with the tape, rendering the bank card virtually useless.  Society, already past the visiting the bank stage, would often meander through life, now with a shitty card that didn't work and aggravating people in checkout lines forever thereafter.

For every step forward that science and creativity provides us, usually we're pushed two steps backward.  Banking's effort to push us forward, was not working, so the chip was added to our cards.  No longer did we have to rely on crossing our fingers in hopes of the strip working, now we just had to insert the chip and punch in our shit.  This progressed crowds a little quicker, but we were still stuck behind grandma who just didn't quite "understand how these new-fangled things work" and lineups continued to grow.

Ever notice how when things change in an effort to make one's experience easier, tends to be plagued with negatives.  Everyone fails to see the big picture in favour of the benefits they believe with come of the changes.

I resisted getting the TAP feature on my card for the longest time, not because I was afraid of some dastardly dick stealing my wallet and accessing my vast (un) fortune, but more afraid that I'd be that very dastardly dick, TAP dancing all over town buying shit without really thinking about the consequences.  You may notice that the money flows much easier when you remove the arduous task of punching in security codes 'n' shit.  Sometimes I won't even realize how much money has drained from my account, due to this ease.

In recent weeks, my attempts to get my car up and running, had me traipsing all about town buying this and that and tapping my card every time.  I'm afraid to look at my account balance.  Spending money is way too easy, nowadays, and the rising prices aren't helping matters any.  Government and all these banking institutions bombard us with the necessity to save money, yet they make it so difficult to do so with the cost of living rising on a daily, dare I say, hourly basis.  Shit's gotten so bad, I think back to that Show & Tell with Jimmy and his crazy news article and I can't help but think, maybe the Devil is responsible.  The financial anguish definitely feels like torture.

Personal Injury

Sunday mornings, there's no DJ who mans the radio stations.  It's all run via computer software and in the course of playing music for the first few hours, the station will repeat some of the segments that other DJs had produced throughout the week.  One of the subject matters covered this week, people who wished they had a more interesting story as to why they sustained an injury.  Right away, I recalled the day I tore my bicep and the harrowing details that followed.

PART ONE: THE INJURY

I had been off of work prior to this injury, due to..., what else?  An injury.  I had a traffic accident that had resulted in a serious back injury which required months and months of rehabilitation.  I'd returned to work only weeks before this event occurred.

I worked nights at a local retail establishment and in the mornings, before we were set to depart for the day, we'd perform a thorough clean up of discarded packaging and other refuse.  We had put a stand up air compressor out that night and had an empty box, which we had filled part way with plastic wrap and other shit.  It didn't weigh very much at all, but when I picked the box up to place onto a flatbed cart, I felt something snap inside my arm.  It took me by surprise and as I recall, I scurried backwards into the racking, holding my arm with my free hand.

I'd be lying if I said it hurt a lot, because to be honest, it actually kinda felt cool, but it's definitely not something I wish to repeat.  It felt like an unraveling, which in actuality, it is.  I recall the blinds that my great-aunt, Chrissie, had at her house.  As a child, we weren't allowed to adjust the height of them because, I'm guessing, at some point, one of us idiot kids, tugged on the blind and let it go, sending it skyrocketing to the top of the window, thus requiring a tall ladder to scale to retrieve and return to the lower portion of the window.  If you've experienced this, you'd be familiar with the thwap-thwap-thwap sound the blind makes as it reaches the top.  This is exactly how my arm felt.

I knew right away what I had done to myself and when work was finished, instead of heading home for some much needed rest, I instead found myself in the waiting room the the University Hospital.

PART TWO: A QUESTIONABLE DIAGNOSIS

The case was performed by medical interns, who first sent me for X-rays, which proved inconclusive, so they followed up by performing an ultrasound on my arm.

The whole time, I was insisting that I had torn the bicep, explaining that I felt it unravel inside my arm, but they weren't having any of that.  They kept forcing their belief that I would be in a world of torturous pain if I had, indeed, torn the muscle from the bone.

I insisted that pain is only a figment of the imagination.  It's fear-based and most of those who experience pain, manifest it solely because of a fear of the unknown.  Like, "Holy shit! What did I do to my arm?" kind of bullshit.  This was not the case, here.  I firmly held my ground, insisting that this was the reality.  The young know-it-alls would not succumb to my claims.

The ultrasound proved as inconclusive as the X-rays were.  It was at this time that the surgeon popped in for a consult.  The interns, having fun at my expense, tried to get the doctor in on the teasing.  "He claims that pain is fear-based and because he 'knows' what he did, he's not feeling any pain." 

I recall the doctor pausing, leaning his head from left to right, then replied, "Yes.  That sounds reasonable."  Suddenly, the room got quiet, the physician leaning in between two of the three young docs, his eyes fixed on the video feedback on the monitor.

"It's difficult to see just how bad the damage is.  We'll have to open it up to get a good look."

Long story short (too late 😉), the surgeon pulled me aside the day after the surgery and reported to me with a huge smile smeared across his face.  "Yep!  You tore that sucker clean off the bone!"  He slapped my knee, continuing the tale with a chuckle in his voice, "It was beautiful.  You couldn't have torn it more perfectly."

He went on the explain that normally when someone tears the tendon, it looks like a bomb went off, but in my case, the tendon had torn right at the bottom most portion.  He told me all they had to do was trim some of the shredded portion off then they pulled the tendon down through the two bones of my forearm, then attached the tendon to the back of the Humerus bone of my upper arm.  Because so little of the tendon had to be removed, he speculated that I should reclaim full use of the arm.

I've seen people who suffered a much worse injury than mine, who were left with a semi-crooked arm.  They can never extend their arm fully, whereas myself, I can.

PART THREE: THE AFTERMATH

Immediately following my meeting with the surgeon, I was fitted for an odd looking apparatus that was designed to hold my arm in a certain position to better the healing process.  Hold it in a manner where full movement would not be an issue in the future.

The apparatus was odd.  It had a cuff that clipped to my upper arm, with a hard immoveable cable attached to the lower portion which kept my arm twisted so the inside of my arm would face upward.  It was quite cumbersome and it was difficult to wear a jacket.  This, of course, occurred in late-November, early-December, when it's necessary to wear a heavy coat.  With this contraption strapped to my arm, I couldn't hardly zip the jacket up, which made me appear to be quite the attraction.

Of course everyone is going to ask what happened to me.  You couldn't look at the pathetic nature of my appearance without wondering, "WTF?!"

The truth, which I shared with you at the top of this page, was boring and lackluster, so I embellished it some.  Embellish isn't really the correct term, but exaggeration is completely accurate. 😂

On one particular evening, I was with my best bud, my brotha-from-anotha-motha, at a local drinking establishment.  Actually, it was the one and only bar in the town of Delisle, where Dan had been living with his family.  Prior to this date, we'd partied in that bar a few times.  It was especially fun when they'd have karaoke.  I admit that I can't clearly recall any of those prior visits due to high alcohol consumption, but on this day, I don't believe I was drinking.  The last thing I'd wanna do is fall down and reinjure my arm.

The waitress came over to see if we'd like another beverage, when she noticed the contrivance strapped to my arm and immediately asked what had happened.  The truth being a snooze-fest, I changed the story to the one I had been repeating to everyone I had been encountering up to that point.

PART FOUR: THE STORY

I told her that I was walking downtown when I heard a woman scream, "Stop him! He has my purse!"  I looked ahead of me, where I noticed the woman screaming for help.  Between her and me, was this fellow running through the crowded sidewalk.  Being a fan of pro wrestling, I knew straight away that I could remedy this situation quick and as the man was about to run past me, I extended my left arm, throwing it into the man, forcing him to the ground.

The waitress was enthralled, leaning in, mouth open and hanging on my every word.

"Right away," I told the server, "I knew that I had torn something in my arm when I clotheslined that thief."  

The waitress leaned back, muttering "Holy shit!"

Enjoying the ridiculous reaction I was getting, I added the tagline, "They wrote a story about it in the Sunday Sun.  I believe they called it, "Local Samaritan Saves Christmas For Out-of-Town Shopper".

"I'm going to go home and check that out." she said, before returning to the bar with our order.

"Why'd you tell her that?" Dan asked me, "Why'd you tell her about the article.  People out here don't throw anything away.  She's going to go home and search through every damned paper looking for the story you just told and she's never going to find it."

PART FIVE: THE EPILOGUE

I couldn't call into the radio station to tell them this incredible, albeit, made up story, but perhaps the subject will come up again, one day, and I will be able to call in and share some of my silliness.

Poor AJ Styles, clothesline by John Cena.

Lilliputian Injustice

Listening to the radio on the way home from my mom's house.  Radio personality & all around funny man, Greg Beharrell chimed in between the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Collective Soul to mention how wasteful it is for pizza companies to just use the tiny table in their pizza boxes and throwing away all the tiny little chairs.  I took a moment to think about the words that just tumbled out of Mr. Beharrell's mouth and into my ear holes.  The words dancing around inside my cranium, like a pinball on adrenaline.  Bing. Bing. Bang. Boop.  I don't know exactly what the boop was, but it got my creative juices a flowin' and got my fat ass seated in front of my laptop to bring y'all another rousing edition of my Brain Matter.

"Yes!" I muttered to myself and yes, I tend to audibly speak to myself when I'm alone.  All geniuses do and if you don't, then well....  (Insert awkward pause.😳)

"Yes!" I audibly said, as the heavy guitar riff from Collective Soul's Where the River Flows began.  "That is wasteful..., unless..."

Maybe the pizza companies don't just toss out the tiny chairs, maybe the chairs are donated to tiny people.  Tiny people who use and appreciate these free chairs, but seeing as the tables are all absent, used to save the hot melted cheese on pizzas from sticking to the top of the box, instead.

Poor tiny people forced to sit and eat their dinners and their snacks off their laps like the olden days before tables were invented. How many millions of chairs have been given away since the advent of the tiny pizza table?  There's, at least, a pair of chairs to every table and judging from the bulging waistlines of most North American's, there's a f*ck-ton of tiny chairs out there somewhere...  Probably in the dump, because who are we kidding?  Corporate Pizza doesn't give a shit about helping tiny people out.  Tiny people aren't buying giant pizzas.  Tiny people aren't the target audience for such privileges as pizza.

Greg Beharrell has exposed the pizza industry for what they are.  Evil overlords who oppress tiny people who stand at less than two inches.  Greg Beharrell is a good man and we should thank him for bringing this injustice to light.

High Five

I like to listen to the radio when I'm driving at work.  It's Cruz in the AM, because I love hearing the comedic banter between the hosts Clayton Kroeker and Stacie Cooper.  In the afternoons I sometimes stay with Cruz, but more times than not, lately anyway, I've been listening to either Rock 102, which is local or else 104 The Wolf out of Regina.  Regina doesn't have much going for it, other than home to the Saskatchewan Roughriders, a Carl's Jr restaurant and the radio station 104.1 FM - The Wolf.  Today happened to be one of those days where music from the Queen City's station filled the air inside Bus #1812.

Near the end of my shift, the announcer came on with a funny story out of the United States.  When he began telling the short tale, I began to chuckle, believing the outcome to result with 9-1-1 being called, but sadly that funny finish would never come to fruition, but the story remained amusing all the same.

It seems that there was a little girl who had awoken early from a nap, got out of bed and went searching for her mother.  Taking advantage of their young daughter being asleep, mommy and daddy squirrelled off to their bedroom for some sexy time. 

Unbeknownst to them, amid their sensuality, their daughter was wide awake and searching the house for them.  It wasn't until she overheard a commotion erupting from her parents room, when she went to investigate.  Luckily, for both she and her parents, the door was locked, preventing the child from witnessing what was actually happening behind the door.  Sound, on the other hand, was not prohibited from passing through the locked entryway.

The horror that rushed through the mind of the small toddler was overwhelming.  Sounds of bloody murder came erupting from the inner sanctum of the parents' sleeping chamber.  Not before too long, the child began crying.  Sobbing and wailing, all the while pounding on the door, begging for her mother to be safe.  Screaming for help.  

Mom and dad, alarmed at the sound of their baby is such distress brought them rushing to the door to see what was the matter.

Mother with her child, now nestled in her arms, tried her best to calm the distraught infant, softly whispering apologies and affirmations that mommy and daddy were just playing.  That daddy wasn't trying to hurt mommy.

At the end of the story, the radio announcer simply stated, "I don't know what dad was doing, but good for you, Buddy.  High Five!!" ✋

Six Hundred and Sixty-Six

Last week, I was driving down the street when the radio DJ came on and began speaking about the Iron Maiden album, The Number of the Beast.  She praised the whole album, claiming that the songs were all placed perfectly in a manner that compliments them all.  Another disc jockey was present for the conversation and he sounded equally as enthused.  The day marked the fortieth anniversary of the album's release.  It also marked the debut of the band's new lead singer, Bruce Dickinson.  I was never a big fan of the band, not necessarily because of any disdain, I was just never exposed to it as a kid.  My heavy metal fandom went in another direction.  Although, I would eventually come to realize a connection to this album, within days of hearing this conversation on the radio.

The DJ's eventually played a track from the album, the titular track, Track #5, The Number of the Beast.  It was heavy, but not too heavy, and having never heard this song before, I was quite enamored with said track.  A couple of days later, I would find myself at one of the remaining music stores left on the planet, and I had picked up the CD of this Iron Maiden album.  My first Iron Maiden CD for my vast collection of CDs taking up space in my home.  I plunged the disc into the deck in my truck, which incidentally, is the only operating CD player I have left in my possession.

A huge smile filled my face of whiskers, the music filling the cabin of my vehicle and dancing around me.  It was invigorating.  Nothing comparable to The Quickening*, but enjoyable all the same.  Eventually, I would make it to Track #6, Run To The Hills.  I was overjoyed.  I'd not read any of the tracks on the back of the CD cover, so this song was a huge surprise and a welcome one at that.  I'd heard this song played on the radio for years.  I'd always turn up the volume and belt out the chorus in the best manner I could muster.  I had a connection to this song.

People often reminisce about where they were when they heard about this news or that event.  We can remember where we were when we learned that the World Trade Center was hit by a plane.  Or when the towers came crashing down.  I remember what I was doing when I learned that Andre The Giant has passed away, just as I can remember the first time I ever heard the song "Run To The Hills" by Iron Maiden.

I was just a small boy.  We, my dad, sister and I, were visiting my uncle Murray and his family in Yorkton, SK.  My cousin, Bob, had a new car, a Plymouth Turismo, a small two-door hatchback.  I remember it was night time and he was taking me for a short boot in this speedy little sport car.  He instructed me to listen to this song that depicted a history lesson that he'd learned in school.  The song was "Run To The Hills" by Iron Maiden.  He played it for me twice and the volume got louder each time and I loved it. 

Given all the pushback from media and religious groups, pertaining to this [then] recent album release, describing it's contents as evil and devil worship, it's hard to believe that there'd be a song that, in my opinion, is more of a protest song than anything harbouring evil intent.  According to Wikipedia, the song documents the colonization of the Americas.  The song tells the story from the perspective of a Cree Indian, followed by an American Cavalryman.  It describes the pain and misery of the Cree people.  Hardly a demonic song, although evil is present in the song, if you carefully dissect the lyrics, but on evil in the horrors that were inflicted on the Cree Nation.

As bad as the subject matter is, I do have to say that it's a kick-ass song.  One that puts me in a rockin' good mood when it airs on the radio and one that always transports me back in time, to that brisk winter's evening, racing through the streets of Yorkton, SK, with my cousin Bob.

(*The Quickening is a fictional concept related to the immortal characters of the Highlander franchise, first introduced in the 1986 film Highlander. Originally, the Quickening referred to the energy immortals are born with, which makes them invincible to death unless beheaded.)

GLOBS!!

I heard it announced on the radio this morning.  Tent Caterpillars are in season.  They seem to come in waves.  The radio claims every five to six years, but personally, I've never seen them since I was a young kid and back then, they were extremely bad.

Clumps of them were attached to the trees and it was scary to be near them, for no other reason than if they fell on you, they were really f*cking gross.  Like Fear Factor gross.  Of course, as young kids often do, killing them became somewhat of a sport, each child attempting to make a bigger mess by killing them.  Myself and a couple of friends learned a way to really gross out the girls in our class, by stepping on one half of them, forcing their innards to explode out the other end.  It was quite inhumane, by today's standards.., by any day's standards, actually.  However, they are a pest that kill trees by the acre, and apparently they get really really bad every five or six years.

According to the radio personality on the radio this morning, he'd spent the weekend out of town and the Tent Caterpillars were quite bad.  "You haven't seen bad," he explained, "Until you see about a thousand of them crawling up the side of a house."

"You p*ssy!" I thought, recalling how bad I'd seen them when I was a kid.  While a thousand on the side of a house might appear quite bad, that's a drop in a bucket compared to the shit I saw...

It was this time of year, about a month before school let out for the summer.  As I said, the Tent Caterpillars were bad.  We had a couple clumps of trees in our school yard and the caterpillars were merciless, chewing away every leaf within eye shot.  Somehow, many of them had made the long trek from the far end of the school yard to the school, itself, and began the arduous trek up the side of the building, to form it's cocoon, I'm assuming.  It was here where our paths would intertwine and what caterpillars survived being eaten by predators soaring above the playground, we students would terrorize and kill in the most grotesque of manners.  However, the caterpillars would get their revenge on us..., and how!!

Every year kids from the schools were sent home with permission slips to be signed by mom or dad, which would allow us to venture north of the city to learn about Batoche, Fort Carlton and the whole Louis Riel Rebellion bullshit.  It's something that's probably quite interesting, not for a kid barely over the age of ten.  I'd kind of like to take in the experience, now that I'm old enough to appreciate it, but I'm a little hesitant as my opinions on the matter differ greatly from the majority.  Politics, aside, we children climbed aboard a swanky tour bus, similar to a Greyhound and ventured toward Fort Carlton, by way of Duck Lake.

As we grew closer to the site of the North-West rebellion, the number of Tent Caterpillars grew larger by epic proportions.  The radio guy thought a thousand on the broadside of a building was overwhelming, but until witness a lone highway, blackened with caterpillars traversing across, moving in one motion from a sea of obliterated trees to a fresh green forest across the road, so thick that the bus that you're riding in, needs to slow it's speed, as it gently sways from side-to-side, it's wheel wells caked with the carcasses of expired worms, for us morbid children to look out the back window to see two naked grey asphalt trails slowly disappear, the blackness of millions more caterpillars replacing those freshly dead.

If we thought this sight was bad, it was going to get a f*ck of a lot worse.  Fort Carlton, itself, was under siege.  Not since Louis Riel and his menagerie of goons, had the fort experienced such distress.  Literally, GLOBS of slithering slimy worms would collect in every nook and cranny of the fort.  While presenters tried to explain the history of the fort and the Metis-uprising, no student (or teacher, for that matter) could concentrate, everyone's gaze planted on those hoards of worms.  Each ball intertwined with itself wriggling and wiggling reminiscent of the orgies put on by the infamous Roman Emperor, Caligula, only these would make even the most season cocksmith blush.  Every attempt to enter a building turned into a stunt similar to those performed by Indiana Jones.  Run, tuck and roll, practically, to avoid being sprayed by falling balls of furry caterpillars.

It was truly disgusting and while it doesn't give me nightmares, though it really should, I am reminded that no matter how bad shit seems, it can only get worse.  I don't complain about the weather, because no matter how cold it gets, it'll never equate that minus seventy-two degree Celsius storm I was in, in Manitoba.  And no matter how many hundreds or thousands of Tent Caterpillars I come across this summer, it'll never be equal to those I experienced in Fort Carlton and Batoche, when I was a kid.  That being said, I guess I'll be skipping that trip this year, as an adult too.  I'm much more squeamish in adulthood, than I was as a kid.

Fort Carlton, SK, as it is today...