Wednesday Morning 3 A.M..

At three in the morning, your mind enjoys the freedom of unrestricted access to all the crooks and crannies of your brain and wanders wherever the heck it wants to wander.  Sometimes it will take on a jaunty ride through past memories, sometimes projecting itself into a future of happiness and bliss.  However, on occasion when it is feeling particularly nasty, it seeks out with  seemingly laser focus, those hidden negative thoughts and holds onto them like burrs on a wool sock.

When you are lying there, pretty well unprotected in your cozy bed, there is a certain level of trust that nothing will happen to you. You certainly don't expect something like a meteor to come crashing through your ceiling and squashing you like an ant. No, you feel safe... serene... cocooned in a warm blanket, silence all around and a soothing darkness to lull you to sleep. Well, sometimes you feel that way.

Just a while ago I was in a similar situation, in bed, a fluffy duvet keeping me toasty warm with the window cracked open a bit to let some fresh cool air in the room. The in-room humidifier was emitting a soft steady whirling sound and sending a stream of moisturized air into the room. My wife was softly breathing beside me and except for the fact I was awake at the aforementioned three a.m. everything was good. Yes, everything up to that point was good.  Then it happened.

I was just falling back to sleep when I thought I heard my wife murmur something. It certainly sounded like her voice. She has been known to talk in her sleep and even once I was awaken by her meowing like a cat.  But I love her, so you put up with that sort of thing every now and then.  Anyway, this time what she said was kind of inaudible, but I was pretty sure she said something.  I lay there straining my ears in the darkness wondering if I had just imagined the voice.

Then I heard it again. This time I was sure she said, "Ghill'em". "Ghill'em?" I repeated in my head. What the heck is ghill'em?  Then as I was trying to process this, out of the darkness I heard her again. This time slightly different but still sounding like my wife. It was more like, "Ghnow".

"Ghill'em ghnow"?  I rolled the words over and over again in my mind, changing the emphasis and the inflection.  Then suddenly, as if a light was switched on, I knew what she was saying wasn't "Ghill'em ghnow", it was "Kill him now!"

No doubt about it, she said kill him now!  What did I do that was so wrong? Sure, I haven't always been the perfect husband, but getting killed for that was a bit over the top, in my own personal opinion. Any prospect of sleep was gone now.  It is not an easy task to close your eyes with the thought that you might not ever open them again, especially if someone with murderous intent lying there not a foot away from you. I glanced to my side and in the darkness I could make out my wife seemingly sleeping, unmoving, breathing softly without even a mew emitting from her lips. 

Unsure of anything, I lay there,  my eyes clicking back and forth in their sockets, my body unmoving, but ready to evade any impending attack. As I sat pondering this situation, again out of the darkness I again heard, "Ghill'em ghnow".

I sat bolt upright in bed, my arms akimbo like an avenging Ninja. I may have let out a manly squeak or two, I'm still not sure.  And then again, "Ghill'em ghnow".  But from my new perspective of sitting upright, I found the sound came not from my wife's lips but from across the room. So using my three in the morning brain I quickly deduced it was one of two things; that either my wife had become an expert ventriloquist between the time she went to bed and three in the morning or there was a ghostly presence in the room. A ghostly presence with murderous thoughts. Surely these are the most reasonable explanations, what else could it be?

Of course, the idea that my wife's' voice as she slept was uncannily similar to the sound of the humidifier gurgling as air bubbles made their way into the reservoir didn't even register on my ragged mind. That didn't occur to me until hours later when my wife woke from her sleep and stumbled from bed to make her morning coffee. By then I was rather tired of sitting up with arms akimbo for the previous 3 hours. Six in the morning brain is a little more functional than the three in the morning brain. So it soon became clear to me that hearing the humidifier threatening me with murder when my wife wasn't even in the room might be the most logical of answers.

This isn't as rare, or as crazy as it sounds as many people can see the man in the moon where there are just shadows and light, or interpreting the lyrics of "Louie, Louie" as somewhat pornographic when they aren't or right down to detecting murderous thoughts from a humidifier impersonating your wife. But in case I do end up dead, you'll know it wasn't the heat that killed me, it was the humidity.

Stuff

I've got too much stuff.  It's funny that after years of a relentless pursuit in the acquisition of stuff, now all I want to do is get rid of it. The hang-up is, I just can't throw it away, it's good stuff, that's why I kept it in the first place. For sure, there is stuff that could go if I was a heartless human being. Children's' drawings, if you can call crayon scribbles on a 24" x 24'' piece of  kraft paper a drawing, is a prime example. These renderings haven't seen the light of day in decades, but yet, there they sit. Years of Mothers and Fathers Day hand crafted cards, notebooks from every year of public school and virtually anything that touched their hands have found their way into bins of untouched memories.  The matters only get worse when you have more than one child, in our case it was times three.  I once offered to return theses masterpieces to their creators but every one of them gave me that, 'you're not pawning them off on me' kind of glance. We did try and go through them once, but all that really accomplished was me getting all misty eyed. Not necessarily from the memories, but from the mould and dust that wafted up.

I am sure if I went back 50 years and told myself that the accumulation of stuff would become a problem in my later years, my response would be something like. "Old man, go back to the future. Can't you see I'm a carefree child of the 60's?"  I was not a very perceptive  kid back then, or now, for that matter.  But yes, the seeds of accumulating stuff were planted back then.  As an example, back in the sixties between my cousins and I, we had enough GI Joe's and related gear to fill far more than the 4 footlockers we already had.  We likely had enough troop compliments and associated equipment to serve as an actual battalion and even then, we didn't stop collecting.

I don't know why as young adults the acquisition of stuff was so important. But, it certainly seemed to be important at the time.  Perhaps it was a keeping up with the Jones' type of thing, or perhaps more likely, keeping ahead of the Jones'. "What do you mean, you don't have this stuff?" Of course, that was the era where your stuff defined who you were. Every young upward professional (affectionately known as yuppies) had to have this stuff.

To compound the problem, I am the type of person who infrequently loses things and rarely breaks things.  Even if something did break, I would think, 'well that is easy to repair. I'll just save it and fix it later'. I have a graveyard, or should I say a stuff infirmary, of slightly damaged goods piling up in the basement awaiting treatment.

As my wife never tires of pointing out, the same applies to the relentless game of keeping up with technology. Every time the latest and the greatest came out, the oldest and the lamest was delegated to the basement to begin its second career as a space occupier and dust collector. I have bins of tech stuff'; power cords, AC adapters of every possible output, floppy disks and hard drives with an astonishing capacity of 250 megabytes. The kind of things that you know, might come in handy someday. 

I wrote a story a while back, where the only technology that wasn't hackable or part of the internet of things, were all those old tech products that didn't have a backdoor built into them by the nefarious antagonist (not named Bill Gates) who felt if he could control all technology he could easily dominate the world.  The heroes of the day used all of those old computers and cell phones that were collecting dust in basements around the world  to win the day and save humanity.  Although, when I laid this scenario onto my ever skeptical wife as the reason for saving all this stuff, she was not very understanding or confident of my prognostic abilities.

If I went back in time once more to that same non-perceptive kid and asked him if he could believe that in 50 years, entrepreneurs would seize upon the populations need for accumulating stuff and would build a multi-billion dollar business from it.  To imagine that they would build utilitarian boxed buildings so people who had no room left at home for their stuff could load it all in a car or truck and move it to another place to store it. Then to top things off, people would actually pay somebody to let them save their stuff.  I am sure he wouldn't care, cause you know, he was 13 and wouldn't have a clue what an entrepreneur was and as was pointed out early, wasn't really perceptive enough to even care about things like that.

But even if an adult was asked the same question back then, I am sure they would have laughed in my face and pointed out that you can never have enough stuff.  As for paying someone to let you save stuff? Well, I'm sure they would fall back to the belief that a fool and his money would soon be parted.  Just looking at the number of storage buildings around the country today, I guess there are a lot of fools out there, me included.

Relatively Crazy

The world is a crazy place and seems to be getting crazier by the minute. It's not that the crazy train hasn't been riding the rails for years, but similar to the new normal of our weather patterns, the crazies get wilder, more extreme and more unpredictable with each advancing day. It would not particularly surprise me if it was announced that North Korea allowed their citizens access to news on American airwaves just so Kim Jong-Un could point at the American President and say, "See? It's not me who's crazy. That guy gives crazy a whole new meaning!"

Even here in Kingston some people may think the crazies have touched down. We now have everything in place to construct the third crossing. To many out-of-towners, I'm sure when they are first exposed to our constant dialogue about the Third Crossing, they must imagine some sort of historical, religious or political event that has had a profound effect on the people of our city. Once it's found to be just a bridge construction, I am sure they would be a bit disappointed. This bridge construction is something that has been poked, prodded, studied, debated, written about, argued about, vilified, glorified, cursed and praised and now it's fact. More mental energy has been wasted on this project than almost any local issue I can remember.

As Billy Joel so aptly put it in his 1989 hit, "We Didn't Start the Fire", the crazies didn't start in today's world and I'm sure if he felt inclined, he could have started his song lyrics long before 1949, the year of his birth.  I'm sure our friend Oog, that loveable caveman, thought that his buddy was, to put in today's vernacular, totally cra-cra when he started to cook meat. Crazy is all relative, but I should point out that not all relatives are crazy.

Technology has certainly lent itself to the advances of crazy. I look at the behaviour of many people today and if one were to transplant that behaviour to 20 or 30 years ago people would be looking at them and at the same time doing the cuckoo bird salute, twirling their fingers beside their temples. A lot of people seem to shut out the world, sequestering themselves in their houses. Their only link to the outside world is a computer, tablet or phone screen. Even when they venture outside, the world is shut out. The wander the sidewalks with ear buds in their ears and eyes averted downward to phones, stumbling blindly into telephone poles, traffic or other people. Perhaps, if they activated their cameras on the phone, they could watch where they are going on their screens, then update their progress on Instagram.

The relativity of things, is not new, it existed long before Einstein developed his theory, we just didn't recognize it. But that is true of many things. In absolute terms time is, at least to our current knowledge, pretty linear. A year is a year no matter which way you look at it. Just the same as a decade is 10 years and a millennium is a 1,000 years. It doesn't speed up or slow down (within reason). But what happens during those periods vary. Advances in science, society and structures have grown by leaps and bounds.

I often befuddle myself, which I may point out before anyone else does, is a fairly easy task, when I think about music and its relativity. Today's kids, be they as young as 4 or 5 into even their 30's likely all recognize and perhaps even actively listen to music from the 1950's and 1960's; the Beatles, the Stones, Elvis, Buddy Holly or any number of artists. In some cases this is reaching back as much as 60 years in some cases, but the music does seem as fresh and as innovative as ever. If I were to apply this time line to myself when I was 18 and at the height of my musical awareness and music had its strongest influence over me and I reached back even 40 -50 years in musical history, this would like groovin' to the megaphone tunes of Al Jolson or Rudy Valee and the Connecticut Yankees. Social outcast, I likely would have been. It was hard enough to even acknowledge that you listened to the Beach Boys back in the '70's.

Perhaps this can be attributed to the music from those periods being so readily available online and in pop culture. Music is so much more accessible today as compared to my day. In those days if you wanted to listen to Al Jolson you had to pray that your grandfather still had some disks for the Victrola or bang it out on the parlour room piano if you had the sheet music.  

But just as crazy is relative and music is relative, so is the rest of life.  There are always two sides to every issue, just as there are two sides to every coin. There wouldn't be one without the other. Whether this is good or bad is a whole other debate, relatively speaking.  

Lotto Love

I never thought I was a particularly lucky guy. For a someone named Patrick and with Irish heritage, you would think my cup would be runneth over with fortuitous events and whiskey. But no, my cup is bereft on luck and has been empty of whiskey for many years now. My experience with any sort of lottery certainly seems to support this. My wife and I have purchased a dream home lottery ticket or two every year for 30 years now. Nada winnings. But we get to the enjoy the fact that all the money raised through this particular lottery stays in the community and does benefit many organizations and hospitals. But to be brutally honest, I would rather have the house.  

Fate, as it is wont to do, decided to accentuate the point by gifting my son and his wife who bought a ticket for the first time last year to promptly win a cash prize of $1,000. That was very nice for them and I wished them all the congratulations that a good father does, but to be again brutally honest, I would rather it had been me.

Lotteries are a big thing not only in this country, but also world-wide. Just recently someone in South Carolina won $1.6 Billion. That's Billion with a B. The obvious question is, who needs that much money, which is equivalent to the combined GDP of a few dozen countries? Well, I can honestly say, me. I mean it is only fair, right? There I am week after week, paying a voluntary tax to the Government of Ontario by buying a tickets to any number of draws. I am pinning my dreams on something that quite proudly declares that there is only a 1 in 36,000,000 chance of winning. Even on my most optimistic days, I acknowledge that to be pretty steep odds against me. I have always thought of this as a cheap form of entertainment, which it must be, as it is certainly not a well thought out plan for retirement.

My brother-in-law has played the same lottery numbers for every draw over the last 30 years. That's a lot of draws and a lot of serious dedication to playing the odds.  He is to the point that he is mortified if he would ever, ever miss a draw. He knows that as soon as he missed a draw, his numbers would come up.  This kind of handcuffs him to eternity. I am sure he is at the point that when he checks his numbers the morning after the draw, he exclaims to no one in particular, "Oh come on! 30 years! Just throw me bone, okay?" He too, likely has some choice words for Fate.

Some people do have all the luck, with lotteries that is.  There was a Winnipeg man who won a $2 Million lottery 5 months after winning $1.5 Million lottery.  Again, an example of Fate just having some fun with me. But on the other side of the coin, countless men and women who have won lotteries have reported that their lives were ruined from their winnings. Bankruptcies, dishonest people coming out of the woodwork, divorces and destroyed relationships abound amongst some lottery winners. Which also sounds disarmingly like the members of the  House of Commons. This certainly does put an exclamation mark of caution on an already cautionary tale. But it also makes a point that if you're a bit messed up when you have no money, you'll still be a bit messed up with money. But, I wouldn't let a lottery win change me. I'll still be that same slightly irritating know-it-all I've always been.

I have read many biographies over the recent years, covering the gamut of Hollywood stars, rock musicians, entrepreneurs and scientists. In most books that I have read involving scientists or entrepreneurs, they rarely have an instances where they would need to be in the right place and right time.  There is just too much slogging through the mundane aspects of the mechanics of science or the ups and downs of establishing a new industry or product. Their good fortune usually takes the form of an experiment or concept gone wrong  that results in an experiment or concept gone right out of pure luck.

With music and entertainment stars, almost all report that they were in the right place at the right time to catch whatever the wave was that propelled them to stardom.  Harrison Ford is an example of that. He was building bookshelves in George Lucas' house when Lucas noticed him and cast him in a small role in "American Graffiti".  We all know what that led to. Graham Nash of Crosby, Stills and Nash was just another guy singing harmonies on a street corner until he caught the attention of his idols, the Everly Brothers who were on tour in England. They liked his sound and eventually so did the rest of the world.

I don't think I have ever been in the right place at the right time for anything. Well, maybe on my wedding day and of course for the conception of our children, which for the record has had a pretty lucky outcome.

I think the big secret is having the feel of what places might just happen to be the right place to be. To be honest, I'm not even sure Kingston has a right place to be at the right time for fame and riches outside of a lottery win. But I am willing to give it a go if luck wants to shine a little love on me.

Love and Marriage

I've been getting a lot of "Wow's" from younger women recently. On paper that sounds pretty impressive, but in reality I admit it is not from my youthful looks or from my killer physique. In fact, the only thing my physique is currently killing is myself.  No, the compliments come when they find out I have been married to the same woman for 37 years. Invariably, that is followed by the observation that I've been married longer than they have been alive. Younger women can sometimes be so cruel. I'm sure they didn't mean to cause any offense, but once a man gets into his 60's, his ego becomes as fragile as, well, the ego of a man in his 60's.

However, they do have a point, 37 years is a lifetime for some. It is easily more than half my lifetime that I have been married. It kind of astounds me as well that I would be with the same person I met at university in 1976. How and why did I look at her and somehow make a decision that I should get to know her better. If you reflect on what force, cosmic or otherwise, which would cause a person to look at another person and make a decision to be with them for the rest of your life is rather mind-boggling. Rather frightening as well, because I would say that 90% of the decisions made in my 20's were abysmally wrong.

There are many, many factors on which a relationship can be built. Lust has been the start of some marriages and while the fires of lust burn very brightly and passionately, generally the flames are pretty short-lived. The well of lust can be a bit shallow and likely drained rapidly if that is the only thing that feeds a relationship. Lustful attraction although alluring and somewhat blinding, can be fleeting and easily replaced by another more shiny object.

Love, besides being that of a many splendored thing, is of course a main ingredient in all marriages. But love, like other things, can be ever evolving and changing. What used to produce waves of seemingly endless love can often turn into a drone of tolerance or hateful resentment.  Love can fade away, I mean I used to love Kraft Dinner as a student, now I get shivers up my spine just thinking about it.

There are cultural and societal reasons for marriage, but often these very reasons for marriage are also the reason why many people stay, or are forced to stay, in relationships that aren't healthy to either party. Marriages of convenience are not always that convenient to all involved.

I am certainly not saying that marriages based on lust, love or societal/cultural relationships won't stand the test of time.  I'm sure there are numerous examples of each of these which have endured and will endure. In my opinion, they are just not the critical factors which makes a lasting marriage work.

Over time in all healthy relationships, I becomes we, decisions are made on the basis of how each will be affected and self-centredness gives way to understanding and empathy for the other. By the time you get to over 30's years of marriage, you might just as well through up your hands on individuality and admit you have merged into one being. In the words of the Borg (not Bjorn), you will be assimilated.

Every marriage has a series of peaks and valleys. Hopefully, there are more peaks than valleys for it to work successfully. But if the valley just seems to go on forever with no looming mountain ranges in sight, it is understandable that someone may have to find another route to happiness. My wife and I have had our valleys, that I am not denying. Not everything has been roses and sunshine. But it is a matter of how these setbacks are dealt with and the commitment to work through these difficulties that help feed our relationship and longevity.

To me, however, beyond lust, love and societal factors, the thing that makes everything work is friendship. Having respect for your partner, valuing their opinion on everything and simply being able to enjoy their presence is in my opinion,  the trait which outweighs all the others. Yes, there are all those other elements that keep things going, ebbing and flowing at different times in a relationship. However, without rock solid basis of a friendship underlying all of these influences, everything else will wash away. If a bridge spanning a river is built on a sand or clay base, it will eventually wash away with the changing currents and the bridge will crumble into the water, so too in a marriage without friendship.

To most couples, at least those with children,  there are three phases in any long term marriage. Your life before children, your life with children and your life after children. All are distinct and different from one another and all carry their own challenges in any relationship.

The value of being friends is never more pronounced than it is once your children have moved out leaving just the two of you after twenty odd years of having children always around.  In those child-rearing days there was always a buffer between you and your spouse, always a third or fourth person to talk to, complain to or more than likely, complain about. Once, they have flown the coop, it's once again just the two of you looking each other in the eye. At that point you better hope you are good friends or it could make for a very long, quiet existence. But to hedge your bets, just  make sure you have two TV sets in your home.