8 More Iris Cat FAQs

Except for the few weeks she took off from active duty in the summer, Iris the Cat messages have been appearing in our front window for almost 10 months.

Early on, we published these answers to our most-common made-up questions. But since then we've made up eight more. Here they are:

8) A new sign every day? Really?

No. Every two days more like. Three sometimes. Which is still way too often.

7) How does daylight saving time affect Iris' signs?

Never thought you'd ask. What with full time jobs and very short winter days, getting a brightly lit photo is a crap shoot at best. We've actually called in outside help on occasion. If the government needs any more reason to get rid of daylight saving time, this is it.


6) Speaking of freelancers, does Iris accept other people's suggestions? 

You bet. But don't expect attribution There's no room on the sign. Plus I hope you're not surprised she steals. Iris is a cat. They're all master criminals.

5) All of them?

I believe so, but Victoria Shroff might disagree. She's an Iris fan and a real honest-to-goodness animal-law lawyer in Vancouver and if Iris ever sues us, she'll probably hire Victoria as her agent. Victoria likely thinks cats aren't felons.

4) How long do you think you'll be able to keep from making a felon/feline pun?

Next question.

3) What's one of the most surprising responses you've gotten to an Iris sign?

Ha! My sister Charlene said the following and I quote: "People love Iris because she's so pretty and wise." My own older sister called "Iris" wise! Reminds me of how people used to think that Charlie McCarthy was really funny.

2) Charlie who?

McCarthy. He was late ventriloquist  Edgar Bergen's sidekick. And no, I never made the Charlene/Charlie link until right this minute.

1) Do you ever think you'll get tired of this immature word-play?

Maybe when I'm punning for the fjords

Jesus Mary and Joseph

STRAW POLL SAYS:
Everybody recalls their nativity role
 (Photo by Chris Sowder on Unsplash)

Hands up everyone who remembers what role you played in your grade-school Christmas pageant.

Hah! Just as I thought.

You all do! Rather, we all do.

Never mind that it was way more than 50 years ago, I still recall me dressing up as Saint Joseph and keeping watch over Baby Jesus.

I remember the brown cloak I was wearing and how nervous I was.

I also remember another really important part: And that is the little girl who played Mary.

She was stunning.

Radiant.

"Mary" had long dark hair and big brown eyes and I remember that when she visited our house before the pageant, my late mom Huena commented on her beautiful dark skin and "Mary" attributed it to a diet that included lots of olive oil. Or pasta. I forget which. But I still think those two food groups are good for your complexion.

I was six.

Here's why I'm telling you this.

Yesterday, on my way to work, I heard a couple of  local deejays toying with the idea that we all grow into the characters we played in the Christmas pageant, and I think they might be on to something.

"Shepherds?" the female announcer said. "All of them are serious stoners."

One of the guys on the show said he was jealous of his older brother who upstaged all the other kids because he played a dog in the stable and raced around the stage licking the other characters and lifting his leg to pee against the stable wall. Sounds inspired to me.

When I got to work, I told my pal Richard about the deejays.

Richard--and he's a few years older'n me--said that he had been Joseph in his pageant but things went off the rails early. Milliseconds before Richard delivered his one big line--"my wife is with child and we need a place to sleep," the joker playing the innkeeper leapt out from behind the door shouting "No room at the inn!" Joseph started giggling and couldn't stop for the rest of the show.

I totally get that.

I work alongside Richard every day. Pretty much all we do is try to make each other laugh.

I've always had lots of time for St. Joseph. Here's a guy married to a beautiful woman; she has a Kid  (upper-case K cuz it's Jesus) and even though Joe had nothing to do with the "making" of said Kid, if you catch my drift, he loves Mary and the child all the same and he's a good dad, trying to keep everybody happy while his wife and Kid make all the big decisions.

You don't have to be a biblical scholar to know that his biggest moment is when he asks for a room at the inn and gets turned down.

God knows we've all been there. You've been driving all day; everybody in the car wants to stop but the road is one no-vacancy sign after another so you power on, hopeful that around the next bend, something will be available and for some reason this is all your fault and you're thinking everybody in the car loathes your very soul. But I digress.

In real life, I happen to know that Mary from my pageant left St. Albert's shortly after grade one then later in life went on to do some runway modeling and when I ran into her in mid-high school, it was almost as if she'd forgotten me.

St. Joseph should be patron saint of the friend zone.

So I ask. Did you grow up to be your character in the pageant?  My son Michel did. He was Jesus.

In the chess game of life we are but pawn (ers)

TIED UP WITH A BOW. It was a very good
 deal with strings attached.

That fiddly thing in the picture?

It's a viola da gamba.

The photo was taken at 1:18 last Thursday afternooon, minutes after I--the world's worst bargainer--wheedled and dealed for the instrument with a tough-minded clerk in a pawnshop near my house.

That--believe it or not my first bargained-for purchase--was what I was celebrating in the pub.

And if that isn't a load of hogwash I don't know what is. I was going for a beer with my friend John O'Callaghan anyway;  it just happened that I did the pawnshop deal first. John took this pic.

But still. I did bargain for the instrument. Except not on my own behalf.  The viola da gamba belongs to Teilhard Frost.

Teilhard--one of the most colourful gentlemen on the planet--is a man you couldn't possibly do justice to in one single blog entry. When you're done reading my story, click here to get Teilhard's.

Teilhard is also the Sheesham part of the travelling minstrel show Sheesham and Lotus & Son. I've known him since he was a kid and he's never asked me for anything, ever.

Until Thursday morning.

I was at home goofing off when Teilhard Facebook messaged me to ask if I could visit a pawnshop a few blocks from my place. Teilhard, who lives about four hours from here in a boonies locale called Wolfe Island, had  been in the store recently and had seen this viola da gamba but didn't have time to deal with it so asked if I could, you know, go down and pretend I knew how to dicker and buy the thing.

Free time I had!

So down to the pawnshop I went--taking texted instructions from Teilhard all the way.

I actually asked him what I should do for openers. "What," I asked, "should my viola-da-gamba gambit be?"

"Haha," he texted back.

I asked if he had any tips. When they cooked up Carter DNA, they forgot to put in the bargaining gene. My wife Helena once told me I bargain up.

"Look tough." Teilhard advised. "And disinterested. Lots of shoulder shrugging!"

I entered the cluttered shop and found my way around to where the instrument was hanging. My first bid, from the woman serving me--got laughed at.

I left the store.

I texted that fact to Teilhard.

He said I should go higher. I asked a nearby panhandler if he'd had any experience with this store. He said they'd alway been fair with him.

I made another offer. She wouldn't budge. I stood at the counter and wondered how I was supposed to act. Should I look broke? Or suspicious? I am not wired for this.

I left. Talked to the panhandler some more. He lives near me.

Texted Teilhard. He gave me permission to make another offer.

In I went.

RESIN D'ETRE: When Teilhard plays, he doesn't fiddle around

Out I went.

The panhandler probably hadn't had such a good laugh in ages.

Teilhard gave me his final offer. I walked back in. (I am now very familiar with the inventory of this pawnshop, btw.) 

Our fourth bid won! I was thrilled.

And from among a blizzard of back-and-forth texting, here's one of Teilhard's messages: "I can use it in my educational program. I refer to them [violas da gamba] all the time I will now be able to actually demonstrate!! How exciting. Thanks so much for sweating through that!!! And sorry for all the exclamation marks."

The pleasure, dear Teilhard, was all mine.

Then he asked me if I'd measure it when I got home and I said "whattaya mean home? I'm going busking. If, that is, I can fight off the viola da gamba groupies."

To which he replied "Good luck. They are very good at the art of disguise as people who don't care."

Teilhard will take delivery of this treasure in the new year.

Me, I learned a few lessons.

First, when you get a request from a young person you feel strongly about; you're likely to be a pushover. I love Teilhard like he's my nephew and when I use the word love I don't fart around;

Also, it's easier to bargain and/or ask for money on behalf of someone else. Think about that the next time somebody wants you to help them raise money for some good cause;

And finally, even though I didn't write this blog only because it let me make the viola-da-gamba gambit pun, that's as good a reason as any.

Karen feeding of a young guy's brain

I haven't asked the woman at the centre of this story if I can use her name, but here goes nothing.

Believe it or not, I am extremely cautious about how I employ names in this blog. I never use a person's first and last names without permission.

THE DEVIL YOU SAY: Imagine the
moment you learn you share a name
with a famous dictator.

With some exceptions. For example, if a guy is famous. Or dead maybe. And of course family members and good friends, I write about with abandon.

But other than that? No names.

Well except for this chap I once did some business with whose name tag told me he is "Victor Mao." Victor Mao. I'm going to tell you about him without asking his permission.

When I asked about the surname, he told me that he'd grown up in Canada and had no idea who Mao the Chinese ruler was until his opthalmologist mentioned it when Victor was 14. Imagine being a teenager in the the eye doctor's chair and finding out your surname is one billions of people associate with one of history's most famous and infamous people.("Okay Mr. Mussolini, what letters do you see on the chart?")

Me, I just started by asking about his first name--Victor. Were his parents expecting much or what? Can a guy named Victor be allowed to lose? At anything? Ever? (There are no Victor Carters, by the way.)

Victor Mao. Not only did he seem like a well-adjusted young man,  he appeared very happy when I left his office.

But I digress. The person I'm writing about today is Karen MacIntyre, and I did not ask if I could use her name.

Karen, you have to know, is my good friend Trevor's sister.

Trevor and I first started pal'ing around when we were eight or nine; and Karen would have been all of 15 or 16.  I haven't talked to her in ages.

But when I was eight or nine, in my eyes, just being in the same house as the beautiful Karen MacIntyre was reason enough to be Trevor's buddy. She has no way of knowing this but up until that point, I'm pretty sure I'd never been in a room with a woman as good looking as Karen MacIntyre. Trevor's other sister Debbie was was the same, but but sad fact is, Debbie was closer to our age. That meant she was real. Talk-to-able. Karen was the exotic older woman.

KAREN AND FRIENDS:
a.k.a., the 'Old Spice Girls' 

That they were halfways nice to skinny little big-eared me was just icing. Karen also has no idea of the profound effect she had on me.

(Pause for breath)

Here's what I'm talking about.

Four days ago, my wife Helena and I were at Costco. We were heading for the check-out line when I realized I needed deodorant. Not like, then and there. Rather, I remembered,  I was running low at home. 

We strode toward the deodorant shelf.

The choices were--as always--almost overwhelming but frankly, I don't care what brand I use. It's all the same to me. Except.

There was one type on special: five sticks for $13. And because it was on sale, that was the brand I was going to have. Under any other conditions, I never would have given it a moment's thought.

But this was different.

Here's the thing.

The older I get, the more I realize you never ever know where what you say is going to land. And take root.

We stroll through life, having conversations here; making jokes there; offering one liners on all manner of topics, never thinking for a moment that somebody might actually be listening to what you're going on about. And they'll take it to heart and carry it around for the rest of their born days.

 A long long time ago--let's say 40 years--Trevor and I--a pair of pre-adolescent grade-schoolers--were lucky enough to travel from our hometown of Sudbury to visit the wondrous Karen, when she was a nursing student in Hamilton, Ontario.

A  few things stand out from the trip.

I remember Karen and her pals showed us around McMaster University; then they took us to the Stoney Creek Dairy for ice cream cones; and finally, I remember overhearing Karen talking to one of her girl buddies.

One of them was describing how some guy had been coming on to her. And, she said, he was okay looking, but a fatal flaw made his chances of having any success less than zero.

His felony?  "He was," she told Karen, "wearing Old Spice."

Ooo----ick. Old Spice after shave.

Who knew? A buzz-kill before the word was invented.

Up until that moment, for me, splashing on Old Spice aftershave was something I sort of looked forward to doing. (Okay, shaving was pretty high up there on the wish list too.)

SEND IN THE COLOGNES: Yup. The instructions came with the product

But with one up-turn of her adolescent nose, the pretty Karen MacIntyre's pal pulled the plug on Old Spice for me.

After that? Once shaving was a thing, it had to be Brut or Hai Karate, which came with instructions on how to fight off girls, or anything; even the celtic scent of Irish Spring.

But no Old--spit ptooie--Spice for me.

Until this past Sunday. I caved.

Seems like I crossed a bridge of sorts.

This very morning, when deodorant time rolled around? It was Old Spice.

Does this mean I'm washed up? Only  thing I know for sure?

Getting old is the pits.

Making tracks for life

When I was a kid, we Carters didn't have Grand Theft Auto. We had slot cars.

Just like in the picture. Two little electric cars, guided along their paths by tiny plastic pegs and fuelled by hand-held wired remote controllers, raced around the track until they crashed or we got bored, whichever came first.

For us young Carters, the slot cars delivered minutes and minutes of fun.

MAKING TRACKS FOR LIFE: Big brothers knew how to make
playing in traffic fun!

Of course when I say "we had slot cars" I mean "my older brother Eddie had slot-cars." I'm pretty sure it was Ed Santa brought the racing set to.

But because I was the baby of 10 and spoiled so rotten my teeth were brown, I  thought every thing in our house belonged to every body in our house.

Toys, boots, candy, longjohns, you name it. We shared everything equally.

Or maybe it was just me. One of these days I'm going to survey my brothers and sisters to see if they felt as generous with their stuff as I did.

It's true about the brown teeth though. My baby teeth---and this might be linked to the fact that my mom and dad allowed me as much sweets as I wanted--came in crooked, sort of "fangy," and darkly off-colour. Pretty attractive huh?

Get this: One of my childhood nicknames was "Golden Snags." Imagine. Teasing a youngest brother because of a physical deformity. That's the kind of older siblings I had I mean still have. It's a miracle I turned out so well.

Another of my nicknames? "You Little Squirt." A third? "Little Hitler."

You can't make this crap up.

LITTLE SQUIRT:
I got called that, too!

But back to the slot cars. As high-tech and advanced as it was, the toy had limitations; so  early on Eddie figured out that if you removed the little white guard rails from the edge of the track, the risk of the cars flying over the side got way better, so off came the guard rails and wheeeee! off flew the little racing cars.

Eddie also--in an effort to make the racing cars even more dangerous--squirted 3-IN-ONE oil on the track to make the surface virtually undriveable on.

I also just remembered Ed configuring the slot-car track to ascend a slight ramp and instead of sloping back down again, just end. So the cars just flew off into mid air, doing a sort of  mini Jimmy Dean. (Amazing how a few little-boy shenanigans presage life-long patterns. But I digress.)

I looked up to my older brothers and sister then and now and wonder how they put up with spoiled rotten me.

Not only were they all generous, sharing, daring, bright and adventuresome, the Carter kids had superb timing.

I remember one time out in the yard playing cowboys. I was the villain and I'd done something real bad and had to be hanged for it.

And--true story--the rope was looped over a tree branch, the noose was around my neck and everything. I was about to pay for my crimes.

But mere moments before I met my maker, lucky for me, out came Mom to call us in for lunch. Just in the-- ahem--neck of time. How much fun is that? We laughed and laughed.

But something just occured to me. You don't suppose that...naaaah...couldn't have been.

Where we bring back the True Meaning of Hallowe'en!

A SKETCHY CHARACTER INDEED: Me,
before cameras were invented.

Here's how old I am: When I dressed up as a hippie for a Hallowe'en, I didn't even know what a hippie was.

I was probably five, maybe six.

The costume idea came from my older-by-15-years-or-so brother Tom.

Believe it or not, the word "hippie" was not yet a household word.

But Tom always seemed to know about stuff before the rest of us. My older-by-29-months brother Ed and I have discussed this mystery many times. We've no idea how Tom managed to stay ahead of the curve.

We grew up in the dark ages in a mining community called Sudbury, Ontario, with two TV stations, and two maybe three radio stations, one of which was French. We had no FM radio. Yet somehow, Tom was the hippest guy in our universe. He brought home Argosy magazine and Bob Dylan and Smother Brothers albums. He told us about hippies.

My best guess is that he received--and still gets to this day--messages from outer space. But I digress.

Like every other costume of the time, the hippie one was decided at the next-to-last minute. Tom fashioned a wig from one of  my mom's mops (a.k.a., he sawed the handle off) and made a protest flag with "MAKE LOVE NOT WAR"--whatever that meant--on it. The only thing missing was the requisite pillowcase for the loot, and I was good to go.

Back then, almost everyone's costume was made on the fly.

HANGIN' OUT ON GRENADIER: Be it
resolved--"Two Eds are better'n one."

Hallowe'en was completely different. We  may have had jack-o-lanterns, but they were all the same.  Nobody decorated their houses. And no kid with any dignity would have gone trick-or-treating with--gasp--parents.

And you know what?

Hallowe'en, when it was a simple and unplanned affair,  was way better.

I mean worse.

That's right. Hallowe'en--more than half a freaking century after I donned that hippie mop--has morphed into one of the only annual obligatory holidays that I look forward to.

And here are half a dozen reasons why.

1) Adults get to play along! My mom and dad thoroughly enjoyed candy and beer and parties and would have leapt at the chance to be involved in Hallowe'en all those years ago. But they were too busy. My mom had 10 children.No microwave. A wringer washer. You don't think she'd have given away her jewelry and her youngest child to join in a mid-week party like lucky young parents nowadays do?

BE IT RESOLVED: "One side effect of
Hallowe'en decor is it likely keeps the
J.W.'s at bay."

2) People go to great trouble and expense trying to make houses look haunted. We're no slouches in that department neither though a few years back, Eddie said we could save ourselves a lot of trouble; if we really really wanted to scare the kids, he and I could just shell candy out from the open side door of our minivan. Did I ever tell you Ed's a brilliantly funny man? I thought not.

3) Speaking of, most Hallowe'ens, Ed comes over and we along with my wife Helena and whoever else is visiting, have a front porch party. The street turns into Mardi-Gras lite.We average more than 150 trick-or-treaters plus they drag all their parents along and everybody's in great moods. Best of all, it ends nice and early.

4) Nobody ever talks about "the true meaning" of Hallowe'en. That's because the true meaning of Hallowe'en is having fun and eating candy.  End of story.

5) Well, almost the end. Another thing about Hallowe'en is you don't have to cook and clean for it. And it's not like Valentine's, a day designed to make half the population feel miserably lonely and another quarter of the population feel guilty and a very very tiny part of the population feel stupid for forgetting to buy his Polish wife a gift until the last minute so the only thing he comes up with is the equivalent of an airport souvenir.

6) Or St. Patrick's. Talk about offensive. As somebody whose roots are in Ireland, I take considerable umbrage at this annual ritual. Around the world, millions of non-Irish people think it's perfectly appropriate to pretend to have roots in Ireland, so what do they do? They put on goofy hats, drink beer and make fools of themselves. Is that what they think Irish people do? Well, now that you mention it, that's exactly what Eddie and I will be up to come Hallowe'en.

One man's recipe for 'Winning at Life'

DAD AND KISENYA:  (I copied this picture from the Red
Deer Advocate website. I'd give the photographer credit but
there was none.)

Four years ago, the following paragraph appeared in the Red Deer, Alberta, newspaper, The Advocate: 

"He has undergone tongue reconstruction using arm and leg muscles, chemotherapy and radiation treatment. He had a second surgery to remove his tongue, and a reconstruction again using his own muscles. His lower jaw was removed. He has had to learn to walk again because a bone from his lower leg was used to reconstruct his jaw."

Whooaaaa!

Medical staff took some man's shin bone and put it where his jaw used to be. They rebuilt his tongue with muscles from who knows where.

The things doctors do. Me, I have a hard time moving words around a page...

Elsewhere in the story, and why I'm even talking about it,  is the fact that "he"; namely, Jason Kom-Tong, a 35-year-old husband to Bambi, 32, and father to Zak and Kisenya, had stage four cancer of the tongue and had only been given a few months to live. 

Cancer of the tongue. A few  months to live. For the love of God...

Although Jason had started some experimental anti-cancer therapy in Vancouver, the former oil-field business-minded Albertan was unable to work or talk; he was getting nourishment through a tube that went directly into his stomach.

Here's the thing:  I know this Jason guy.  

And his story is worth nothing short of yelling to the world about. Never mind for a moment that I say that about everybody.  This story's different. 

Here's why.

The day last year that I first met Jason, after  he told me he had to eat through a tube, I dumbly asked, "what's that like?" And  you know what he did?  He joked! "It's f'n awesome," he said. This was my kind of guy!  

Turns out the Kom-Tongs moved here from Red Deer in 2017. Bambi found a fast-track dental hygienist program here that she could complete quickly so she’d be able to support the family. Jason continued the treatments in Vancouver; and by the time we met, it seemed that the treatment was helping.

He was well beyond the few weeks he’d been given three years earlier.

Last time I heard from him was Halloween, 2017

Until this week. The following text showed up on my phone: “Hello Peter. It’s been a while.

“The reason I thought of contacting you is, I officially beat cancer and want to give back.

 “I was hoping to get some news coverage but every time I emailed CTV they don’t respond back.  Which I can see why because my email sounds like I’m a crazy person.”

Then I read the text again. “I’m giving away cases containing many silver coins.”

In their celebration of his new lease on life, Jason and his family have taken to filling little pirate chests with real silver coins and holding impromptu treasure hunts. Some in public places like a park in Niagara Falls; and some in less public places, like the dental hygiene school Bambi’s attending.

X MARKS THE SPOT: ish. This is the letter the Kom-Tongs
give to the treasure hunters

They’ve put a whole lot of work into it. (See the photo of that letter that they hand out? These people are detailed!)  The next one’s somewhere in Toronto October 17.

Then….. I thought, “Well Jason. You’re giving boxes of money away to complete strangers.  Some might say that’s a bit odd.”

If I, on the other hand, just got pulled back from the edge of hell the way Jason just was, I’d be like Scrooge on Christmas morning after the big conversion — dancing in the streets and giving stuff away too.

Turn out, Jason is more like Scrooge than I knew. He says his health scare made him reengineer his priorities. Before this, he told me, “I rarely took my family anywhere. Work and money were all the mattered. I was blinded by my career.”

But now?

“Life should be enjoyed.

“I just want to rock the dad thing and write my book and tell my story. The silver [treasures] may entice people go out with their families to view some of our beautiful nation; or maybe will sway them just a bit into helping out a student or someone in need.”

See why I like this guy?

Finally, what do you suppose a really handsome ambitious chap who has had his face and life ripped apart by tongue cancer call his life story?  “Winning at Life,” of course.

I sure hope he gets the attention he deserves.