Humour

Coffin

/ sweetsaraline

Papa knows that his cat will die soon and that there is nothing he can do. This cat has lived with him for sixteen years, so this situation is not unexpected. Papa will show his appreciation for his friend by building him his own custom-made coffin.

The cat lifts his head briefly when Papa brings his measuring tape. He is too old and sick to be overly curious. The fur around his nose and eyes has become frosted and dull over the years and his body is thin and frail. He patiently allows Papa to measure him.

With the measurements in hand, Papa goes out to his workshop. He loudly builds a box that the cat will quietly rest in for eternity. After all the sawing and the hammering, he inspects it. It’s a good and sturdy coffin, perfect for a good and sturdy friend, but when the cat dies, it turns out that he no longer fits in the box.

Papa tells me this story in my mother’s kitchen after Christmas dinner. Nobody knows it yet, but this will be his last Christmas.

My mother walks in as Papa is saying, “And he knew that I was measuring him for his coffin, too. Anyway, he died that night, and his whole body swelled up and wouldn’t fit in the coffin. I had to shove him in there, and I was banging down on the lid—”

My mother is so shocked that she has to interrupt. “Who are you talking about?” she demands to know.

In which my son strongly dislikes some guy we don’t even know

/ sweetsaraline

It’s 2016, my son is seven years old, and we are boarding an airplane. We arrive at our row and the young man in the window seat greets us politely.

My son is angry that this guy has the window seat.

I am surprised by this reaction because my son hates flying. The last time he had a window seat on a plane , he cried out, “Oh no, we’re all going to die!” while we were landing at the airport. He wasn’t trying to scare the other passengers to be mean, he just thought that what he was saying was accurate.

When you’re not afraid of flying, it is difficult to know what will help someone who is afraid to feel better. Apparently, specifically choosing non-window seats while booking the flight is not helpful.

My son is telling me that he wants the window seat and asking me why he can’t sit in the window seat. I explain to him that I chose to not have window seats and I explain why. He is not satisfied with my answer, so I explain that the passenger in the window seat probably also specifically chose his seat, and he chose the window, and it wouldn’t be fair to ask him to switch seats when he specifically chose a window seat and we specifically chose non-window seats. I also explain that we should probably just leave the guy alone because we don’t want to be rude jerks.

“Okay, fine,” my son grumbles. I give him a comic book and he settles down, but his face still looks slightly sulky.

The plane turns on. The engines make all of the voices of all of the passengers sound muffled and hushed. The flight attendants do their safety pantomime in the aisles as the plane crawls slowly around the airport.

Finally, it’s time for the airplane to shoot up into the sky in a diagonal line. My son tries to look out of our neighbour’s window. He stretches his neck back and forth before saying, “Ugh, his head’s in the way!” and collapsing back into his seat in frustration.

We run into the guy from the airplane the next day when we’re returning from a tour. His face brightens when he sees us.

“Oh, hey!” he says, waving and smiling.

“Ugh, it’s him again,” my son says in disgust.

Yoga time, party time

/ sweetsaraline

The yoga mat unfurls with a fwooooop. My cats think, Oh, cool. A group activity.

Sirius hops down from the cat tree and trots over happily. If this cat was a puppy, he would be wagging his tail. Freddie stretches and says, “Brrrrrrt?” before he also makes his way over.

The YouTube yoga instructor tells me to go into plank pose. Freddie helps by going under me and rolling around on his back so that he may display his magnificent cat belly. In sphinx pose, Sirius stretches out as he lays down on top of my arms. In downward facing dog (downward facing excuse me?), I have one cat affectionately head butting me in the face and one sitting down on my toes and leaning against my ankle.

The yoga instructor says, “And now press back into a well-deserved child’s pose.” I feel tiny, heavy feet walking up my back, and then Sirius lays down between my shoulder blades.

Quitter

/ sweetsaraline

2018 is the year I quit smoking for good. This time I’m going to try some medication to help, so I find a doctor and make an appointment.

The waiting room is empty. I can’t remember the last time I saw an empty waiting room. The nurse with the clipboard calls my name sooner than expected. She tells me to sit down and asks me some questions. When she checks my blood pressure, she looks at me in surprise and says, “You have beautiful blood pressure!” I think, That’s because I smoke.

The doctor is an old and kindly man with a gentle smile. He must like this job, certainly he would retire otherwise. He’s more than happy to prescribe a medication to help me quit smoking, and he’s willing to throw in an inspirational speech to boot. He used to smoke way back in the day, back in med school, but then he quit. He knows that it’s difficult, but he also knows that it’s possible. He also knows about all the benefits that come along with quitting.

He says, “You can take the five dollars a week that you would spend on cigarettes and save up for a trip.”

Silver monster

/ sweetsaraline

A young girl named Bessie is walking home from school in Forestville, Ontario in the early twentieth century. She steps from log to log on the corduroy road that cuts through the fields and trees, occasionally stopping to balance on one foot. In about ten or fifteen years, all of these fields will be full of tobacco, but for now, various vegetable plants stretch out of the ground, waiting to be harvested. The layers of cloth under Bessie’s dress make it puff out, making her look like a triangle with legs from far away. She carries her books and her slate tied up carefully with a piece of leather.

She hears a noise in the distance. It is the most terrible noise that she has ever heard in her entire life. It is a grinding, roaring, clanking noise. She turns to see what it is, but all she can see is a blinding gleam on the road, and it is bearing down on her.

She runs. The hollow sound of her footsteps on the logs is drowned out by sound of this horrid thing. As it gets closer, she throws herself into a field. A sleek, silver monster with an unnaturally wide and somber mouth full of enormous teeth rolls by. The terrible sound fades away with the cloud of dust. Birds begin to sing again.

“I thought it was a monster coming to get me,” my great-grandmother shares decades later when she tells the story of the first time she saw a motor car.

License plate

/ sweetsaraline

Sometimes you have to make a quick decision during a stressful time. Your brain throws several options at you when, really, two options would suffice. Is the option to wait a good one, or will you have an even worse problem two minutes from now? Is the second option too dangerous? Will the third option get you lost, making your stressful situation even more stressful? You can’t sit here weighing options, you have to make a decision right now, immediately.

“Oh no, I just cut that person off!” I say as I drive around with a friend in Ottawa. She tells me that it’s okay because I have a Quebec license plate.

Garden Star of the week: Whatever the fuck this is

/ sweetsaraline

Here is a tip for Montrealers with out of town visitors: take them to Jean-Talon Market. It’s sure to be a hit, and it will be very convenient for you because you can pick up a few things for dinner while you’re there.

This is what my husband and I did yesterday. As we were all leaving the market carrying our goodies, I saw a sign that said “anti-écureuil”* and I floated towards it like a sailor being drawn to a big pile of dangerous rocks by a murderous mermaid. And there it was, a display full of this plant. The market seller told me that all I had to do was leave them in their pots and place them about five feet apart, and my garden would become like a Bermuda Triangle for squirrels. I didn’t even ask what the plant was called, I simply paid the man immediately and went on my merry way.

I have no idea if it will actually work, but I can’t resist any possible opportunity to one-up those pesky rascals. And that is why whatever the fuck this plant is has earned the distinction of being the Garden Star 🌟 of the week. Congrats… you.

*Anti-squirrel

Where are they?

/ sweetsaraline

My son is eating all the oranges. The bag becomes smaller and smaller each day. I hear the fridge open in the middle of the night and I say, “Eliot, what are you doing?” and he just says, “Orange,” before stuffing more into his already full mouth.

This is all fine with me. I am glad that he is enjoying the oranges. They’re good for him. He for sure will not get scurvy. The sharp juice floods his mouth when he cuts the orange membranes open with his teeth, allowing the nutrients and vitamins to get to work. This is a very good thing.

But where are the orange peels? They’re not in the compost bin. They’re not in the garbage can. Where are they?

(SPOILER ALERT: They’re in his pockets.)

Oh, deer

/ sweetsaraline

My father prefers fishing over hunting. It’s just more fun to be on a boat on the lake when the water is calmly reflecting the brilliant sun. Hunting, though? He technically can’t go anymore, but that doesn’t bother him. It’s probably been at least 30 years since he went and he doesn’t miss it. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t appreciate it when a friend goes hunting and brings back a treat for him, though. I’m just putting that out there in case any of his friends are reading this.

Today we set our scene in a townhouse in the late 1980s. Lunch time is coming up fast and my dad has been looking forward to the venison that his friend gave him. It is in the fridge wrapped in tinfoil. He opens the door and pulls the silver corners of the wrapping open and pulls a piece of meat out. He takes a bite.

Delicious. That’s what it is, deeeeelicious. He thinks to himself, Hey, you know who might like this? My five-year-old daughter.

There is really no way for him to know that I watched Bambi for the first time at Aunt Shirley’s house yesterday.

My father calls me over.

“Here, try some of this. You might like it.”

I look at the meat with interest. “What is it?”

“It’s deer meat,” he says.

I recoil and shake my head, frowning.

“Come on, it’s yummy,” he insists.

“No, I don’t want it.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t like deer meat.”

“How do you know if you don’t try it?”

I shake my head again.

My father is running out of convincing things to say. It’s time to pull out the big guns. It’s time to bust out his favourite Pink Floyd lyrics.

“If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding,” he says.

I stare at him. Tears are beginning to form in my eyes.

My dad puts on a silly accent and says, “How can you have any puuuudinnggg if you don’t eat your meat?”

That’s when I burst out with, “I don’t want to eat Bambi’s mom!” The tears are rolling down my cheeks and my eyes are glistening as I look up at him.

This is a plot twist that my father was not expecting. He quietly wraps the deer meat up in the tinfoil and puts it back in the fridge.