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| SURVIVING A CRASH COURSE: The bike story could have had a far worse ending. |
My first response?
"Walking away from a motorcycle crash was pretty awesome. How many people get to do that?"
Publishing a very warmly received book of stories wasn't bad either.
Neither was enjoying my day job and the people I work with all week.
I'm alive and healthy in one of the most comfortable societies in the world in the absolute best time in history. With an insanely fun family.
Is this barfy enough for you yet? I'm not done.
2025 was a standout year for me.
But a favourite moment? That had to be Saturday., Dec. 13, at 1:30 in the afternoon.
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| THE LIKE BUG: The only car that makes people smile and punch one another. |
My wife Helena and I were in our 2016 Beetle travelling from Toronto to my hometown of Sudbury for a Christmas dinner hosted by my sister Bertholde.
Of course it was snowing and except for a few overconfident types in 4x4s, traffic was just creeping along. But welcome to central Ontario in mid winter.
Helena and I were discussing the words "you're" and "your".
Helena has a masters degree in speech and language pathology from the University of Toronto so she knows a thing or two about articulation and hearing. She suggested that even though one might think the words "you're" and "your" are pronounced the same, there's actually a difference and that we can detect the distinction if we listen closely enough.
I didn't agree.
So we tried an experiment.
Her idea, folks.
I'm paraphrasing but it went something like this. Helena: "I'm going to think a sentence containing either 'your' or 'you're,' but I'm only going to say that word out loud. And then you guess which one I'm using."
Are you still with me?
I barely know how to transcribe what happened next. Bear with me.
Helena: "Silence silence silence silence your [or you're] silence silence. Which one was it?"
Peter: "You are?"
H: "You're right."
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| DATING OURSELVES: Me and Helena in our pre-broken-oven days. |
P: "You are."
H: "What?"
M: "You said 'you're."
H: "Okay your turn."
P: "Your."
We probably covered 60 kilometres with this important experiment. And it's way harder than you think to just "think" most of a sentence but say only one of the words out loud.
Turns out Helena was (duh!) right. There is a teensy weensy difference in tone between you're and your.
We then tried a few similar words and only stopped when
I told Helena about the lady in the delivery room who was shouting "Don't! Won't! Can't!" and the doctor said "Not to worry. Those are just contractions."
Best moment of the year? Why not?
We weren't talking about why our three grown children Ewa, Ria and Michel have all taken to living in the boonies; Ewa on Vancouver Island, Ria on Manitoulin and Michel 15 minutes north of Weber's Burgers. We weren't discussing the rising cost of cheese and apples; we weren't talking about the food trap epidemic that makes us nervous when we're running out of toothpicks; we weren't describing aches or medicine or steps we should be taking to replace our aging Bosch oven that has a cracked burner.
We were having the serendipitous kind of baggage-free conversation people enjoy when they're dating.
If you don't understand why such a moment could be the highlight of a year, you haven't been married long enough.
I hope you're enjoying the first week of 2026 as much as yours truly is.