Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas friends and readers, and also readers who are friends, and friends who tell me they read but really don't.

And for those of you who don't celebrate Christmas, Happy Tuesday!

I have nothing for you to read here today, so you have no excuse to avoid your family. Spend time with them. They're the only ones you got. Unless of course you are a celebrity, in which case you could adopt a whole new family from Africa in 3.5 business days.

Rock & Tackle

From the fall of 2002 to the summer of 2003 SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) hit Toronto. The disease developed first in China and was then carried over via a Toronto woman who was back in China visiting her family.


Less then 20 percent of all SARS cases in Toronto were fatal, yet an even bigger fallout occurred. The city's hotel occupancy was cut in half, tour bus business' teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, and everything from shopping malls to major theater productions were hit hard.

The city was in a crisis and the economy was in trouble, enter the Rolling Stones.

Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and... those other two guys came up with a plan to headline a massive concert to help revive tourism and the economy within the city. This is where our story starts.

Let me set the stage for you, July 30th 2003. The former military base Downsview Park was played host to 500,000 audience members and fourteen bands for a day long concert.

My brother Will, our friend Dan, and my girlfriend at the time arrived at 6am.

A few hours later we were all let in, going through security checks we rushed the stage, everyone laying down blankets and beach towels to mark their little piece of the park.

The ground was littered with them, with small patches of grass between. This made leaving your blanket for any pricey refreshment or piece of merchandise a difficult maneuver.

Bounding over blankets you felt like something out of some lame, forgotten, arcade game. Atari's Blanket Dodger 3000.

If you made it over beach towels and blankets you had to face another obstacle, what we dubbed the gauntlet. A crush of people in an incredibly small corridor pushing every which way. If you were to loose your footing, as I nearly did several times, no one would see you again until the poor volunteer who is picking up empty water bottles the next day discovers your body, all smushed to a pancake like Wile E. Coyote on a work day.

So truly there was very little incentive to leave your spot under the scorching sun. Waiting some seven hours before the first act took the stage, waiting over twelve before the big ticket acts like AC DC and The Rolling Stones performed.

The monotony and sweating felt like we were part of some mass sauna sit in. We had packed lunches that were quickly disappearing simply because it was the only thing one could do.

Off in the distance, over on the other side of the stage someone had brought a beach ball, throwing it into the crowd it bounced its way around.


I watched it with fascination, suddenly feeling less judgmental of a cats strange love for a ball of string.

I waited and willed the ball to come over, to have something to do, to see how far into the crowd I could hit it, to see what way the wind would take my mighty volley.

Hours went by, but the ball never reached me.

Several feet (or five beach towels) away from us a group of guys were forming a human pyramid.

Now maybe it was a love for Egyptology, maybe one too many viewings of Bring it On, or perhaps just shear boredom from waiting six hours in the hot summer sun... we may never know for sure, but for some reason my girlfriend was compelled to join in.

"Be back in a second!" she squealed, the idea of doing something beyond controlling the rationing the last juice box bringing joy to her words.

Before I could say anything she was off. Bounding over towel and blanket alike she began claiming her way to the top of the tower of human.

She tops off the pyramid. Like an angel topping the Christmas tree. She's my angel I thought, the sunlight causing her to radiate beauty. I was simply lost in thought until...

"Take it off!" shouted someone in the crowd.

"Take it off!" joined another, and before long we were in full blown chant mode. A crowd of the countries most stoned, the countries most drunk, or simply the nations most sun burnt were all chanting for the girl on top of the pyramid, my girl, to take off her top.

Everyone is chanting, and she, the drama class geek, is soaking in the stardom, toying with the crowd. With me.

So I do the only thing I can think of. I take off running towards the pyramid.

Now I haven't put much thought into what I will do once I get there, and 'there' is fast approaching. I am only a couple of feet away, my eyes locked on my girlfriend like bull on matador. Her top is now off, and with it so am I.

My feet leave the ground as I hurl myself toward the human tower, arms spread.

What happens next I like to think of as a tackle, though onlookers may describe it as a belly flop. The human pyramid collapses like a house of cards, a mass of body parts land atop of me looking, I can only imagine, like a game of Twister gone horribly wrong.

Now somehow this made her view me as overbearing, over protective, and just plain over. As she disappeared into the gauntlet I was prepared to give chase, until I noticed that beach ball heading my way. Deciding I had waited to long not to be a part of this I braced myself, connected, and sent the ball flying into another part of the crowd.

By the time I had finished and turned around my girlfriend was swallowed by the sea of people. Yes bouncing that beach ball had cost me the ability to run after her, you know I guess we all give in to the crowd from time to time.

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The Snowball Effect

I never took up skiing till I was thirteen. Call me crazy but in those thirteen years never once did I have the desire to slide two anorexic sleds to my feet and haul myself down a hill towards the awaiting snow covered pine trees.

When I was thirteen though skiing was all I could think about, for there was an upcoming school trip to the slopes, and my lack of skiing ability would not stop me.

How hard could it be right? You go down a hill from side to side, I mean it wasn’t exactly rocket science… or talking to a girl, I figured.

Just to be on the safe side though I decided I needed a lesson, and after some convincing on how important my new found career in skiing would be, my parents saw it that way too.

The lesson was a mere hour long and to my frustration we never got off the bunny hill, still I knew I was ready for bigger and faster things, for in my mind, the ski trip with my school, a mere stepping stone to the Olympics!

And so my first ski trip began with promise. I went up with a pack of friends, but within seconds of arriving at the top they had already started back down.

I on the other hand didn’t see the rush, I stood there at the top of that hill for some time, just taking in the scenery below, trying to figure out which parts of it would hurt less to crash into then the others.

Finally I started down and the scenery grew larger and larger.

It was coming closer at an alarmingly fast rate, as was one skier who had the misfortune of being in front of me.

Our skis were about to touch and as he turned to look at me, an expression reserved for serial killers and door to door Jehovah’s witnesses etched into his face. I knew I had to do something quick.

I swerved.

Next thing I knew I was in a ditch, my skis and my legs in one big knot.

Within seconds I noticed two people staring down at me from where I had fallen.

“Are you okay?”

“I can’t get up,” I said as I tried to untangle my skis.

The two began panicking and calling for help.

“No, no, it’s just my skis are all crossed and…”

They weren’t listening.

Soon I had gathered my own little audience, watching me, discussing me, taking bets on my injuries.

I was about to explain that it was just my skis… about to, till I noticed a small group of girls I went to school with had gathered. I decided paralyses might be less embarrassing then the inability to untangle myself.

It was a good theory, till the ski patrol showed up with snowmobiles and stretcher in toe.

As they went to action saving my life, I wondered when the best time would be to break the news of the mix up to them.

They were well trained, those heroes of the hills, for I was untangled in seconds and ready to be lectured.

I learnt a valuable lesson that day so many years ago… when you are out of control, let the other guy get out of YOUR way.

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Lincoln in the Audience

I am down in the United States right now, doing what I love to do when I am in this country, explore the television offerings from the country that created the medium.

There is one trend I’ve noticed recently, a lot of shows on the History Channel have been showing different theories about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, inspired I assume by the upcoming sequel to Nicolas Cage’s film National Treasure which deals with missing pages from John Wilkes Booth’s diary.

It feels like people have gone Abraham Lincoln crazy, at least on the History Channel, VH1 isn’t exactly running ‘I Love the 1860’s’ but at least on one network Lincoln is in vogue.

The theories range from lone gun man to Confederate conspiracy, each with their very own show. So I got to thinking, why should I miss out on this bandwagon. Why can’t I have a show presenting what may have really happened to Abraham Lincoln?

So I’ve got my diligent researchers here at Cidiot to look this thing up and I now present to you my theory of what really happened the night Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, a theory which I hope the History Channel will purchase for adaptation into a two hour prime time event.

The basic facts are these: On April 14^th, 1865 President Abraham Lincoln and his wife attended the play ‘Our Amercian Cousin’. It was here that Booth snuck into the Presidential Box and shot Lincoln with a .44 caliber Derringer.

But what were Booth’s motivations? Did he act alone? These are the questions historians have set to answer for over a century.

Submitted for your approval (but more importantly for the approval of the executives at The History Channel) is one such theory. John Wilkes Booth did not set out to murder the President of the United States that fateful day. Instead he merely wanted to take in a performance of a play that was making a cultural impact.

See Booth was born to a family that lived for the theater. His father an actor, his mother an actress, he was raised on Shakespeare and breast milk… as this was a period before there was such a thing as the Gerber Baby and so William Shakespeare and breast milk had to fill a void canned baby food would eventually dominate.

Lincoln as we know also attended this performance of Our American Cousin but because of pressing Presidential business he arrived late. It’s not that he meant to be late, but when you are the leader of a country in the midst of civil war punctuality can occasionally be difficult.

And so poor Abraham Lincoln missed the beginning of the play and was forced to ask those around him in the Presidential Booth what exactly was going on.

“What did I miss?”

“Wait, who is she again?”

These were the questions reported to be whispered by Lincoln, who was by all accounts a loud whisperer, a fatal flaw that irritated many in the audience below throughout the first act.

These loud whispers bothered none more then Booth, a student of the theater who really didn’t appreciate the narrative being disturbed by the lanky man in the balcony. But what could be done? You cannot exactly shush the President of the United States.

During the intermission the President got himself caught up on who was who and why different characters were doing what they were doing. Meanwhile Booth’s girlfriend got him to calm down a little. Eyewitnesses say that had the night ended here disaster would have been diverted. But there were still two more acts in Tom Taylor’s play.

In act two the President revealed another personality quirk, something I have dubbed the Parrot Chuckle. For instance when the character of Lord Dundreary (the 19^th Century Biff Tannen) delivered the mixed up aphorism “birds of a feather gather no moss,” the President would laugh along with the rest of the audience only that mid laugh he would repeat the last half of the funny line, in this instance “gather no moss.” Occasionally this would be followed by a knee slap, a shake of the head, and the words “God how do they come up with this stuff?”

This drove John Wilkes crazy, and eventually he snapped. Raising a finger to his mouth and looking up at the Presidential Box he issued a loud and forceful shush.

The President did not take notice. He continued Parrot Chuckling through the next act and a quarter as Booth’s shushing became louder and more constant to the horror of his girlfriend.

It should be noted that although Booth’s night at the theater had been ruined, he had not been pushed to homicide yet. This would come about in act three, scene two.

When we piece together eyewitness accounts we learn that President Lincoln performed the equivalent to the modern act of the teenager who sits through a movie text messaging the whole time, he began dictating a telegraph.

“Dear Ulysses STOP I am watching that American Cousin play you were going on about STOP You were right man, that Edward Sothern is pretty LMAO funny STOP Some people are coming over to hit the pipe after STOP Major Rathbone will be there STOP Should be off the hook STOP Join us in the west wing smoking room?”

John Wilkes Booth snapped, he got up and stormed off to the Presidential Box.

The timing was unfortunate for two reasons. One, it meant John Wilkes Booth missed his favorite line, "Don't know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man-trap..." And two, it meant the last words that Abraham Lincoln would hear were “Sockdolgizing old man-trap.”

And so was the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, killed not for decisions made in office but for a general disregard of theater manners. Perhaps a far less dramatic end than history often leads us to believe, but for anyone who has ever sat near an obnoxious audience member, it’s a relatable tale.

Alright History Channel, my cell phone is on and I am ready to start receiving my residual cheques.

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Game, Set-up, Match

The singe life (remarkably this has not yet been the title of a short lived sitcom), a time that many in a long term relationship seem to romanticize… well I suppose romanticize what with its root word conjuring images of flowers, chocolate and a healthy dose of door holding, isn’t exactly the right word. It’s about the freedom, the seemingly endless options, and the lack of a significant other to argue with.

Myself (a long term relationship participant)… well I just don’t seem to remember single life that way. Sure yes like anyone I had my good single times, but really all I can remember is the amount of work.

There’s the whole asking a girl out… except, you know, you don’t just ask her out do you? You have to sound slightly more modern then Richie Cunningham asking a Mary Beth or Mary Sue to be his date to the Sock Hop. Yet you need to make it clear you’re not asking her to hang out as a friend.

You need to lay a ground work of flirting, but of course even this needs to be measured. You don’t want to come off as a “macho pig” (to quote Jessie Spano, naturally) but at the same time you don’t want to deliver some half hearted compliment about her shoes that gives off that flamboyant friend vibe.

If you pull off the proper levels and feel you’re winning her over and decide now is the time to convert this into something, well then you have to prepare yourself for rejection.

It happens… sometimes a girl will in fact deem you not worthy of getting a free meal, drink, or movie out of. But you know, that’s not exactly how they’ll put it. Granted I can’t really predict how you’ll be rejected. If I could I’d be pretty mad, that’d kind of be the worst superhero power ever. “What’s this? Rejection sense tingling… sir, do not approach that woman! She is going to tell you she is just getting over a really serious relationship!”

Superhero jokes, now maybe you can predict some of the reasons I was rejected in those crazy days of singledom. Let’s jump back a bit and pretend none of this has happened…

Granted I can’t really predict how you’ll be rejected. There are of course a few tried and true lines.

“Let’s just be friends,” a classic (with several variations). Guys let me translate, when a girl says let’s just be friends she’s simply saying “makeovers yes, making out no way in hell.”

Then there’s the next level of rejection, the “you’re like a brother to me.” Again allow me to translate. “You’re like a brother to me,” meaning: it’d be a crime for me to be with you, so don’t even try.

Don’t get me wrong, I really don’t view being single as all doom and gloom. Sometimes you really do connect with that other person and phone numbers are exchanged.

Or maybe not anymore? For all I know I’ve been in a relationship so long that I’ve become dated, maybe it’s all gone digital now. Exchange last names and Facebook one another. Which actually would be handy. I have to admit there have been times when I guiltily realized I didn’t even know the girls full name and we had past the point of asking.

But if sending a message on Facebook really is the in, are there rules for this? “Hey man, be careful, you don’t want to look over eager. Wait 1 day to add her as a friend. Now if your going to wall post that bitch wait 1 more day, but a private message man, 2 days.”

I haven’t asked around, but I assume there are rules. I mean with the phone number there were always rules; everyone had their own opinion, their own advice. “Wait this long till you call her…”

So no, I don’t miss the wild single days. For all the fun times, it really is a lot of work in-between. However I was recently asked to serve as wingman for a friend.

Oh to be a wingman. For a guy whose in a relationship the role of wingman is like retiring from professional hockey and then coming back to play in the old-timers game. You don’t want to come out of retirement, but you’re happy to strap on those skates for a night just to remember the rush, to prove to yourself you’ve still got it.

As a wingman you aren’t out to get the girl, you’re just there to make your friend look good. Which I guess thinking about it maybe old-timer’s hockey game isn’t the best analogy. You’re more the team that’s scripted to loose to the Harlem Globetrotters. Yeah, that works better… you’re the Atlantic City Seagulls.

Now for those of you unfamiliar, the role of wingman is a complex one. You are required to wear many hats all at once... though not literally as a guy who dons a lot of headwear all at once is probably not a good choice for wingman.

Here are the (remember figurative) hats:

The Coach

You’re Mickey Goldmill, the trainer, the motivator. Sure you’ve retired but you’re there to help those who are still in the game to realize their potential. If you can also somehow tie in a montage of punching hanging carcasses of meat and dramatically running up a flight of stairs this is always a fan favorite, however it may not improve your point man’s game. In fact some studies suggest fists soaked in carcass juice may turn off women.

The Secret Agent

No, you’re not James Bond. You don’t get the woman in the end. You’re 004 or something, the expendable character that helps Bond gather intelligence. Does the target have a boyfriend? Is she looking for something particular? Is her crazy-hot ratio off? It’s your job as wingman to get this information.

The Kamikaze

You’ve got someone to go home to at the end of the night, so go head first and embrace the crash. Open up the lines of communication at any cost, put yourself in the embarrassing or awkward position and don’t look back. If in the course of so doing you crash and burn, and this crash and/or burn sets your point man up perfectly, even better. Your buddy will be sure to buy you a Purple Heart from the bar for your sacrifice in the line of duty. And to clarify Purple Heart I am of course making an analogy of beer in place of the metal of honour awarded in the United States to those who are wounded or killed in the well serving their country. I am in no way making a reference to some sort of girly drink, as the good wingman knows that fruity drinks shall only be secretly consumed in the company of their girlfriend, not out with the guys.

The Blocker

From time to time your buddy will face obstacles while working his magic, another guy will try and get the girls attention, or maybe the girl’s friend will try and get her away from your point man. Whether you have to run conversational interference or you just need to tackle them, let nothing touch your QB.

The Hype Man

Like the guy in a rap group with the same name, the hype man is there to back up his point man. When he needs to take a breath, you jump in to fill the break in the conversation. When he makes a joke, you laugh. And like any good hip hop hype man you’re there to build up the excitement levels of your audience… though advisably not through the traditional rap method of call-and-response chants, this tends to confuse and scare the girl you are talking to, especially I have found if the girl your buddy is targeting is in a Starbuck’s and you begin your call-and-response by quoting a 1989 ‘2 Live Crew’ song, “if you believe in having sex, say ‘hell yeah!’” A more recommended advisable way of building excitement is to talk up your friend, really sell him. Though who knows, maybe it was just my delivery of 2 Live Crew that steered me wrong.

Yes sure it’s a tough job in its own right, but someone has to do it, and in the end, isn’t it a lot less stressful then asking the girl for her phone number? Or is that ask a girl for her name so you can search Facebook’s database for her and send a friend invite?

Call me old fashion but it just doesn’t have the same ring, I guess that’s what happens when you leave the game. There’s no way of predicting whether you’ve permanently retired or whether you’ll pull a Michael Jordan, nevertheless I’ll still be out there, serving as wingman. Setting my Globetrotter’s up to pants me as I go to take a free throw. It’s all in the name of entertaining the audience.

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Here's a Tip...

Etiquette dictates that I shouldn’t have more then a very brief cell phone conversation in public. Sure you can talk in public with the person next to you, but if you want that conversation to happen over the phone, it’s just not right. Apparently it’s rude of me to rob nosy people of the ability to hear both ends of dialogue. Two people talking in the same public space side by side, go for it. One person in the same space on the phone… well it’s just not proper etiquette to stop eavesdroppers from having full conversational enjoyment. It’s downright barbaric.

And when you aren’t using your knife it is to be left on your plate, sharp side facing inward.

Never, ever outward.

And your drink must always sit on the right side of your plate. What, were you raised by wolves? Don’t know how to follow proper etiquette? I mean come on, if we all started putting our cups on whatever side of the plate we just so happen to feel like, well then we’re no better then the common dung beetle.

Etiquette is an extension of the childhood game of ‘tea party’ in which little girls, dolls, and select teddy bears do their best to kick it high society style. There are strict rules on how to conduct themselves in such a game, and if Mr. Cuddles the stuffed giraffe can’t pull himself together and act refined he’ll most certainly be shunned.

Some of these kids grow up and retain this need to uphold the laws of basic human decency, the things that civilization itself is built on… basically whatever makes them feel superior.

There is, I should add, no word on whether or not your average teddy bear grows out of tea party stage or not, although I am sure telemarketing being what it is that eventually we’ll have reliable sample numbers from our cotton brethren.

Etiquette can be learnt we’re ensured. You can read books, pay to sit through lectures. You can become refined! You can tip everyone from your tattoo artist to your mail man!

Oh the tip, the act of giving someone a little extra then the cost, something for them to keep and fail to mention on their tax returns. The bonus for a job well done.

I suppose the original meaning behind the word tip, 16^th Century German for “to give unexpectedly” was not something the etiquette police learnt between afternoon teas.

To give unexpectedly we do not. The tip is a strict process. The proper percent has been outlined for you, calculated and set in stone, each service its own rules and regulations.

Two dollars a suitcase, not one! What the hell is the matter with you? You clearly can’t function in proper society.

No, we are not to believe in the phrase ‘to give unexpectedly.’ So much so that those blessed with a clear sense of civilized and uncivilized have invented a view backronym’s to help justify the word. “To Insure Promptness”, “To Improve Performance,” and so on.

The thing is we aren’t really sure why we tip anymore, are we? Even with all the guidelines to what percent you owe the bartender who got you a beer with extra head after chatting up the nearby brunette… we really can’t conclusively say why we’re doing it.

At some point in my naïve adolescence it was taught to me that the tip was a means of rewarding someone who goes above and beyond the call of duty, who gives you an amazing level of customer service and who really, truly deserves something extra. The tip I learnt, was on a sliding scale, depending on this service.

I guess this system only exists if you are dining alone, because I am pretty sure a waitress can get your order wrong, spill coffee on you, greet your every request with a why-don’t-you-just-die stare, and mock you for ordering milk… and if you attempt to leave without a gratuity left at the table, your fellow diners will react in shock. Rude and cheap may be bandied about. You’ll be told off for clearly having no idea what it is like to be in the service industry. And if you don’t crack and offer you 15% bonus to the waiter, your etiquette superior will forcibly cover your tip for you.

So it’s not about customer service. Maybe it’s because these professions are paid so poorly? But then I don’t remember anyone in the Sporting Good’s Store passing the hat when I went to buy shoes made by a kid in Cambodia.

I have worked in the service industry, a full service gas station. One without a canopy, exposed to all sorts of weather. It’s a job without a chance to sit, where I would be on my feet all day. A job where I’d be berated for every slight climb in the price of gasoline. And I second hand inhaled the stuff all day long, putting my brain cells at risk, and possibly paving the way to kidney issues or cancer.

Really I probably wasn’t paid enough for all that. And from time to time I’d refill your washer fluid, clean your windows, pump your gas, and check your tire pressure all well it rained and hailed. I’d do it quickly (I tend to move faster when jagged pieces of ice are falling from the sky) and somehow with a smile. In return you’d give me a tip. I appreciated it, it motivated me some days to offer the same quality service to the rest of the customers.

But more often then not there was no tip. For the majority I’d pump the gas they want, tell the price, and take the money, transaction over. Just doing the job. Sometime’s I would even do my job below your reasonable level of expectation. Exhausted I’d be slow, swamped I’d forget to screw your gas cap back on. In fact I will even let you in on a secret, something you may suspect from time to time while dealing with someone in the service industry. There were times when I really didn’t care about you, dear customer. Yes, there’s something far more important in my mind then you sitting in your yellow hummer demanding answers to why you pay so much. Something on my mind that I much more care about. And sure I’ll go through the motions for you, because you are what stands between me and my pay cheque.

Why would I deserve something extra on those days?

Maybe it’s too much to ask when it comes to the rules of the tea party that have been dictated. But I’ll ask all the same. Can we all try clearing the stuffing from between our ears and remember that a tip is an unexpected gift? It’s a reward for doing your job well, and…

Oh you know what, I’m sitting here at this café writing and it just occurred to me, I completely forgot to put something in the tip jar for the barista who burnt my bagel. The poor girl. Hold that thought, I’ll be right back…

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Baggage Claims

If you've followed my career in comedy you'll find I seem to spend a lot of time talking about the baggage carousel, the lamest of all types of carousels which lacks both colourful, ridable animals, and organ music.

The baggage carousel is that moment of truth, that time when we discover whether we'll be wearing our carefully planned wardrobe for the duration of the trip, or whether we'll be sporting the ill fitting tourist trap t-shirts with the graphic that leads one to believe the shirt was commissioned back in the early to mid 1980s, you know, when people we're to busy worrying about the red menace and to coked up to care about simple things like taste.

And so if you've ever been out to see me perform stand-up you've probably heard me rant about the fear induced by this particularly slow moving device.

In fact just last February I wrote and directed a short film about about this very topic (Baggage, starring Evan Brandon and Kristen Dealy).

Now I've never had my luggage lost, although I thought I did once on a red eye home from California. I was incorrect, or so the airline informed me, my bag wasn't lost, they were only 'temporarily delayed.'

Temporarily delayed? So what, my bag was going to join me in Toronto but something important came up and it'll be with me at its soonest, most available time?

This isn't a story about my bag having scheduling conflicts, nor a story about my film or my stand-up. No, this is the story about how I met my girlfriends father.

We'll start at the end and work our way back, Momento style...

The End

As I am standing there, trying to identify the shape of my suitcase from the suitcase lineup diagram the woman trapped in the lost luggage cubbyhole has handed me, my girlfriend taps me on the shoulder.

She's standing there with her dad, a suitcase between them.

"Derek, this is your bag," she informs me.

"Ha, where did that come from?" I ask the father, the daughter, and the woman whose midwest accent almost hides the fact she hates her job.


My Girlfriend's Version of Proceeding Events

Okay, so if you believe my girlfriend Amanda (and I am by no means encouraging you to, please wait till my version of the story for a plausible explanation) here's how it all went down.

We stood there, waiting on my bag, slowly everyone around us got theres, but not me. From time to time a strange looking dark green suitcase would rotate by.

"Is that yours?" Amanda asked.

"Are you sure it's not yours?" She asked the second time around.

"Derek, we should at least check this one," the third pass.

Now I know my suitcase, I am familiar with its look, design, and shade of green. This was not it. I wasn't going to humour her by checking, risk the actual owner running at me convinced I was stealing his luggage.

Soon it was just the two of us and another guy further down the carousel. Why he wasn't taking his dark green bag I don't know. And where was my slightly smaller light green bag?

"Let's just check this one..." my girlfriend was saying, or something similar. I didn't fully hear as I was wandering up to the cubbyhole window to discuss with the woman on duty the case of my missing bag.

In the background Amanda was on the phone to her father Jeff, who had been waiting in the parking lot to give us a ride.

"Hey dad, we're still at baggage claim, Derek thinks they lost his bag."

Meanwhile the woman at the counter was busy dealing with me, "it shows on the computer that all of the luggage from that flight has been loaded onto the carousel." Her voice was half matter-of-fact, half pleading with the universe that this wasn't something that would lead to her filling out more paperwork.

As the woman and I began to discuss the case of my missing suitcase Jeff showed up to get the scoop from his daughter.

"Derek is pretty sure they lost his suitcase."

"What about that one right there?" Jeff asked at the dark green suitcase which was so clearly not mine.

"That's what I keep saying, but Derek says its not."

At this point Amanda grabs for the suitcase, pulling it off she checks the tag.

As I am standing there, trying to identify the shape of my suitcase from the suitcase lineup diagram the woman trapped in the lost luggage cubbyhole has handed me, my girlfriend taps me on the shoulder.

She's standing there with her dad, a suitcase between them.

"Derek, this is your bag," she informs me.

"Ha, where did that come from?" I ask the father, the daughter, and the woman whose midwest accent almost hides the fact she hates her job.

What Really Happened (aka Derek's Version of Events)

I've landed in Minneapolis, Minnesota to meet my girlfriends family. I am waiting for the seatbelt sign to go off so that I can get out of my chair and gracefully hit my head on the above storage compartment.

So now I wasn't there, so I cannot be 100% sure about the following events, but this is what I've pieced together.

A guy with earmuffs and a bright orange vest, possibly two of them, unloads the suitcases. My slightly smaller, slightly lighter green suitcase is still there at this point. I don't believe these vest wearers to be in on the take.

They load everything up onto their little car and one of them drives off with it.

Now there's probably another guy who handles placing the luggage onto the conveyor belt, the guy who drives the little buggy is probably not aloud to help, a union thing. So here's a guy who controls the flow of the luggage, and he's all alone.

Now I cannot say for certain his motives, as I have never met this dastardly man, yet here is what I have deduced.

At some point this man lost or damaged his own suitcase, one his wife gave him as a gift, yes it wasn't the most romantic of gifts but he needed a suitcase, he had been hinting and hinting, and so she got him one. But now it was lost and/or stolen.

As fate would have it my suitcase was a deadringer for his. All his dread about the wife finding out was put on hold, if he could just bring this one home no one would know.

But then he would be doing a disservice to the actual owner of the bag.

Thinking fast he grabbed another suitcase, a darker green, a little bit larger. He took everything out of it, not thinking of the fact that he was now robbing someone else of their suitcase (the other guy waiting further down the conveyor perhaps!), he put all of my stuff in before transferring my name tag to it.

'My' suitcase went down the conveyor, shooting out onto the carousel.

We stood there, waiting on my bag, slowly everyone around us got theres, but not me. From time to time a strange looking dark green suitcase would rotate by.

"Is that yours?" Amanda asked.

"Are you sure it's not yours?" She asked the second time around.

"Derek, we should at least check this one," the third pass.

Conclusion

I know what you're thinking, how could I know this? Well I drove for several hours with my girlfriend and her father, several hours from the airport, hearing the whole way about how I didn't know my own bag, how I should trust my girlfriend. Several hours of time to think and figure out what really happened at that baggage claim...

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How Much is that Poppy in the Window?

On November the 11th it's known as Remembrance Day here in Canada (as well as Australia and the United Kingdom), in the United States its Veterans Day, still elsewhere its Armistice Day, while in South Africa it is simply Poppy Day.

It's a day when citizen's of countries all around the world stop to remember those who gave their lives in times of war and in times of peace keeping.

As the South African name for the 11th notes, for many the poppy is a symbol of remembrance. This is due to battles that took place during the first world war in an area dubbed Flanders Fields, in which the bright red corn poppy of Europe grew in the untold wastelands of death and war.

In Canada a poet by the name of John McCrae wrote a poem simply titled "In Flanders Fields" which utilized the haunting imagery of the poppy. Before long both the flower and the poem became in their own right both national symbols and symbols of remembrance.

Each November Canadians donate money and pin a red poppy to their coats, jackets, and shirts. It's a symbol of respect and a vow not to forget.

Now where is all this going and what possible, horrible, mixed up thing have I gotten myself into with such a symbol you may be asking yourself, and as such let me begin by saying don't worry, I did not tarnish anything.

See a couple of years ago I met a girl by the name of Emma whose birthday just happened to be November the 11th. This got me thinking, and before long I thought of the the perfect gift to give on this day, real live poppies, one for every year.

Simple plan right? Visit a florist, pick them out, pay some money, and maybe write a quick card.

I got to work the day before as I was heading to a beach for the first day of principal photography on my first film, the feature length Love Squared. I had a long list of local florist’s phone numbers, and I figured it’d take only one or two down the list before I found what I needed, then I could get back to thinking about the days scene.

No such luck.

The first woman on the phone said she sold poppies. As my mind breathed a sigh of relief I realized the woman was saying something else, a very important something else.

“Wait, do you mean cut poppies?”

Cut… what did she mean cut? Like cut from the ground? How would that make sense? Did many of her clients come over with spades in hand to dig out their own bouquets? I decided I better play it cool so she wouldn’t try to take advantage of me.

“Yeah, uh, you know, I’m just looking for real poppies, you know, real ones, like, you know, the live kind.”

As it turns out she did know, and she didn’t have any.

Not worried I moved on to the next number on the list, and then the next, and then the next.

It was around this point my assistant director decided to give her two cents worth, “they don’t sell poppies because they put people to sleep, like in the Wizard of Oz.”

Several crew members jumped on her comment. There was no way poppies put people to sleep, yet she refused to be told otherwise. As they debated whether the flowers were magic or not, I decided to hit the next place on my list.

Still no luck, no explanation why.

My assistant director was beginning to feel validated when I hung up, “see, it’s because I’m telling you, they put people to sleep.”

The debate raged on.

As I asked yet another florist, and got yet another no, I was forced to put the woman on hold as someone kept calling my name. Turning around Mike, my trusty editor who had made the mistake of offering to come visit set on a cold November day for an exterior shoot on a beach (a mistake he would only make one more time I believe), motioned for me to give him the phone.

“Hello,” he said, when I finally did. “I just have one question, is the reason you don’t sell poppies because they put people to sleep?”

Mike hung up, successfully putting to rest the Wizard of Oz Syndrome theory. Everyone now much quieter, I called the next person on my list.

Or so I thought, I had accidentally dialed the same person as Mike had just been talking to.

“Do you sell poppies…” I began.

“This isn’t amusing,” shot back the woman whose voice suddenly became familiar.

“Oh no, no, I must’ve dialed…” The line clicked.

The crew (aka people who clearly work harder then me) were well into setting up for the first shot and the actors were getting into their wardrobe. Everyone was doing what they were supposed to be, and so naturally I decided to distract one crew member with my poppy frustration.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to buy poppies here,” he said matter-of-factly.

Illegal? No, it couldn’t be… could it? I began to get worried as I called my next florist, what if all these calls about poppies were illegal? What if word got back to the police?

“Say I asked if I could buy poppies, would that be, let’s say, on the level?”

The old woman on the other end of the line sounded confused, panicking I hung up.

Later that day I casually raised the subject to one of the actors, trying to feel out if poppies really were illegal.

“Illegal? No, they’re extinct.”

I stood there confused, my mind reeling from a sucker punch.

“But what about poppy seed bagels?” was the sentence my mind finally put together.

“Not really from poppies.”

I walked away, vowing not to discuss this topic with anyone else, I went back to calling.

The second last florist on my list finally shed some light on the poppy dry city, “Sorry dear, poppies are out of season.”

Out of season, how could poppies be out of season?! The one day of the year that they mean the most and they aren’t in season?! These are the questions I wanted to demand of her.

“Thank you,” is what I said.

That night when the shoot was over and done with I turned to my friend Donna who has a knack for knowing what I don’t, surely she could settle once and for all if poppies were truly out of season.

I told her what the woman said to me.

“Yeah, it’s true, dogs generally don’t give birth in the fall.”

It was at this point that I gave up, the poppies had managed to outfox me this time. I settled into a conversation about the mating habits of dogs, but in my mind all I could think was they were out there, somewhere, just beyond my reach. My white whale, the poppy.

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Howl of a Run

Part of what makes me a Cidiot is my uncomfortable relationship with nature. To me the wilderness is a place to visit, to spend a week or two marveling at its sights and beauty and then head back home. In my mind it's sort of Disney World without the 75 dollar price of admittance and of course when I run into a mouse I don't try to get a picture of me hugging it. Magic Kingdom is a nice idea, but you don't move in. The same goes for the country in my mind.

But still something made me think I needed to get in touch with another side of myself. To embrace the small town atmosphere, maybe wake up early on Saturday's and help a local farmer till his fields.

Now I don't quite know what tilling is, but I imagined it'd be back breaking yet leave me feeling rewarded once the harvest was done. In this scenario I also seemed to have magical abs that glistened in the sort of sunlight only Hollywood could light, the farmer's daughters watching from the comfort of a local porch.

And so I went east to Belleville, Ontario when it came time for me to go to college. During my years there I never once did anything productive on a farmers field, unless partying and shortcuts count. The only agricultural crops I grew were mold, and that was a most unfortunate bumper crop.

My brushes with nature were also short lived. Convinced I'd run into a crazed moose or something on the path between my dorm and the college I rarely ventured far.

Then one night my fears seemed to come true.

I like to call it a tale of near death if you will.

I was walking through the forest-y portion of the path late at night as I headed back to place. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed something coming through the trees. At first I passed it off as just a dog and continued on my way. Then I began to think about how strange it was that there would be a dog. In all my time on campus I had never seen a dog, they weren’t allowed, why in the middle of the night would one randomly be walking in the woods?

Slowly turning to look at the thing from the woods again it hit me how much it looked like a wolf, in fact it looked identical to a wolf. I started to walk faster, and as I did the thing started coming at me, every time I went a little faster it went faster.

My mind swarmed with thoughts. Was this how it ends for me? Killed by a wolf?

As it got closer tomorrow’s headlines ran through my head:

“Little Red Robertson’s Corpse,” “An American Werewolf in Belleville” or my personal favourite, “The Boy Who Didn’t Cry Wolf… Because it Ripped His Vocal Cords Out.”

I took off running and it did too.

As I braced for the end a campus security guard came out from the woods.

It's funny, one minute you're fearing for your life, the next your trying to explain very rationally to campus security that the reason you were running away from the drug sniffing dog was you thought it was a wolf trying to kill you.

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Epilogue to the Horror Film

For those of you who haven't skipped right ahead to the play button let me say this week's Cidiot is a little different than normal. It's part of a stand-up set of mine edited specially for Confessions of a Cidiot (as noted by the Cidiot specific intro and extro.)

My girlfriend Amanda has a love of horror movies and from time to time she'll try forcing them on me (a man whose late night imagination and paranoia are not well suited for the genre.) After sitting through one to many I got to thinking...

I could go on with the back story (in fact I already have, but luckily for you my fingers found the backspace key) but really just sit back, hit play and enjoy this special Halloween edition.

I had fun with it and I'm hoping you will too.

(Note: Despite the appearance of a video screen, this is solely an audio presentation. Do not attempt to adjust your internet connection.)

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Pied and Go Seek

I’d like to introduce to you a small village nestled in Norfolk County, Ontario. Granted they didn’t ask me to make this introduction and they might even be shy or bashful in me doing so, but still I feel the need to introduce you.

So meet Waterford, and Waterford meet… my favorite reader.

Waterford, Ontario is home to 2,500 villagers, and if you are to go by one of the strangest opening paragraphs in a Wikipedia article the Yin Family are notable residents being that they are of the rare Chinese variety of Waterfordian’s. They run a Chinese restaurant there, and (if one can assume from their inclusion on Wikipedia) are the talk of the village with sentences that begin with, “do you’s know what them crazy Chinese folk were up to the other day?”

Originally a railroad town along the Canadian Southern line, trains had all but stopped coming to little Waterford at the turn of the 20th century. The village’s growth was halted, and those that remained turned to agriculture.

That is until someone dreamed up Pumpkinfest.

Ah Pumpkinfest, or as the locals call it “Tricking Cidiot’s into Traveling Hours to Fill Some Guilt Ridden Need to Take in Some Agriculture.”

Some four years ago my sister gave into the need. Little is known of how she came to be aware of the pumpkin harvesting festival, though I suppose a lot would be known if I asked her, but picking up a phone and calling her is far above my duty to this column.

Regardless, she convinced my brother and I to pile into the car, whisked away on several hours of journey to the promises of midway games, pumpkin pyramids, and, as my sister promised, “the best tasting pumpkin pie you’ll ever have.”

The promise of pumpkin pie, and the best of our lives at that, was enough to drag us out of the comforts of the city. Before long we were surrounded by the darkness of country roads, and the eventual, inevitable realization that we were lost.

A dimly lit convenient store appeared about this time, the way such a store spookily appear in a slasher flick, first to the relief of the travelers, but before long between blows by an ax they are wishing they had never stopped.

Not to disappoint a man sat on the old convenient stores wood veranda. Perhaps on break from his local militia duties he donned a skinhead and matching camo pants. He glared at us as we approached the store; I was convinced we were heading straight for shallow graves; our bodies months later would become the topic of town conversation.

“Did you hear about them bodies they dug up in old Roy’s tobacco field?”

“Ah, I imagine he’s mighty pissed, all them fascist cops trampling round there he’ll liable miss the harvest.”

Did I mention I graduated with honours from Small Town Stereotyping School? Though that D I got in ‘Introduction to Alabama Inbreeding Jokes’ nearly cost me my diploma.

Needless to say my Cidiot minded fears were not shown to be true, instead we got the much needed directions as well as several packages of salt and sugar laced carbs.

We were back on the road and before long we had arrived, I could practically taste that sweet pumpkin pie.

Before we could dig in my sister insisted we take in the other sights and sounds of Pumpkinfest, a short-lived plan as it seemed we had missed the fest side of things. After lost induced detours we had arrived to late, the midway was closing up. The much raved about parade had long since marched by.

But we could still have pumpkin pie!

No, we couldn’t.

In all the snack shacks and restaurants, and amongst all the fair tents hawking fake tattoos and your name on a grain of rice, there was no pumpkin pie to be found.

We traveled from end to end of the village, but nothing. Lit in the glow of a pumpkin pyramid I could hear the theme music to The Twilight Zone kick in as we gazed across a field to a sign that read “No Pies Available This Year!” In case the exclamation mark added insult to injury a second sign had been tacked on above reading “Sorry”.

The town was pie dry. It didn’t just say ‘No Pumpkin Pie’, it said ‘Pies’. Apple, Strawberry Rhubarb, or Boston Cream. Why if this sign was correct the odds of finding Chicken Pot Pie or even a Pizza Pie were slim to none.

How had such a thing happened? How had an entire village rallied together to ban a delectable treat that had dated back to 2000 BC? What had led to this decision? Some tragic pie related accident that had shocked and horrified the citizens of Waterford? Not even the Nazi’s, whose bans, restrictions and all around authoritarianism has spawned the annoying quip when faced with some new rule, “what is this Nazi Germany?”, had ever gone so far as to ban a pastry.

It didn’t matter what had led to Waterford’s backlash on pies. There were none.

I tell you this story because we had vowed never to return, that is until now. This Friday we’ll return to Waterford’s Pumpkinfest, curious and anxious to see if the Pie Ban of ’03 has yet to be lifted.

I’ll keep you posted, but at least I know if worse comes to worse I can always visit Yin’s Restaurant, serving “Chinese and Canadian food without a buffet!”

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What's In a (Domain) Name?

My name is Derek Robertson, yes, but if you like what you read here and want more you won’t find me at derekrobertson.com. Someone beat me to the punch.

I grew up in a world of Etch A Sketch’s and Pogs, so I wasn’t prepared half a decade later when everyone and their mother bought their own personalized domain name.

Yes, it’s too late for me, but not for my kids. Somewhere in the distant future when my wife (or inappropriately young mistress… what? Accidents happen all the time) suggest a baby name I won’t get bogged down thinking about what sounds good…

“How about Rachel?” she’ll ask

“Rachel? Rachel Robertson? Really? Dot com that and our daughter’s screwed. Unless you’re willing to raise her in the United Kingdom, rachelrobertson.co.uk is available.”

Forget the birth certificate, when my daughter is born the only documentation I want to see is ownership of her new domain name presented to me by the hospital’s IT department.

What can I say, I’m a 21^st Century father and when the time comes for me to force offspring upon this world (sorry world) they can rest easy knowing their shameless self promotion, inane blogs, or if she’s a bit anti-social, pictures of her favorite types of cats from around the world, will have a home at _insert_name_robertson.com.

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Conversion Conversation

There’s a website called Craigslist which, for those of you whose internet usage revolves solely around Confessions of a Cidiot (and in my mind that is all of you), is a website featuring lists. They are on job postings, personal ads, apartments to rent, junk for sale… basically everything that makes up the chunk of the newspaper you grab first when going to build a fire. Presumably there’s also a guy named Craig, a little less popular then Myspace’s Tom and understandably, when was the high stakes world of classifieds a glamorous place?

On Craigslist in the personals category they have a section known as ‘missed connections’. The idea is that one person sees a person they find attractive, but instead of trying the age old method of going up to said person and saying hi, they run home to their computer, write out the event and hope the other person checks Craigslist, reads it, and contacts them.

I really don’t know what the odds are that two socially challenged individuals connect over a ‘missed connection’, though I am not holding my breath for a wedding invitation.

I’m not really a fan of this process, I mean isn’t part of life that awkward surge of adrenaline as you teeter on the edge of rejection during your well planned out speech that went something like, “so um, yeah, I guess I was sort of thinking, um, like, I don’t know, if you’re not busy or whatever, um, maybe we could do something, um you know, together? Sometime, maybe.”

Regardless I have written my own ‘missed connection’, though I am not sure old Craig will run it. It goes like this…

You, late 30’s – early 40 year old balding scientologist, me 22 year old non-believer. Should I have taken you up on your challenge to fight?

I’ll explain this in a moment.

From time to time I am greeted by people who want to stop by my house and see if I am familiar with Jesus. Apparently there is a deep seeded feeling amongst the religious community that my house lives in such a vacuum that even a Mel Gibson movie hasn’t come to my attention.

“Like Jesus Christ Jesus? Or are you talking about a Mexican who just moved into the neighbourhood?” I ask, because I clearly have nothing better to do in life.

“We speak of the Lord and Savior.”

“So that rules out the Mexican?”

They’ll always ask me if they could come in for a few minutes and tell me about their beliefs. This is a strange notion, and I wonder how many people say, “oh yeah, come right on in!” I mean half my friends haven’t even seen the inside of my place, why would I invite someone in who the minute I excuse myself to go to the bathroom they might be spiking my Kool-Aid?

“Try new Kool-Aid mystery flavours! The Kool-Aid where you don’t know what you’ll get till you’re drinking it! Now in Cherry, Grape, and new Jonestown Valium & Cyanide^TM! Oh yeah!”

I did once allow someone to enlighten me on their door to door religious beliefs, but she was very attractive and so I figured, you know, it was only polite to listen.

She told me that there was a prophet on Earth and that once a year he speaks to everyone via satellite. When asked if I would be interested in being a part of all this I replied, “No, but do you know if your prophet is hiring anyone to shoot his next video?”

What? In my industry you always have to be on the look out for the next job.

And then there’s Scientology, a group who I haven’t interacted with much. Once, while I was waiting on a friend, I was asked to sit down and be tested by an E-Meter. Bored and looking for amusement I agreed. Sadly there were no attractive women in the equation this time around.

The man told me to think about different things in life and his little meter went up and down over and over, very theatrically. He took some notes and told me my life was filled with a lot of stress and that he had a ‘cure’ for this. He pulled out two thick books written by one L. Ron Hubbard and told me I should buy them.

A machine to justify you buying over priced books? Genius, why didn’t Amazon.com think of this?

In fact I was so inspired I have been thinking of sitting outside of bars, comedy clubs and theaters I perform at with a ‘C-Meter’ designed to tell you your life lacks comedy and you should probably buy a ticket and come inside.

I’ve never wished any of these people whose beliefs did not go hand and hand with mine any sort of ill will, and up until this weekend they too have treated me with the respect you’d expect from people secure of their place in the afterlife.

So back to my ‘missed connection’, I was walking at the time with my sister and my girlfriend as we passed a tent full of Scientologists selling, yes, books by L. Ron Hubbard.

As we walked by, having our own conversation, the bald man must’ve misunderstood something, or maybe he was just suffering from overexposure to the E-Meter, because he lost it.

Threatening us he demanded we come back and say it to his face. That we didn’t walk away like chickens.

I don’t really know why, or what it was he wanted said to his face, but he was on the verge of becoming a cartoon and erupting in a cloud of smoke.

I guess it must be tough being on the fringes of belief, I guess sometimes it must make you just want to lose it.

So maybe I don’t give my money to your organization, maybe you’re not attractive enough to be invited in for a good old converting session. But can’t we all be friends?

I’d like to leave you with a song I’ve written as inspired by the classic 1970's Buy the World a Coke song, for frustrated pilgrims and prophets everywhere.

On a hilltop in Toronto
I’ve gathered door knocking converters
From all over the world
To bring to you this message
From religious fringe sects
From all over the world
It’s the real thing – Flavor Aid
And they sang…

I’d like to buy the world a temple
And furnish it with love… and life savings
Exit our human vehicles and board a spaceship
And self-immolation

I’d like to teach the world to chant
In perfect harmony
I’d like to buy the world a Flavor Aid
And wash it down with cyanide
That’s the real thing.

I’d like to teach the world to chant
In perfect harmony
I’d like to buy the world a Flavor Aid
And wash it down with cyanide
That’s the real thing.

What the world wants today
Flavor Aid
Is the real thing

What the world wants today
Flavor Aid
Is the real thing

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Train in Vain

I enjoy traveling. I enjoy discovering the slight differences in an otherwise generic string of hotel rooms, in spending hours waiting for a flight, in the way the waiting just slows down your thinking and forces you to take a little time for yourself. Why I differ from your average traveler on the joys of waiting, I am not sure, though this one trip may have something to do with it.

See I once spent twelve hours traveling from Belleville, Ontario to my home in Toronto. For those of you unfamiliar with this distance let me just say that normally, on a normal train ride, you could cross this distance in slightly over an hour. I said just slightly over an hour, not just slightly over twelve hours. Through some quirk in the universe I found myself boarding a train at 7pm and getting off at 7am.

So what happened? Well I’m glad I’ve rhetorically asked myself that, see it began as soon as I had boarded the train in Belleville. No sooner I had sat down then the train started to roll backwards. And it kept going. It wasn’t just a “whoops, through that into reverse” sort of embarrassing lurch backwards before correcting it. It kept going.

A half hour later our reversing stopped. And then we just sat there, in the middle of nowhere, the nearby woods all around us just ever so slightly backlit by the moon in an intimidating ‘your screwed if you leave that train’ sort of manner. We sat there in what quickly became complete silence, after everyone on the train car exhausted looking around and going “what do you think is going on?” and the person next time them replying “I don’t know?”

Finally we got some information as the captain… is it a captain on a train? A pilot? I think it’s an engineer who drives a train… well after a quick research session of typing “who drives a train?” into Google I’m happy to report the first search result is “Brazil's president drives bullet train on private leg…” Since this about exceeds the budget for research I have hear at Confessions of a Cidiot, or really just exceeds my interest in knowing, we’ll have to go with this.

So Brazil’s president comes on the PA system, deciding to fill us in, “Hello everyone. You may have noticed we were traveling backwards there for a little bit…” he seems unsure of this statement, as if perhaps without degrees in train driving we might not have caught this little tidbit for ourselves.

“What happened is this,” continued el presidente as he went from unsure to the tone reserved for a man about to explain to his wife how he ended up smelling like stripper. “Another train broke down out here, and so we’ve, we’ve, well we’ve decided to backup so we could hook the other train onto ours and just pull it on into Toronto!” His confidence building towards the end, before adding for good measure, “so yeah, once we hook the two trains together we should be on our way.”

What our good friend the president of Brazil left out was that no one aboard his train, or that of the train behind us, knew anything about hooking two trains together. This was information that probably would’ve been good for the Prez to know ahead of time, before we say started a half hour trip away from our destination, but now it was to late and none of us 400 passengers were going anywhere until someone figured out the correct way to hook two trains together.

Of course being towards the front of the train we had little idea as to what was transpiring, the attendant in our car every few minutes bitterly informing us it would just be a couple of minutes more. For those of you unfamiliar with Canadian train customer service, each train car is staffed with one attendant who is, surprisingly and what one would assume is a physical impossibility, always a little more bitter then your average bitter flight attendant. She, and it seems to be about 80 percent of the time a she, with 15.5 percent of the time a bald man, and 4.5 percent of the time a man with hair, almost always speaks in a thick French accent. This accent always hints at being a little forced, as if in the hopes that if you think English isn’t their first language you won’t ask stupid questions like “why did you sell more tickets then seats on a train?” (It’s happened) or the more timely “why have we spent two hours on a train and are only further away from our destination then when we started?”

Traveling by train in Canada makes you appreciate flying, in ways you thought not possible in this day and age of liquid fearing, pay us if you want your in-flight meal, and we’ll have to run a background check on you before we give you the plastic knife, airline service.

People began to grow restless, our female attendant and the bald male attendant from a few cars up who had come to help her out began fielding questions from every person missing a connecting train, bus or plane, every person who had a special event to go to that night, or just anyone who didn’t think spending the night in a train not built for overnight service was a fun idea.

“What’s going on?” was the standard question. The attendants sighed (forcing them to interact with a passenger is really asking a lot) before launching into the fact we’d only be a few minutes longer.

The true answer went something more like this: the diligent engineers at the back of the train, with their handy tools for the job, one watt key chain flashlights and all, had finally identified why the concept of hooking one train to another was just so darn tricky. The train from Montreal, the one that had broken down, had at some point along the way collided with a deer. The key clamp that would secure their train to ours was now buried deep under a pile of White Tailed Carcass.

But again we didn’t know all this up in our car. Instead we were greeted with our own personal bad news; the train was out of food to sell us. Well they weren’t completely out of food, but as the bald attendant tried to explain in thick accented English when pressed on the issue, “well, we are not totally out of food, but we do not have enough for everyone, and so we will not sell any of it to anyone. It’s only fair.” The man’s reasoning was not greeted with as much understanding as he seemed to be expecting, perhaps had he explained to us about the mush formally known as deer no one would be quite in the mood for food.

The P.A. system jumped into action again, “hello, this is your president of Brazil speaking (as you can imagine this isn’t a direct quote), what we are going to be doing is pulling forward, then backing into the other train. Thank you for your patience.”

And so we did, for the first time in hours the train began to move forward, then backward. The engineers had decided removing road kill from the front of the locomotive wasn’t in their job description, but perhaps if we backed into the train the force of our train hitting the other would dislodge the deer and we’d be good to go. This line of thinking is perhaps why Hollywood has produced few films where the hero was a brilliant train engineer.

The deer remained stuck, and, as we’d learn later, the engineer radioed up for the train to pull further ahead, then back faster! Nothing, “faster!” the engineer called again. No one ever recounted a story about any crew member wondering if it was such a bright idea to slam two trains together over and over, faster and faster. I suppose possible train derailment is a good alternative to deer guts on the hands.

El presidente took us up to ramming speed on the third pass, and miraculously it did the trick. The two trains were hooked. The funny thing was, in all the commotion in trying to hook our train with good old disabled Train 65, no one thought that once we were hooked up together we’d still have to overcome the mechanical difficulties that plagued the first train in the first place, problems with the brakes.

“We are all hooked up to the other train now; we’ll just be a couple more minutes, thank you for your continued patience.” The PA system ensured us. Somewhere at the back of the train our heroic engineers went to work.

Myself and the girl sitting next to me took this additional couple of minutes to get to know each other. When these ‘couple more minutes’ turned into several long hours we began to find we had learnt more about one another then some family members knew, and we were dangerously low on idle chit chat to pass the time.

Our fellow passengers in the car were starting to get a little paranoid in ways only passengers aboard a train in the 21^st Century could, the best theories on what was really going on it was agreed, were a terrorist attack or a hidden camera reality show.

The reality show theory began to gain steam as a third attendant, this time representing the 4.5 percent young, not yet bald male’s, came aboard our car and informed us every bathroom on the train had been used to capacity, that the septic tanks were full, and that we were going to have to go outside from here on in.

The women aboard our car were outraged, and for the next half hour or so anger over the idea of using the woods as a washroom filled not only our car, but every other car in the train.

Slowly people broke down and gave in, leaving the train they were instructed not to go more then five feet beyond the tracks by attendants who held flashlights on everyone, ensuring no one tried to flee the prison we had all paid to board and make a go of it in the woods.

Every so often a woman would come back in from outside and exclaim “I just urinated in the woods!” and all the other women aboard the car would cheer, as though we had entered a very, very, special edition of Oprah.

I myself eventually gave in and left the train to venture out into the cold January night. Walking past my fellow travelers to a secluded little spot I looked all around at the thick, pitch black wall of forest around us. As I began to unzip I started to do some calculations. I began to run the odds of the fact that maybe I wasn’t a main character in this story; here I was the furthest one away from the door to the car, adjusting the glasses I wore in only the way the first guy to die would. His body mysteriously being dragged into the woods by some unseen force, another passenger, perhaps our hero, seeing me lifelessly disappear into the woods would try to warn others, but who would listen? Not only does the first person to die in a horror movie have the sad fact that he’s dead going for him, his death always goes unnoticed.

I quickly zipped up and returned to the train.

Before long we were finally moving, another half hour we were back in Belleville. Seven hours of traveling and I hadn’t made it an inch closer to home. We stopped well some people were unloaded onto stretchers and the rest of us used the stations washrooms and lone vending machine.

An hour or so later we boarded again. The trip, we were reassured, would not be much longer.

A half hour past Belleville we allowed a freight train to pass us, how this is possible to allow one train to pass another train I may never know, but needless to say as it got past us is broke down. In all seriousness, it stopped dead in front of us. We began the waiting game again.

And so you see to this day I can stand, no, I might even enjoy a red eye from Los Angeles to Toronto with a four hour stop over in South Carolina. At least there’s no deer.

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