Indelible Adventures

In my first year of college I stayed in residence at the Gillies Street campus, surprisingly I was part of an experiment in co-ed housing on campus.  Traditionally this residence had been all-girls until I showed up in early 1977….(crazy is it really that long ago???)   And an experiment it truly was, having only one set of showers and toilets made it a rather interesting situation for me as well cos’ in those days I was a shy country lad who got embarrassed if a girl so much as spoke to him let alone run into them in a shower or going to the toilet!  I can still remember waking up extraordinarily early (like 5:00 am early) each morning to have a shower before anyone else as I didn’t want to either embarrass myself or anyone else in the process.   To say I was nervous taking my three-minute shower each morning was a massive understatement – in and out and back to my dorm room with footprints down the hall.   Wow, it would be a rather differe...

This weekend has been a series of life lessons for Zach and Sami.   Earlier today they both played in their final soccer tournament for their local house league.   As of Friday night Zach’s team was sitting at the number 7 spot out of 8 teams and his team had to win their final game of the season leading into the tournament to move up to number 6 spot and so get a chance to play a lower ranked team.  Prior to the game they were destined to play the number two team, who having beaten them on each occasion during the regular season was pretty intimidating to say the least.   To move out of this bracket they needed help from the team above them who had to lose for them to move up, but given the situation it didn’t look good. Watching Zach play his heart out in that game was inspirational.   He knew that a lot depended on the game and so he had steeled himself to do whatever it took to win.   He played an awe inspiring game scoring both goals in a 2-1 win....

When do the routines of life start?   This weekend I’ve been reflecting on the many routines I have in my life and particularly the ones I have with my kids.   The first one with Zach started innocently enough at the ripe old age of 6 months, yes he’s 13 now so it’s been a while.  He and I would go to Lick’s at Yonge & Eglinton (a famous hamburger joint in our neighborhood which is no longer there) every Wednesday night for “boys night”.   TW and Zach - March 2007 - Caribbean Cruise After a short while the staff began to recognize us and always chat while our order was being prepared, I’d always leave the name “Zach” for our order and I guess over time they assumed it was my name.   We always had a whale of a time – him eating his hotdog (yes, I’d cut into very small pieces) and put on his high chair tray along with a few French fries. In those days I traveled a whole lot less so it was easy to make it a regular thing. ...

Okay I grew up in the country and we had lots of animals, what can I say?   In fact it might better be called a menagerie if you’d seen our acre block.  Of course we had a dog (Rowdy – named by my sister Glenda after the 60’s TV star of Rawhide (Rowdy Yates who was by the way played by Clint Eastwood).   Eh, how good’s that for a memory.  We also had a myriad of cats of one color or another always mooching about as well as a rabbit (Bugs….yeah original I know).  He was snow white except for his ears (one floppy and one regular) that were brown.   We also had birds – Rosella’s , a canary and a number of wild magpies that had been hurt and couldn’t fly so we fed them as well.    One big happy pet family! Ferret's teeth - yikes memories of being bitten! However, all these animals pail in comparison to our pet ferrets .   Our ferrets like most people know are ornery at the best of times, with exceptionally s...

The summers in Australia where I grew up were hot, often reaching into the 40’sC (over 100 F for those in the US) on a regular basis.   I always laugh when someone ask me if it was clear heat?    Like that makes it any cooler…always infinitely better than humidity I suppose (certainly more bearable than living in Toronto in the summer) at least in Australia it was pretty consistent.  Summers were long and hot, but as we got older there was an ominous coming of age responsibility that we all had to accept. Growing up in rural Australia we each had an unwritten obligation that as soon as we reached the ripe old age of 16 you became a volunteer fire fighter.  In those days, yes the mid 70’s (no sniggering now!) the rules were fairly lenient and the training was pretty sparse although we did congregate at the local fire station every Sunday morning for an hour or two to practice coupling and uncoupling the canvas hoses, hooking them up to the pump o...