TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 14

[Tobie Shapiro]

September 28, 20000000000000000006


Dear Fokes,

	Thank all of you for responding to my plea for feedback.  And 
the extra comments are so appreciated, I cannot tell you.  It is 
splendid, absolutely splendid to receive word from those who read.  I 
suggest we all do this more often.  It's the difference between 
calling out, "I'm HOME! HELLO!"  and getting no answer, and calling 
out, "I'm HOME! HELLO!" and hearing, "HI.  I'M UPSTAIRS.  How was 
your day?!"

 
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Oh, Canada!

	My heart got broken good and quick, and I was mourning for 
God only knows who.  For the life of me I cannot remember the 
faceless vicious cad who jilted me.  But he was special to me then, 
and getting over him was going to take an extraordinary effort, 
something unusual, a change of scene, a rash move, a grand gesture. 
So.  I got on an airplane with my bag packed and I headed on up to 
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada where my sister and her new husband, Fred, 
were going to school at the University there.  He was working on his 
master's degree in psycholinguistics, and she was working on her 
master's degree in genetics.  They'd left Berkeley for the north 
country only a couple months before.

	It was fall, and the winds were blowing.  The cold hadn't 
thoroughly set in yet, but if this California girl was wanting to 
learn what winter was about, she was getting her introduction.  Dana 
and Fred were living in an apartment in a residential neighborhood, 
low density, plenty of trees, and alleyways that ran in back of the 
houses.  They showed me all the special Canadian things.  When they 
parked their car for any length of time, they had to plug it in to a 
motor warmer so the engine wouldn't freeze.  When they forgot to take 
in their groceries, leaving them outside the back door, the whole bag 
and everything in it froze, and when Dana tried to crack an egg into 
a pan for breakfast, it hit the skillet with a sharp clank.  I heard 
her laughing in the kitchen.  Evidently, it was hard for her to 
purchase her birth control pills because Alberta was heavily 
Catholic, and the government made it difficult to get a prescription. 
But they were enjoying their stay in exotic Alberta.  They enjoyed it 
until winter.  But that's another story.

	We went downtown to the Hudson Bay Company, one of the oldest 
general stores on the whole continent, and I bought a turquoise 
corduroy captain's hat that I wore every day for at least a year.  I 
used to pin a red enameled six pointed star onto the rim, my joint 
nod to Chairman Mao and Judaism.  I thought I was being playful, but 
I may have confused some of the proletariat.  Dana and Fred left me 
in the car while they ran in to some store for something.  The car 
rocked violently in the wind and I watched a huge cardboard box go 
tumbling down the street.  All the parked cars were dancing in place 
as ferocious gusts of cold autumn air ripped their way through the 
city.

	At night, they told me the story of their blue shag rug, the 
one with the abstract pattern woven into it.  It was a wedding 
present.  The rug kept sluffing off big tufts of blue fuzz in the 
apartment, and they had to keep cleaning up after it.  Then, one day 
they heard someone out in the hallway saying, "Where did all this 
blue fluff come from?"

	And then, they lit up a joint, and taught me how to inhale 
deeply, hold the smoke down there in my two lungs to make sure I 
could appreciate the full effect.  We listened to Bob Dylan albums 
and I waited for the marijuana to take hold, as if I were waiting 
outside my own body for a sign.  It didn't work.  They instructed me 
further.  Then, all of a sudden, it hit me wildly, and I was 
transported to another universe.  I couldn't figure out which 
direction the room was facing.  I lost all sense of orientation, and 
it struck me so funny that I rolled over on my side laughing.  Then I 
felt like the whole room was tilting and I was lying uphill, then 
downhill.  I laughed so hard my eyes were filled with tears, and Dana 
and Fred were triumphant and ecstatic, because they'd gotten me 
stoned for the first time.

	I got over the heartbreak about what's-his-name, and returned 
home a new woman.

 
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Trip Sitter

	My sister had the aspirations to be a true Hippie back in 
those days when Hippies were roaming the earth.  I was too busy 
practicing my cello and writing, making art work.  Too directed. 
Plus, I had inhibitions about getting naked and I didn't like sex 
with many strangers.  I also didn't take to the drug scene.  The most 
I could manage was marijuana, and that set me off into psychological 
twists that were too uncomfortable to seek to repeat.  Acid?  Well, I 
tried it on four occasions, but each time, it left me sort of flat. 
I'd wonder what the big fuss was about.  Colours always seemed vivid 
to me, and I didn't need enhancements.  I kept wondering:  What?  Has 
nobody ever introspected before?  So I was a dud.  And I came into it 
late, too.  While my sister had dived head first into acid and 
mushrooms, grass, and peyote in her first semesters in college, I 
took a much longer time even to skirt the issue.  Nevertheless, I was 
not judgmental and didn't give the revellers a hard time.  In fact, I 
enjoyed their enthusiasm and giddiness, their childlike awe at simple 
things, their impressionable spirits and openness to the universe as 
a huge playground filled with newly invented toys.  My sister and her 
friends used to use me as a trip sitter.  They'd all drop acid, and 
I'd act as a guide of sorts, taking them for walks in the garden or 
up the street.  I'd listen when their thoughts went awry and hope to 
make them laugh.  One time, I led a group of four or five celebrants 
up the sidewalk to telegraph Avenue.  It was like being the grown up 
with a klatch of kindergartners.  They required some herding and 
attention, some direction and coddling, but generally they were able 
to stay together as a group.  Some of them complained that they 
didn't have any music on them.  Remember, this was decades before the 
walkman and even longer before CD players and iPods, all those 
methods by which a young creature can shut out the world in favour of 
a few thousand selected tunes, a sound track to your life.

	When they complained of no music, I got out a handful of 
pennies and plugged them, one at a time, into parking meters.  This 
was the biggest hit since the Beatles.  They were mesmerized and 
delighted.  "You must be stoned," they all said with exuberance and 
disbelief.  "I can't believe you're not stoned!"

 
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net