Repurposing

So at some point last year - I think it was like midsummer (and that's a guess, i totally don't remember), the Carriage that attaches to the chain that moves the door on my garage door opener broke. the opener still worked, but the stopper had broken off, so it was pretty crippled. I eventually just disabled it, and have working the door manually ever since.

Cue the last month or so re-orging my garage. I've been pulling out garbage, combining like things and redistributing hardware, moving the stupid shelves to the other wall and lowering them to be a great workbench - topped with an old discarded tabletop; set up an old kid's computer desk with castors to live anew as a rolling tool bench; took the LCD TV that worked intermittently, and as such was replaced in the house front room and set it up over the desk, attached to a Roku we don't use anymore to play Youtube videos, and have a 12 year-old laptop running Windows 10 - barely - hooked to a 17" flat screen monitor mounted on a swing-arm we didn't have a use for in the house.

It's been pretty productive, and I have a great shop space that didn't cost very much to build up. Already run a handful of wildly successful projects out of it; it's nice when you need to do a little job that should take 15 minutes, you don't start by spending 45 trying to find something in a dump. Gives me a great place to maintain the bikes, too.

And there it was. I'd forgotten about it. Up in the overhead storage was a Chamberlain WhisperDrive Opener, Still in the box. been there for like 2 years... but it was purchased in like 2008... and never used. Long story.

So anyway - there's my fix. i spent the last couple days replacing it, pulled the old Genie (which is, technically, newer than the chamberlain, probably - assuming it was new-installed when the house was built in '09 - but a crappy little no-feature stock model) out of the ceiling, and it's laying on the floor all forlorn whilst I set up and tweak the... well, new one.

Another handy feature of my garage is the block-and-tackle hoist for the Wrangler hard top. It makes lifting the hardtop into the ceiling for storage a one-person, one-handed job. i just pull on the string and up it comes. hardly feels like it weighs anything.

So anyway, i'm kinda working and thinking about next steps and I think well, i'll do this and this and then dismantle that genie for scrap, too bad, It turns the chain great, just the doorstop is busted, and I have no need for...

... for...

... for...

a remote-controlled electric-powered 3/4 horsepower chain-drive winch.

That I can mount anywhere and use my Bike repair tools to make the chain any length I want.

And then I looked at that block and tackle hoist.... specifically the empty piece of wall, above the electrical outlet I installed a month ago, where the hoist rope is coiled, loosely.

Soon as I can get my hands on a spare rear bicycle wheel, that sucker gonna be electric and remote-controlled.

AnNOTymity

I lived in Edmonton, Alberta, on and off for about a dozen years.

Oh, stop. It's not as bad as you think. Sure, it's pretty far north, but the winters aren't actually as bad as, say, Winnipeg, even with the annual week-straight-of-30-below-Celsius.

Every February. and that doesn't include wind chill.

There were lots of great things about Edmonton. Aside from meeting my wife there. Summers are pleasantly hot, and the sun stays up a long, long time.

While that doesn't bode well for drive-in theaters - and yes, it turns out those are still a thing - it's very good for street festivals.

Edmonton has a lot of street festivals in summer. I attended them sometimes.

The riskiest street festival for shy, retiring types like me is the Street Performers festival. Usually runs a week in Mid July, all over downtown and Whyte Avenue. The cool places to be in Edmonton. They absolutely thrive on crowd participation.

I may have mentioned in the past that I tend to stick out in crowds. It has to do with being five-foot-sixteen and having not seen the underside of 200 pounds since before I could drive.

Back when I was still The Guy With the Calves, we decided to meet my friend Pats, from school, on Whyte, and head over to the Gazebo and catch a street performance. Dr. Wilbert McIntyre Park in old Strathcona features a paved gathering area with a low, grassy hillside, forming a shallow bowl, with the eponymous gazebo set atop on one side. I selected a position opposite the gazebo up slope on the grass, facing the (very slightly raised) stage, and sat.

Pats looked at me. "Will we be able to see?" Pats, tiny slip of a blonde at 5'1", worried about things like that.

"We're fine," I said. "besides - if I stand up, they'll pull me out of the crowd," I told her. I had a history of that sort of thing, and had learned to at least try to take steps.

Turns out it didn't help.

"Okay, good," Pats told us. "I have to try not to laugh. I just had gum surgery yesterday, and it still hurts."

It's these little hints about oncoming calamity that I routinely get - and don't realize until afterward -  that stick with me the most. It's the "shoulda saw that coming" effect.

The show started. My anonymity in my crouched, knees-up seat and my wrap-around gargoyle sunglasses lasted maybe two minutes.

One performer was narrating, and introduced the story about a Terrible Bear. The other, a little wiry guy, had strapped a pair of wooden platforms to his feet, giving him a six inch lift and a LOT of surface area to satisfactorily clomp around on.

He was accosting members of the crowd, towering over them intimidatingly on his clompers and dressing them down, as the rest of the crowd laughed. And he was heading in my direction.

He clomped up the gentle slope to me. "GET UP!" he screamed.

I gave him That Look, over the top of my sunglasses. It didn't work. "I SAID GET UP!!"

"You really don't want me to do that," I said, Very Quietly, in my Calm Voice, so only he could hear.
Pats could too, and was making strange noises trying to suppress giggles.

But that didn't work either. He was quite insistent. So I rolled on to my feet and stood up.

Slowly. 

His expression started to change as my eye level reached his... and kept going. The crowd was dead silent - except Pats - she was trying not to choke, since she saw it coming.

The guy was amazing. His expression drained into shock and then it only took a beat for him to switch gears when I finally stopped growing in from of him. "Warned you," I said.

He reached way up and patted me on the shoulder in a Very Friendly Way, and asked me if I was having a good day and enjoying myself, in a Very Pleasant Tone.

The Crowd absolutely rolled. Pats had tears streaming down her face.

I said of course I was, thank you. And sat back down.

The story was about how the Terrible Bear wanted to enlist a bear army to take over the forest. He pulled two conscripts out of the crowd . There was NO way I was going to get away with not being one of them. I just rolled with it. One of the hands offered me a mike.

"Don't need it" I said. The Bear shot me a look. Ten yards away up the slope, Pats was still tearing up laughing so hard. She knew what was coming there, too.

About a thousand years ago I was in another army - the Canadian one. They used to have me call drill as the entire 130-strong formation could conveniently hear me. Once, in formation, the Sergeant yelled out for me to call time - we were marching in place and his back was to a long, brick wall. I pointed my voice at the wall, and started. Nearly knocked him over - to the point that he looked over his shoulder.

Microphones. Pish.

The Bear wanted us to repeat the Bear Oath. "Repeat after me," He shouted into his mike. So I did.

The Crack of the first word that followed was recorded by the University of Alberta Geology Department, some 15 blocks west, as a Six on the Richter scale.

Well, okay, maybe not. But the Bear, his back to me, Flinched. The Crowd roared even more, some gasping for air. Pats was rolling around on the grass, holding her mouth.

We eventually managed to complete the story, capturing princesses, and resolving the plot to the absolute hysteria of the assembled mass. Once complete, the Bear and the Narrator - and a number of people from the crowd - still laughing - were lavish with their praise. I told The Bear that the standing up thing worked only because he was a little down slope from me.

It took a while before Pats could stop laughing at me, let alone talk. She might even have forgiven me by now. She's a successful professional; still lives... well, in the suburbs. She works in downtown Edmonton, though.

Wonder if she still hits the street performers. I wonder if her mouth feels better yet...

Crows

The Blue Mule was a 1971 Ford F-150 4X4 lovingly cared for by our next door neighbour in The Sticks, Challs.

Challs was a lot like Dad in that he was... and probably still is... and avid Outdoorsman. They hunted and fished together a lot. I went with them a lot, too.

He also kept his house, yard, and equipment very well. Very handy,  organized and energetic - and young. Things Dad really wasn't.

The Blue Mule was in absolutely showroom condition from the day we moved to the Sticks, to the day I left for the Army, 11 years later. Challs was always puttering with it, wheel off doing the brakes, or painting the undercarriage, or just washing it.

It was summertime in the Sticks, and, since I have to guess, I'd say I was about 10. My older sister Kat and I were playing aggravation out on the front lawn.

In the late 70s, aggravation was a board game for 2 to 4 people consisting of a set of four marbles for each player. The object was to get you marbles to your home setting using moves around the board from a roll of the dice - wilst your opponent sent you back to your start by landing on you.. It's rather a lot like the Trouble® board game my youngest loves to play with us - except for the clicky-poppy-dice-dome thing.

It was probably the precursor to that, as a matter of fact, but I, as usual, digress.

Challs rolled up during the game, and shouted out the window of the Blue Mule "You guys want a coupla crows?"

Well, Kat and I just looked at each other and dropped everything.

Kat loved animals. Pretty much more than people. That would become more obvious as time wore on.

I suspect it was she knew were she stood with animals, and they didn't disappoint her very often.

In reasonably short order we had the crows set up in a portable pen fashioned out of milk crates, complete with nesting materiel, water and food dishes, and the usual newspaper liner for waste disposal. Kat had come up with the names Po and Blue for them. She claimed the names were a literary reference - but a reference to what... well, I've never figured that out.

The names worked tho. Po was the older of the siblings; just about ready to fly, much more stand-offish and really good at faking self-reliance. Blue, not so much. it took a couple weeks to coax him...

Um. Parenthetical point. To this day I don't know what sex those birds were, and at age 10 I had no way of knowing. I'm pretty sure we just assumed they were males and went with it.

Anyway, it took weeks to coax Blue into the air, and then only for short distances. We had a pretty big back yard, and we started teaching them to fly as soon as they'd regained some strength... and some trust.

Every day Po would watch us teaching Blue. He'd watch from 12 feet up one of our pine trees.

And every night he'd fly back down to sleep in the crate, safely tucked away from the neighbourhood cats.

We had them until around mid August. It may have been later in the summer than that, but it doesn't really matter. They'd just about outgrown their milk crates when we took them to Wasa Lake. We took them to set them free.

Having set up our camp, I took the crates and opened them, and just left the crows to make their own decisions. They both flew up to the same tree. Typically, Po was up several feet higher. We left the crates in view for them during our stay.

One of the cool things about B.C. Provincial parks was that the larger ones had amphitheaters and Interpretive services, where summer students would be employed by BC Parks to lead campers on guided hikes through a given Park.

A couple days in to our camping trip one of theses hikes came by the campsite. I was sitting at the rough-hewn picnic table. The guide pointed out the crows low in the tree, and stated that it was unusual for them to be so close to people.

Couldn't help myself.

I had to.

I stood up and walked toward the tree and held up my hand.

Blue flew right to it and landed on my palm.

The Parks Guide's eyes nearly fell out of her head.

Yes, yes. We eventually let them know.

By the end of 6 days of camping, the crows had got the idea, deserted the tree, and made off to start their proper lives.

After at least four hours of confusion, building, and resourcing, and scrambling around after Challs had handed us a pair of crows, Kat looked at me, and said "It's your turn."

She hadn't forgotten we were in the middle of a game. She was like that.

Saint Christopher

A little over a year ago I spun you a tale about the perversity of the universe.

Well, really, more than one. But this one in particular, where that perversity was applied to my experience at the tender age of sixteen, I kind of left hanging.

Despite the colossal lack of clamoring, here, in second-person to help you live it, is the next 90 minutes in the life of Ananke's Well-Aimed Rock.

October 23rd, 1983

N 49° 44’ 43” W 114° 53’ 18” 

You know the water is freezing; it’s late October, for one, and the river is cold at best in the summertime. Glaciers feed the Elk up in Elk Lakes Provincial Park, seventy kilometers to the north.

You also know that the boy is standing on a shelf about an inch wide, and that rock face extends at roughly the same eighty-five degree angle another twenty feet under the water. There is very little keeping him from sliding all the way in from the weight of his clothing and boots.

All of this, and the realisation that he needs Help Right Now flashes through your mind in a nanosecond, just after you've already started running, and whole seconds before his friend looks up from his futile attempt at pulling the larger boy out, and asks from a hundred yards away in a voice tinted with desperation “Can you help us?”

Time stops for you. You're a machine.

You hear the drum of the sound of your footfalls on the seventy-year-old deck timbers on the trestle bridge.

You look up, and you’re already there, task one complete, task two queued up; time to descend the treacherous three-meter (10 feet) of cliff face to the river's edge without kicking rocks or debris on the boys, or falling in yourself.

You've detached. You hear your own voice barking orders to the boy who is still dry. Get his dad, you say. Tell him to bring his truck.

In your mind, this makes perfect sense - everyone in the Sticks has a Dad. Every Dad has a truck. It’s the natural order of a mining town. The wet boy will need somewhere warm to sit when you get him out.

There is no if.

You strip off your coat and leave it at the top of the cliff - to keep it dry so the kid has something to wear. Good thing you attached the sleeves.

You pull off your belt too, maybe you can loop it around… oh, to hell with that, you think, and toss it aside. You don't have time to waste on finesse.

You move down the cliff face like a shadow might on a sunnier day, ending up in place just over the boy's head.

You ask his name, as you know you should so that you may more readily set him at ease. He gives it to you. You tell him to take your hand. He holds up something that feels rather like a brick of cheese just taken out of the fridge… and you note that it has about the same grip. He confirms this by saying he can’t hold on.

Okay, you tell yourself through the adrenaline burn, time to rock and roll. Squatting on your right heel, you stretch your left foot down to just touching the water's edge, simultaneously grabbing a handful of something stable on the granite face over your head.

Good thing you're tall - you cover about eight and a half feet of the cliffside extended like this.

You take the boy by the jacket, center chest, just below his armpit line with your left hand and make as hard a fist as possible, holding his coat.

You know you only get one shot at this or you’re both going swimming – and with everything you have, you stand on your right foot, catapulting the waterlogged 12 year old, scrambling, out of the water, and up to the safety of the ledge overlooking the cliff.

You follow him, noting that whatever you’d used as a handhold is still in your right hand.

Evidently it wasn't that stable.

At the top of the hill the boy sums up his experience, telling you “Shit, Thanks,” as you strip his jacket off of him, replacing it with your own - advising him that his fishing career is probably over once his parents show up.

The adrenaline is bleeding off now, used up in a rush.

You consider getting him out of his sopping jeans and boots, but decide of the side of propriety, and you send him up to the bridge to sit on the concrete piling on the sunny side – it’s also out of the breeze - and wait for his ride to show up, while you put your discarded belt back on.

Scant moments later as you are collecting scattered fishing gear, you hear the pounding footfalls of someone running on the bridge deck, followed by a hysterical woman screaming, “Where is he!” over and over.

You realize that they cannot see their son sitting where you placed him, so you shout back that he’s on the bridge. You climb the short path to the bridge deck and note with a little irritation that his father brought a rope, not a truck.

Introductions are perfunctory and hasty. The man gives the same name the boy did… which makes the boy Junior.

You think you know the name, but don’t recall why, and you decide it’s not important.

Your jacket is returned to you because mom, even in her panic, thought at least far enough ahead to bring a blanket. The man offers to pay for dry cleaning – which you laugh off, stating that it's a wash and wear jacket, but thanks anyway.

You can almost see an inclusive bubble close around the three at this point, and you decide that your presence is really no longer required. You walk away without another word, not wishing to interrupt, or, really, call further attention to yourself.

You will later find that no one saw you leave – by all accounts, you vanished.

It's 50 meters to the crest of the incline with the bridge at the bottom; that crest is your target as it also holds the trailhead you want to take to get you to the CP Rail line and bridge to get home.

Upon reaching that crest moments later, you turn back to look once more at the reunited family unit, only to see another member crossing the bridge.

This one you recognise; she's the new girl in your grade 11 class.

Okay – that must be why the name is familiar. You put it out of your mind.

Completely.

Your walk home is the usual forty-five minutes and is entirely uneventful.

You walk in the front door of your home just as Dad hangs up the phone in the front room and stands up to face you as you step out of your shoes.

“I know what you’ve been up to,” he states, wearing his usual sardonically inscrutable look – a half smile you’ll recognize in the mirror in years to come.

Your mind flashes panic as you know that the CP Rail lines are technically trespassing, and the train bridge you crossed is inherently dangerous.

You brace for trouble, and it probably shows on your face.

He takes your hand to shake it. “That Phone call was from the new Staff Sergeant in command of the RCMP detachment. He said he’s called every Johnson in the phone book trying to find the parents of the boy who just rescued his son.”

Right, you think. That’s where you've heard that name before.

Mr Bill

Obviously, compared to Cesar Milan, I got nothing. But I know Dogs.

I grew up with dogs. A while back I mentioned one of the more memorable canines in my history, but I'm afraid I misspoke in that telling;  the truth is I don't recall us ever owning a dog less than 60cm (nearly 2 feet) at the shoulder. I guarantee I never had to bend down to pet one of our full-grown dogs.

Ever.

At one point, Mom had posted "Large Dogs" in sticky letters on the side of our house in the Sticks to advise the uninitiated what they would find if they ventured further up the driveway, into the back yard. "'Beware of Dogs' makes people think they're dangerous," she'd said. "I just want people to know they're there."

That made sense, and still does. It's my observation that dogs, no matter the size, are only dangerous if you do something stupid.

You saw the plural. Mom and Dad were always of the opinion that a pair of dogs was better than one; they keep each other company. One was usually several years older than the other, and helped train the new pup into the pack.

I'm pretty sure the only reason I survived childhood in the Sticks was because of our dogs. Well... that's not exactly right.

The only reason I survived to the age of seven to move to the sticks was because of our first dog. When Mom, at her wit's end, would finally give up trying to find me, my brother The Artist would hold a piece of my clothing for the dog to smell and send him after me.

And then the dog would lead me home, covered in mud, sticks and glory having spent several blissful  hours playing on the banks of the Columbia river.

As stated - the dog routinely saved me. Mostly from infanticide.

To this day I recall my last moments with that dog. I suspect I was his last human contact before passing - he went downstairs in the house in the Sticks, knowing it was time, accepted his friendly, familiar pat from me, looking up at me with a  smile on my way up for breakfast, and that was that.

I was eleven. So was he. That Hurt.

And, as it turns out, He wasn't The Dog.

Dad, as usual, picked out The Dog. He was from a litter of a police shepherd and an unregistered purebred Alsatian shepherd, and big and clunky as a puppy, brought home because he was inquisitive. He was calm, even-tempered and didn't bark often. He was also energetic, athletic, and very, very intelligent.

He would also become gigantic.

Dad named him after a Norse God and a local Glacier. The Artist took note of his placid, accepting demeanor and dubbed him Mr. Bill.

When he was four years old I would run him and the other dog on a spur of Highway 3 that had been bypassed by the new construction. I used a Chevy Blazer. I clocked him at 35 miles an hour in the broken terrain of the roadside ditch. Fallen trees and all.

I would play with the dogs. We'd wrestle. The Dog was big and strong, but my reflexes were sharpened from playing with the older dog, a lightning fast Norwegian elk-hound cross that was running to fat. I'd alternately tap her cheeks, and she'd try to relieve me of my fingers.

Great fun. Excellent for your hand-eye coordination. People wondered why my forearms were commonly scratched all to hell up to the elbows.

And she made it so The Dog couldn't compensate for my dodge. We chased each other around the yard a lot - usually ending with me catching him by the scruff of the neck in mid lunge, neatly avoiding his playfully snapping enormous fangs, and pinning him.

My friend the Forester tells me both of those games were fairly terrifying to watch.

The Dog, however, gave Dad fits as he would not be contained in the yard. Dad eventually had the backyard fences to six feet, with prison-like chicken wire sloping inwards on wood frames. And he'd still clear it.

And would pretend he couldn't hear you calling him.

To my knowledge, both times The Dog ever harmed a human being were by pure chance. One of the neighbourhood kids was playing tag with a group in our back yard and tripped over him. The Dog, used to this sort of thing with us, rolled up with his forepaws extended and caught the kid in the armpit with a dew claw. Drew blood, of course. Mom watched it happen.

Quite naturally, the kid screamed blue murder that The Dog bit him, and the RCMP were called.

Mom relayed what she saw, and the officer sensibly realized that if That Dog bit a ten year old, the ten year old would be short an arm.

And that's when she posted her sign.

The other time involved my brother, The Artist, who still sports a scar on his lip. We suspect The Dog had become senile at that point - that happened not long before he'd passed. But, as usual, I digress.

Dad was, however, becoming concerned that he'd have to do something as The Dog - while being probably the most benign family pet we could have, was a potential menace to the local wildlife. That was shortly after we finally got him off the elk he had chased across the Elk River.

The Dog solved the problem for Dad by waking up one morning with retinal detachment. Evidently it's a common genetic failing in the breed. At six years of age, The Dog was entirely blind.

It kept him on the ground, and cautious about sticking around. It also gave him milky white eyes from cataracts, making him even more terrifying to meet at the door of the house.

But it also had an effect on his judgement.

This would explain why, at 4am one morning on the last camping trip I went on with The Dog, he decided that porcupine might taste as good as it smelled, and got his muzzle judiciously laced with over a hundred quills for his trouble.

These things happen. The seriously unfortunate bit was that it happened on the first night in to a 3 day at Fish Lake.

Obviously, Mom, Dad and I cancelled the trip that morning, and rolled home, with a short stop in Fernie at the closest Vet.

I, being vaguely gorilla-shaped, got to carry the 60 kilo (that's a little over 130 pounds for my southern friends), blind, drooling, semi-conscious shepherd back to the truck. I chalked it up to Karma. At least he was all right.

The elk-hound was now his eyes. And when she passed shortly after, the New Dog picked up the slack... and appropriately so.

The New Dog was a yellow Lab Mom jokingly named after Dad's favorite libation, as Dad was wont to yell that upon entry to the house.

"Now," she'd said, "at least he'll be calling the dog."

If the Shepherd was intelligent, The Lab was a freaking genius. By the time he was barely a year old, I - visiting from University at this point - watched him drop his favourite kong in a 4 gallon pail of rainwater because he knew The Dog wouldn't be able to find it.

Most of all, The Dog trained me brilliantly with regard to how to approach and handle other dogs.

I  put myself though University working as a Security Guard, among other  things. One evening, the wife of one of the tradesmen drove up through  my gate house to have lunch with her husband. I walked up, handed the sign-in sheet to her, and stepped over to the big Rottweiler in the bed of the truck and was ruffling his ears with both hands, talking to him the way one speaks to a dog when one is ruffling his ears with both  hands.

She stared at me in open mouthed astonishment. "He NEVER lets anybody do that."

I shrugged in an offhand manner. "We're in the same business,"  I told her.

HeliParenting

"You're sure about this?" Ford asked me as he put the car in park.

"Yep," I said, getting out and slinging my haversack over my shoulder crossways, and putting on my battered old Tilley Hat. "Kid's gotta learn sometime."

"Okay, well... guess we'll see you in a couple hours, then."

A year ago August, Kid One was just freshly nineteen, and rankling a bit under the operational rules of the household he was living in.

Ours.

He'd just spent the summer working at Canada's Wonderland as a games barker for his second season - and the two school semesters prior discovering he wasn't really interested in University.

No, I don't find fault in that. I wasn't until I was twenty. The up side was I'd been out in the world for a couple years prior, and had come to recognise the other options were... not.

Anyway, he'd been making noises about moving out and finding his own place, on his own. His Mother and I were a little concerned that he mightn't have a clear understanding of the reality of that. He'd argued vociferously with his Mother about that before his shift.

So I was bringing the reality to him.

He seemed a little surprised to see me walking up to him. "Where did you park?"

I asked to see his cell phone and wallet. I put the cell in my pocket - with his bank card - and handed the wallet back to him.

"What's going on..." he seemed a little... well.  I certainly had his full attention at that point.

"You've moved out on your own. You can't afford more minutes on your cell phone, and you just have enough money in your bank account to pay your rent. So. How you gonna get home?"

I turned and started walking.

Ten steps in, I turned around to find him still standing where I left him.

Staring. Open mouthed.

"I recommend you try to keep up," I told him. "I'm the one that knows the way home." And I started walking again.

My kids are Millennials.

I've read the blogs, seen the jokes, all that. Let me tell you a secret. If someone is suffering from an irrational sense of entitlement, it's because their parents failed to train it out of them.

I've seen that illness before, in my own generation. I feel like my parents were successful at killing it in me... but I'm probably mistaken. I can pretty much guarantee in a Freudian sort of way that each generation to the dim distant past was seen that way by the one prior.

That's because we forget that we all got it trained out us. All that we recall is that our lives weren't this easy - and that's how it's done.

The Herd thought I was insane, of course. “Gotta be at least a 10 km hike.”

“12.7, according to Google Maps,” I replied. That works out to nearly 8 miles for our American (and British) friends.

I wasn't concerned.

I'd spent a lot of my youth walking that far as a matter of routine. As a result, when I got the job that would eventually sustain me through University, I didn't bat an eye at the fact it was across the Oldman River and a hike across town from where I was living. I just packed my uniform in a gym bag and hoofed it. Buses didn't run at that time of night anyway.

Night shift.

Also, I'd been telling all my boys that I would never make them do anything I wouldn't do myself. So. Time to pony up.

Periodically I'll jokingly send my Beautiful Wife an image like the one at right when she expresses what is probably a legitimate concern a parent should have about one of our boys. It's intended for both of us to check our behaviour... and to guard against the behaviour indicated in the image.

She has, on at least one occasion, threatened my life as a result... but I digress.

I misspoke when I told my brother-in-law Ardy's wife, Lane, that I’m careful never to set my boys up to fail. What I meant to express was that I never give my boys a challenge that I’m sure they cannot accomplish.

Very often, they are sure they cannot accomplish these little challenges, and yeah, they just might land on their faces once or twice. But I have more confidence in them than they do.

I think the real issue might be that we are all proud to be able to provide our children conveniences we never had, and that we enjoy the comfort they provide for us too. I guess the key is to get our kids to know – that is to Understand and Appreciate -  that that cell phone–big screen TV–gaming system–Internet access–ride to school/work/friends/Brampton is a privilege, no matter what they think.

She and I work pretty hard at that.

They've also learned - the hard way - that fair is a bad word at our house. They don't like fair. Fair is a serious downgrade.

Took me a few minutes to convince Kid One that he could actually walk all the way home. Once he decided I was serious, he got down to business. At the end of it all, he seemed to really enjoy the walk and the perspective. He said so, anyway.

More than I did, actually. I had a little flare up of the injury that got me out of the Armed Forces  - about 20 minutes in to the walk - and went the next 2 hours or so on a nasty ankle sprain.

No, I wasn't gonna call in for a pickup at that point. I'd committed to the principle. Seems I'm a bit dogged about that kind of thing.

Didn't even limp until the last 10 minutes.

I reminded him of that evening 13 months ago just the other night. He was worried that his new job – and a 3 am wake up time – would get the better of him.

“You can get used to anything, Kid,” I told him. “Look on the bright side - it's only a 10 minute walk.”

Consequences

I want my own eponymous law.

I quite enjoy researching things like eponymous laws and keeping up to new ones - legitimate laws of science and Physics like Boyle's law relating to volume and pressure... and, perhaps slightly-less-legitimate... or at least less empirical... ones like Murphy's and Finagle's.

Being an observer of the universe in general and civilisation in particular, I've found that those like the latter two are pretty much where I live. So my own eponymous law shouldn't be as difficult as you'd think.

A couple things happened in 1986.

Well, okay - an awful lot actually happened, especially to the US Space Shuttle Program, but for purposes of this discussion, I'm only interested in a couple minor little pebbles clinking at the top of what may have become.... well. Perhaps you'll see.

For starters 1986 marked the closure of my first - and last - year in the Canadian Forces. It's also the year that Canada announced the phasing out of the dollar bill in favour of the Loonie.

I was working in a training co-ordination shop on base at CFB Chilliwack at the time. We took a lot of 35mm photographs and, subsequently had a lot of empty 35mm film cases lying around. I noted at some point that the inner diameter of the case was just a bit larger than a quarter.

I hated change jingling in my pockets. And found it was hard on the pockets, to boot. So I started carrying loose change in a film case. Nicely prepared me for the release of the Canadian 1 Dollar coin - the Loonie - the next year as they too fit neatly in my film case. Suddenly I could have 6 or 7 dollars not jingling in my pocket.

Ten years - and three or four film cases - later, the Canadian Mint scraps the 2 dollar bill in favour of a coin - dubbed the Toonie. And they fit too.

But then came the turn of the millennium, and a cascading disaster to hit my little change bucket.

Digital Cameras.

That's right  - the technology that killed Eastman Kodak had a direct impact on how I would manage my loose change in the future. I collected only the couple film cases I could scrounge and held on to weather the gathering storm.

Then I went to work in Oilfield completions. Fun Job. Dispatching heavy equipment and crews all across northern and central Alberta in all weather conditions into isolated little oil leases with as little as four hours notice. Handling explosives and radioactive sources for the completions. Attached to a cell phone for 14 straight days, and then off for six.

One of the more amusing aspects of the job was that I carried a license to handle explosives, and a radiation exposure badge.

The badge was a conversation starter on those occasions when I would be escorting a damaged child to the local x-ray technician; they carry them too. You're only allowed so much exposure in that tightly-regulated nuclear industry, and the badges monitor your risk.

The explosives handling license was akin to a get-through-airport-security-free card. After a week of handling shots and primer cord, loading them into completion tools, and then going home and working on my laptop - it's handy to have that card when you take a trip. I forgot it once on a flight out here after such a week.

They didn't swab my Macbook that time. Probably a good thing.

One of the common explosives we used in setting down-hole plugs was called a BP-3. It's the primary ignition explosive in a Baker setting tool. They're crumbly, slow-burning, and slightly green. Some clever person a long time ago noticed that they bear a passing resemblance to the scat of wild turkeys.

Turkey Turd has since become the industry term for it.

The best thing about them for me was they shipped in a little round plastic case  - a little wider, and a little shorter than a 35mm film case. So I grabbed an empty one, Had my change in it ever since.

The other day I noticed some residue crusting the inside edge - and took pause for a moment as I considered exactly what was causing the green you see in the picture.

It's copper oxide. So something in the case is being turned green by the pennies.

I've been carrying this thing for 7 years. Nothing else has ever been in it.

Except for a low grade explosive.

Which means I've been passing currency with explosive residue on it.

I don't recall ever having this thing with me on an airplane... now that I think about it.

But I must have. Like... to Cuba. And Mexico.

And a couple places in the U.S.

What's the threshold for the sniffers at airports?

How many people have been bewildered by presence of explosives detected on their person in the last 7 years?

Oops.

Net0gre's Observation of the Ripple Effect:
Unforeseen consequences are - at minimum - directly proportional to the usefulness of a given clever idea.