It's not polite to stare, but sometimes....

There are many times when your eyes lock onto something or someone and for all the power in the world you just can’t tear your eyes away. I know it is not polite to stare. I was taught that when I was a kid and pretty much adhere to what I was taught as a kid, but sometimes you just can’t help it. I seem to get so curious about things that I find myself not only staring, but then analyzing what I have just witnessed.

You can sometimes see this with rubber neckers on the highway when an accident has occurred and try as you may, you find your own eyes, almost on their on volition locking onto the scene as well. Of course, this behaviour isn’t reserved solely for the highway, there are many instances where you know you shouldn’t stare, but again, try as you may, your eyes zoom in for a second confirming look. This also happens when it comes to fashion sense. I don’t get in trouble too much anymore, now that I have the troika of fashion police living at home with me. I have had my alertness honed to the point that all I need is one quick glance cast in my general direction that will send me scurrying back in my room to change the offending outfit.

I know it is beyond me to reproach people about fashion and the manner of their dress. When I was younger, if I had a function to go to, the extent of my fashion sensibility was to make sure that I wore the cleanest jeans that I could find on the floor. These were hopefully the ones without 6 months of cigarette ash rubbed into the thigh. If it was a really formal affair I would have at least put a pile of books on those jeans to put a nice crease down the front of the leg. Nothing but the best was my motto. But I was at one of those big box stores the other day and I found myself in wonder as I watched people drifting by in what appeared to be their pajamas. I looked for any signs proclaiming, “Pajama Bargain Days” or something, but there were none. I would have stood there forever with my jaw hanging down if it were not for a quick jab to the ribs from my wife and an admonishment not to stare.

Closer to home, we were eating supper the other night, just the four of us at the table now that my son is engaged and living away from home. We were having a late summer meal of corn-on-the-cob, nothing offside about that. I was just tucking into my cob when I looked around the table and saw my wife and youngest daughter nibbling away on their cobs after applying the required amount of butter, salt and pepper. Each of them proceeding down the length of the cob with their teeth moving in a rhythmic workmanlike fashion. But something struck me odd about our eldest daughter as she ate her cob. That was when I was locked into a stare. Something was not quite right in what I was staring at, but nothing seemed to register on me what it was. I felt like a character in a Stephen King novel. You know the character I am talking about. He is always the one who is staring at something intently just before the head explodes and a creature comes charging out of the blood spurting neck. I didn’t really expect that to happen, but I was preparing myself nonetheless. Then it struck me what was wrong. She was eating the corn off the cob in an entirely unacceptable manner. She wasn’t eating down the row of corn, she was eating around the cob, over the top. She stopped in mid bite when she sensed I was staring at her. “What?” She asked inquisitively. ”Do I have something on my chin?”. “Why are you eating your corn that way?” I didn’t try and sound too accusatory, then I illustrated what I meant. She just shrugged her shoulder and said, “I don’t know, I just like to eat it that way”. “But that’s not the way to eat corn on the cob. We all know that. Didn’t you ever see the old cartoon where they eat the corn like it was a typewriter and it dinged at the end and then they started on the next line? That is the proper way to eat corn-on-the-cob”. She fixed me in a stare that my daughter always uses when she puts me in my place. “First of all, what’s a typewriter?” She always knows how to hit deep. “Secondly, if it happened in a cartoon before the Simpson’s it doesn’t count and finally, I didn’t know there were rules about eating corn. I thought it was more a matter of nutrition than it was in following a set of arbitrary rules as set down by some fictional animated rendering that came from an age where grown up people thought the height of hilarity was watching a duck with a speech impediment dressed up in clothes and talking like a human.” It was at that point I realized we shouldn’t have sent her off to university to develop her critical thinking after all.

I did eventually tear my eyes away, even before I got a jab in the ribs from my wife, but I did punctuate my point. At the end of every row on my corn-on-the-cob I dinged and started on the next row down. Let her stare for a bit.

A Quintessential What?

What would it take to be considered a quintessential Kingstonian? The only benchmark that I have ever heard of is how many generations of ancestor’s you have buried in Cataraqui Cemetery. That in itself is kind of limiting if you consider what the population of Kingston was 5 or 6 generations ago. According to the research carried out at the storied Institute of Higher Lernin’, located in my basement, a generation can be defined as anything ranging from 25 years to 40 years, whereas most genealogists now reckon the length to be around 35 years. That would make the population of Kingston about 3,500 people in the 1830's or if you exclude the Irish, the English and the drunks, just about two people. Consider also the death and pestilence of that era, and the lure of the big cities up and down the river, it certainly doesn’t lead to THAT many people who could leave their footprints behind allowing future generations to call themselves true Kingstonian’s. Another deciding factor could be if your family bears a street name, that would certainly identify you, unless of course your street has come onto hard times and it is now located in a particularly scuzzy part of town that you really don’t want to be identified with it. I won’t name any streets for fear of alienating some people (ever vigilant of political correctness around here) or group of people . Even an historical street name doesn’t seem to be sacred anymore, in these times of budgetary constraints, things have a tendency to go up for sale in the city. Given this atmosphere, even your street name might not last another few years. In my view, having your family’s bones buried up on the hill could be paralleled to what New Yorkers called the “Café Society” in the 1950's. These were prominent families in New York’s high society, some of whom had ancestors that landed at Plymouth Rock. However, their bank accounts were depleted long before their heritage ever would be and they continued to dine out on their name alone. In the case of this hometown, just because there is a weathered headstone over in the cemetery, certainly doesn’t make you that much more of a Kingstonian than anyone else. Although counting corpses in a cemetery is well, a kind of Kingstonian thing to do.

Just down the road in Gananoque, they have a much more succinct way of describing their own. It is said that unless you were born on your Grandmother’s kitchen table, you are not a Gananaquian. No quibbling over generations there, just kind of a dinner-ending thought to your kids meal if they happen to be dining at your Granny’s table one evening. Pierre Burton famously got into the act of defining what is Canadian by saying that only a true Canadian knows how to make love in a canoe. I think of the millions of words he had written over his life span and these are the ones that most Canadians are familiar with. Hell, when it comes to canoes, I can barely carry one, let alone make love in one. With my luck, I would be complimented on my technique when I was truly only trying to keep my balance. I get downright Homer Simpsonish when it comes to canoes. “Oooo. Both ends are pointy. Which end goes first?” Molson’s got in on the act as well with their, “I Am Canadian” television commercial first aired in 2000. Although, “Joe” mostly defined what he was not, he certainly got the message across. More recently the Ferguson Brothers, Ian and Doug produced an hysterical book entitled “ How to Be A Canadian”. I sometimes think this should be required reading for many of our citizens and newcomers alike.

I have gotten away from the root question, though. What makes a quintessential Kingstonian? I certainly feel I am a Kingstonian. I, along with my numerous brothers and sisters were born and raised here even though my family are relative newcomers on the block when it comes to Cataraqui Cemetery. However, in light of this argument I must note that, I do not plan on moving in there at any time soon just so that my kids can gain another generation in the place. I guess I could list some of the esoteric qualities that we, as Kingstonian’s all like to exude, our love of the water being one of them, or I could mention some of the negatives qualities, that maybe we are as a community, tied to the past with no vision of the future. I don’t know how many times I have read in the media that people from outside Kingston repeatedly and reportedly have said, “Nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there”. This is very similar to my feelings about Cataraqui Cemetery.

Well, maybe that is what makes a quintessential Kingstonian. Maybe it is our doggedness to stay here in light of our city’s squandered growth opportunities, or our desire to maybe hold on tightly to our past while others seemingly throw it away for the shiny and new. Our willingness to forsake success for comfort, to disregard the unknown for the known. Even our willingness to look at prisons for their architectural value and not reflect on their criminal contributions to our town might qualify us. I am certainly not an expert on who should or should not be considered a Kingstonian, personally I think it what resides in the heart and not what resides in a particular cemetery that should qualify you. We have often been accused of being a bit cliquish and elitist and in many ways we are. How can we not be? It is not our fault that we see life as the big picture and not count on the immediate and sometimes temporary results that many of our other Canadian cities demand. Maybe we just live on tried and true. How is that for being an elitist?