Happy New Year, Everyone

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The Latest on Me

The feeling is still that the two tumors in my abdomen are kidney cancer mets. I have been TENTATIVELY scheduled for surgery on Feb. 9, pending the results of an MRI on my tibia, yet to be scheduled. If the MRI shows cancer mets in my bones, then no surgery will be done on me; if the MRI is clear, then I will have the abdomenal surgery done first; then after I've recovered from that, the lobectomy and wedge resections of my lung.

The abdomenal surgery, if it is done, will be done initially with a scope through my belly button. If the tumors can be removed with the scope, that would be terrific; if not, then I will be cut open for the procedure.

At first the surgeon was not in favour of performing the operation, believing that it would not improve my prognosis; but my oncologist persuaded him that studies showed that patients with renal cancer mets do live longer when their tumors are surgically resected. Those studies were many pages long - I downloaded them from the internet and gave a hard copy of them to my oncologist. It pays to be your own advocate, I guess.

I had all the necessary pre-operative tests done: a full physical, EKG, chest x-ray and bloodwork, plus instructions for the bowel prep that I'd have to do with one of those nasty Fleet enema treatments, ugh. So all I need is a good MRI result.

If any of you have a spare prayer in your pocket, please pray that my MRI shows no cancer in my leg.

The Latest Buzz



We had a very nice Christmas gathering with my family, over at my brother Fred's, but it was all I could do to hold up my head through dinner. We left for home at 7:30 and I went straight to bed. I'm finding these festive days enjoyable but very tiring. It's hard to keep up with all the activity and noise.

Today Curtis and I did a bit of shopping and are preparing our own turkey dinner with all the trimmings. (I shouldn't say "we," because turkey dinner is Curtis' thang. And he does it verrrry well mmmmm.) Tomorrow will be our third wedding anniversary, and we are having dinner at a very nice restaurant with a couple from church who share the same anniversary. Wednesday at 9 am we have a meeting at a funeral chapel to preplan my funeral, followed by an 11:30 meeting at the bank to make some financial arrangements. We might try a restaurant new to us for dinner that evening, as they have all-you-can-eat ribs on Wednesdays, and Curtis wants to see if he can make them go bankrupt ha ha. Thursday morning at 9 we meet with the gynaecologic surgeon to discuss what he thinks he can do about the masses in my abdomen.

Phew.

From Our Home to Yours



Across however many miles, Merry Christmas. May the joys of the season be yours.

Fantasy Nightmare on Ice



Christmas time brings ice shows and Christmas television specials, lavish productions featuring waif-like women in glittery fairy costumes spinning and leaping gracefully under spotlights to lush orchestrations. Oh, how we marvel at their athleticism and artistry.

Like all little Canadian girls, I once fantasized about being a figure skater. Trouble was, a few obstacles stood in my way: I didn’t have the training. Or the grace. Or the ability. Or the thighs. Oh, I have thighs, all right: lots of them. But my thighs are better suited to less gymnastic pursuits, like mah jong. Mah jong with lots of breaks for cheesecake. You know that scene in “Fantasia,” with the elephants and hippos in pink tutus performing Saint-Saens’ “Dance of the Hours”? Let’s just say I could have been their prototype.

I did skate a great deal when I was a child, all on outdoor ice and in impossibly frigid temperatures. Many times a few hours of fun ended in tearful misery as my frozen toes thawed painfully later on at home. When I became a teenager, the charm of all this wore off, and my figure skates were retired to the basement, becoming a haven for spider webs. Until one fateful day….

One of the hockey moms at the community centre where I was supervisor, invited me to play a women’s sport that was new to Western Canada: ringette. Like an idiot, I agreed and dusted off my yellowed boot skates.

Ringette is a non-contact sport played with bladeless hockey sticks and a rubber ring. The early part of that first season, my body made plenty of contact - with the ice, as evidenced by my technicolour knees, hips and elbows. When our goalie was injured during one particular game, our coach decided it was logical to substitute her with the worst skater on the team. Guess who? I made quite a spectacle of myself screamin with terror every time anyone skated in my general direction. Later, I was lauded for having “natural moves” as a goaltender. Heck, all I was doing was flinching instinctively (with eyes tightly shut, I might add) in self-defence. If sheer cowardice constitutes athletic ability, then I guess that makes me the Gretzky of gutlessness.

Oh, my skating improved with time and diligent practice. I even learned to stop on a dime, in that show-offy way that can cover another player from head to toe with shaved ice. But only on one edge….If I try to stop on the other edge of my blades, I end up facing the other direction. Sigh.

Pass the cheesecake, please.

Latest Update

Here's what Curtis and I learned at the consultation with the thoracic surgeon today...

I'll start with the good news: He said the tumors in my lung are definitely resectable. He can get two of them with wedge resections, but he'll have to remove my upper lobe to get the other one. That would still leave me with 1 2/3 lung capacity rather than just 1/2, so I was happy to hear that. (There's every possibility that more tumors may pop up in my lungs at a later date, but he said then he'd just resect those, too.) He doesn't want to schedule the surgery until I have seen the gynaecologic surgeon about the two big masses in my abdomen, and until I get the ct results for the lump on my parotid gland.

Now the questionable stuff: He says the lump on my jaw "feels like a tumor" rather than a cyst to him. (He's one of only five doctors who feels that way, and I know that fewer than 1% of parotid cysts are malignant, so let's hope he's wrong about that.)

He also still fears that I have bone mets in my right tibia, and not just a stress fracture. Well, my oncologist said if aggressive surgery became a possibility, he would order an MRI of my leg to make sure, so I guess we'll find out when that's done. I'm gonna phone my oncologist tomorrow and see if I can't get him to schedule the MRI asap.

I'm scheduled for some breathing tests in January, and another consultation with Dr. Tan, the thoracic surgeon on Feb. 1 after the other stuff has been checked out.

At least I heard what I'd hoped to: that the mets to my lung are operable, and I don't have to lose my entire right lung.

The Mother of all Catnip Toys



Yesterday I spent 10 bucks on two tubs of catnip, and this morning I sewed it into a 10 x 4 inch fabric log. It's safely tucked away in my closet until Santa Paws arrives. But the smell of it has driven my two boy cats, Milo and Duffy, into orgasmic frenzies.

Wonder where I can get a human version of that stuff?

Overwhelmed



This afternoon, Kim, a friend and colleague, dropped off a big "thinking of you" box from my staff. It was brimming with cards and gifts that have left me a big sloppy sobbing mess:

- a bottle of red Bordeaux from Bob Clasper
- "one-a-day vitamins" (a coffee can full of funny one-liners typed on strips of paper) from Steve Daun
- some delectable Body Shop soaps and lotion from Melanie McCasin
- the Blue Day Book from Shannon McFetridge (who came up with the idea of the box)
- 8 homemade mini cheesecakes from her daughter Alyson McFetridge (a graduate from last June)
- a rose quartz pendant, good for healing, from Deb Romeyn
- natural soaps from Alice Osborne
- The Meditation Book from Pat Strachan
- cappuccino from Wendy Johnson-Brown
- two Chicken Soup books (For the Pet-Lovers Soul and For the Mystic Soul) from Kristin Hein
- a handmade scarf from Jen Kirkwood
- a 90 hour candle from Jan Gibson

I'm going to be very busy writing thank you cards in time for the staff luncheon at the school on Wednesday.

Snow and Ice

Up here in Winterpeg, we curse it, we shovel it, we slip on it; but you have to admit that in their natural states, snow and ice can be wonders of nature. And sometimes, human beings shape, sculpture and chisel it into the most breathtaking marvels. What you see below are photos of an annual festival held in Russia. The snow sculptures are works of art; the ice structures are architectural achievements.




Here's one for Leslie




A life-size replica of the Great Wall of China

Martin



I don't know about you, my few but faithful readers, but sometimes I just fall in love with people. Not in a romantic sense. In a profoundly heart-warming and joyful way. Something just tells me that certain people are brimming with goodness. They make me want to be a better person, and gobble up great spoonfuls of their spirits every chance I get. Some of those people are on my Favourites list to the right.

Such a person is my friend and mentor, Martin. I met him, among many other wonderful people, over three years ago at an online cancer support group for survivors and caregivers. We drew towards each other, and he became one of several people who encouraged me to keep posting my stories. Then he urged me to seek publication; and although I was flattered, I didn't see the possibilities. I didn't know how, or whom; I didn't have the time, etc. etc.

But Martin is a man who always sees possibilities, and he was not to be dissuaded. We're talkin about a guy who has not only endured horrible pain and numerous surgeries and procedures to combat a nasty cancer that had attacked his scalp, but someone who has been a professional musician, a writer, and who now at age 64 manages a resort in St. Kitts. He continues to battle the Monster, and takes on new challenges, having written a marvellous mystery novel I've had the privilege to read. (He emailed me eagerly anticipated installments of his manuscript.) Someone like Martin doesn't give up easily.

He showed some of my stories to some tourists who were in the publishing business, and they said he should tell me to get a copy of The Writer's Marketplace to find publications that might accept unsolicited manuscripts. Skeptically, I followed the advice, and as a consequence, have been a regular columnist in a Calgary magazine every month since April. Next, Martin began a campaign for me to try to get an anthology published. We'll see about that.

This morning, I received the following email from Martin. It echoes much of what Houston has said about courage, or "heroism," a term bandied about rather loosely. Its profundity moves me and suits me. How can someone who knows me only through the written word, know me so well?

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like you to meet my dear friend Martin, so you can love him, too:

Dear Ellen,

I have been re-reading a favorite book "The Life of Pi" by Yann Martel, a Canadian author. Last night I came across this very apropos passage which I pass on.

" 'I'm going to die,' I blubbered through quivering lips.
Oncoming death is terrible enough, but worse still is oncoming death with time to spare, time in which all the happiness that was yours, and all the happiness that might have been yours becomes clear to you. You see with utter lucidity all that you are losing. The sight brings on an oppressive sadness that no car about to hit you or water about to drown you can match. The feeling is truly unbearable....
I was giving up. I would have given up – if a voice hadn't made itself heard in my heart. The voice said 'I will not die. I refuse it. I will make it through this nightmare. I will beat the odds, as great as they are. I have survived so far, miraculously. Now I will turn miracle into routine. The amazing will be seen every day. I will put in all the hard work necessary. Yes, so long as God is with me, I will not die. Amen.' "

My face set to a grim and determined expression. I speak in all modesty as I say this, but I discovered at that moment that I have a fierce will to live. It's not something evident, in my experience. Some of us give up on life with only a resigned sigh. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others – and I am one of those – never give up. We fight and fight and fight. We fight no matter the cost of battle, the losses we take, the improbability of success. We fight to the very end. It's not a question of courage. It's something constitutional, an inability to let go. It may be nothing more than life-hungry stupidity.

M.

"You Can Have This Plate of Poop, or This Other Plate of Poop"



I know some of you are anxious to learn the outcome of the consultation with my oncologist this morning, and I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, but I had a lot of family to call, and then my eldest brother and his wife came over until late this evening. Anyway, here it is.....

Although we were encouraged to learn that the three nodules in my lung have not grown over the past month, we were very disappointed to learn that, not only have the two masses in my abdomen grown somewhat, but they are now almost certainly kidney cancer mets as well. Very very rare ones called "drop metastases" - trust me to come up with something original.

Also, my doctor fears that what looks like a tibial stress fracture, is actually bone metastasis. He had me have an x-ray, and if that isn't definitive enough, I'll have a ct-scan or an MRI done of my right leg.

Surgical resection is unlikely to be an option, although we intend to explore that: He is referring me to both a gynaecological and a thoracic surgeon, to see if my abdominal masses can be explored or even removed laproscopically, and to pursue the possibility of surgery to remove my right lung. He is not keen on me having only 50% lung capacity, in the event that my weakened immune system falls prey to pneumonia at some time in the future. But it doesn't hurt to check into it.

My other options are the traditional treatment (interferon), which will make me feel lousy but might shrink tumors and buy me "two or three extra months," a random drug trial, or nothing but follow-up testing to track the progress of the metastases. In the random drug trial, I may get only interferon after all, or a cocktail of it and some other unpronouncable new drug that they're testing.

I'm not prepared to make any decisions until we gather more information. Since my cancer appears to be slow-growing, there's no real urgency to plunge into a treatment regimen just yet, and I don't want to weaken myself in the event that surgery does become a viable option.

My prognosis? Well, everyone is different, and statistics are only numbers blah blah blah, but my oncologist's best estimate is anywhere from 10 months to 2 years.

That's not enough.

Comic Relief

The picture that follows was emailed to me this morning by none other than Marina, only child of Orville, to whom I paid tribute in the post beneath this one. Despite her pain, she retains a sense of humour and seeks to lighten the mood of others. See why she's my best friend?

The email subject line was "God Save the Queen." I think it speaks to why men shouldn't wear skirts....

I Tips Me Glass



In Act 2, scene 2 of Hamlet, the tragic hero laments, "I have of late... lost all my mirth." That is a very bad place to be, emotionally, and one I have been working hard to avoid lately.

But it's hard.

My best friend's dad, Orville, is dying. Ravaged by old age, Parkinson's disease and several serious infections, he is slipping away from us. As always, he fights stubbornly, but his resolve is weakening. He doesn't want to live any more, but it is his instinct to battle the odds. You see, he's been doing it for over 60 years....

Orville was once one of many young Canadian recruits who were sent to Montreal for basic training before being shipped overseas to war. His unit was administered a contaminated batch of vaccine, that killed most of them. Orville survived, but not without great damage to his body. The toxin attacked his organs and caused numerous fluid-filled cysts to form on his spine, cysts that needed to be surgically removed. His surgeon was an alcoholic who operated on Orville while intoxicated, nicking his spinal cord and paralyzing him. Orville spent six years in hospital; predictions were that he would never walk again.

In the forties and fifties you never saw paraplegics in public; they were institutionalized because the world was a place for the able-bodied. That wasn't acceptable to Orville, and he did not lie idly in a bed. Oh no. He made it his life's mission to make public places wheelchair accessible. He fought for ramps, elevators and wider doorways in public buildings and recreational facilities. He campaigned for all vehicles to have turn signals, so that the disabled could safely use hand controls to drive (he's in the history books for that one), he went to the States to buy hand control kits and installed them himself into the vehicles of other disabled people, he counselled those crippled by injury or disease, he arranged the renovation or sale of their homes for wheelchair accessibility.

He walked out of Deer Lodge Hospital on crutches, defying all predictions.

Orville Olson has been, and continues to be, my inspiration. It is painful to watch his flame, which has burned so fiercely, flickering and waning, just days after his 85th birthday and 50th wedding anniversary to his beloved Louise (a heroine in her own right). It's time for him to rest, and he has earned it, God knows.

I'll mourn him. But his indomitable spirit survives in all of us who have had the privilege of knowing him, all of us who in his honour not only see the glass as half full, but demand that it be topped up.

Here's to you, Orville.

In My Next Life



In my next life, I'm gonna be a meteorologist. I'll make a nice living, even though I won't know what the heck I'm doing, and will hardly ever get anything right.

"Temperatures around the melting point and rain or wet snow."

Phhhhhht. You gonna snowblow my driveway, Mr. Weather Man?

Lanie



Today marks one year since cancer took my dear friend Lanie. We met at an online cancer support group, Cancersurvivorsonlinenow, where Lanie was assistant manager. She defied the odds and lived two years beyond her prognosis, the two years that we were fast friends. During that time Lanie poured all her energy into helping others cope with their cancer experiences. Although we never met in person, we emailed one another daily and spoke on the telephone several times.

I will never forget her courage, her unselfishness, her humour, her grace, her feistiness, and her soft little girl voice.

I miss you so, Lanie.

Don't Let Me Lose This Memory



Geneviève Bergeron, aged 21;
Hélène Colgan, 23;
Nathalie Croteau, 23;
Barbara Daigneault, 22;
Anne-Marie Edward, 21;
Maud Haviernick, 29;
Barbara Maria Klucznik, 31;
Maryse Leclair, 23;
Annie St.-Arneault, 23;
Michèle Richard, 21;
Maryse Laganière, 25;
Anne-Marie Lemay, 22;
Sonia Pelletier, 28; and
Annie Turcotte, aged 21.

These are the names of the 14 women students systematically gunned down at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique on December 6, 1989 in the worst single-day massacre in Canadian history. 13 other students were wounded.

Their assailant was Marc Lépine, a 25-year-old Quebecker and child-abuse survivor who blamed the rejection of his application to the school on "affirmative action" policies promoted by feminists and their sympathizers. In the suicide note he would leave on his body (roughly 20 minutes after he began his rampage, he took his own life), Lépine provided some insights into the virulent mindset that fuelled his rage against women and feminists:

Please note that if I am committing suicide today ... it is not for economic reasons ... but for political reasons. For I have decided to send Ad Patres [Latin: "to the fathers"] the feminists who have ruined my life. ... The feminists always have a talent for enraging me. They want to retain the advantages of being women ... while trying to grab those of men. ... They are so opportunistic that they neglect to profit from the knowledge accumulated by men throughout the ages. They always try to misrepresent them every time they can.

Attached to the letter was a list of 19 prominent Québec women in non-traditional occupations, including the province's first woman firefighter and police captain. Beneath the list Lépine wrote: "[These women] nearly died today. The lack of time (because I started too late) has allowed these radical feminists to survive." It was, instead, dozens of ordinary women whom Lepine separated from the men in the building and attacked.

Since 1989, December 6 has been officially designated a national day of commemoration. Yesterday, candlelight vigils were observed all across Canada, including in all high schools, and thousands of Canadians wore white ribbons, in remembrance of the innocent women who fell.

If Lépine had sought to terrorize Canadian women into staying put in their traditional roles, his rampage may have had the opposite effect. Between 1989 and 1999, the proportion of women enrolled in Canadian engineering faculties rose from 13 to 19 percent. And in absolute numbers, it more than doubled, to nearly 9,000.

It could’ve been me, just as easily,
Could’ve been my sister, left there to bleed.
It could’ve been my father, my brother done the deed.
Oh no, oh no, don’t let me lose this memory.
- The Wyrd Sisters, 1990

Keeping Time



I love Christmas music, especially the traditional carols. Curtis is already grumbling about the radio stations that are playing non-stop holiday tunes, but I can't get enough of them. Even more than listening to them, I love singing them. My voice, like any unpractised instrument, doesn't have the range it used to, but I can still hold a tune.

I had excellent vocal training in high school, thanks to the music teacher and choir director, Mr. Hadfield. He was a scary little dude, hatchet-faced and scrawny, with stooped shoulders and a Woody Woodpecker head. Boy, could he yell when a kid misbehaved in choir class, and when he did, his face would turn vermillion, he would shake, and the cords would stand out on his skinny little neck. "OUT!" he would thunder, then he would stretch his thin mouth into an even more frightening semblance of a tight smile, and say, "Now then...." and continue directing us as if nothing had happened. I made certain I never did anything to invite his wrath.



But man, he could get beautiful sound out of our amateurish pipes. Our musicals were stunning, our festival performances unbeatable, and our Christmas concerts unparallelled. Three years in a row, I sang all fourteen pages of the Hallelujah Chorus at graduation ceremonies, the rich harmonies never failing to cause tears of emotion to stream down my face.

A few of the guys in our high school choir sang in the all-boys' choir at All Saints Anglican Church, where Mr. Hadfield also served as music director. Under his strict tutelage, they had become accomplished vocalists. Two of them in particular, Ian and John, had perfect pitch, and they were the mainstay of the baritone and tenor sections of our choir. They were blowhards, and their status in the practice room made them more pompous than ever; but we all had to give them their "props" where their talent was concerned. One early December day, we were hard at work, learning an a cappella version of "The Little Drummer Boy." Not only is it difficult to maintain pitch when singing without musical accompaniment, but this lengthy choral piece is particularly difficult to keep in tempo; there is a tendency to speed up. While the rest of us sang the carol, Ian and John were assigned the repetitive "prrum PRRUM" bass line that was meant to simulate the drumbeat. It was their job to keep the tempo consistent, acting as human metronomes, as it were.

The two boys would get quite fussy and officious with the rest of us when we began to speed up the beat, and we were getting cranky with their snotty superiority. Thus it should come as no surprise that, when we sang the line, "The ox and ass kept time," we collapsed into fits of giggles. Even Mr. H. joined us in a good belly laugh. I still smirk whenever I hear that part of the carol, although most modern versions have been sanitized to "the ox and lamb".

Where’s a Monkey When You Need One?



Many years ago, I dated for a brief time, a guy who worked at the tropical house at the zoo. He had many interesting stories, one of which was regarding the solution of a problem the zookeepers had with crated animals from Asia: This was before Canada adopted the metric system, and the tools the workers had were incompatible with the screws and bolts that housed the animals shipped from across the ocean. The monkeys were notorious for their curiosity, using their tiny dextrous fingers to dismantle everything in their cages: doors; brackets that held their perches, swings, shelves and other apparatus; metal cages used to protect them from the heat of the ultraviolet lights in their enclosures. Sooooo….

What the keepers would do when confronted by an impenetrable crate, was to place it in the middle of the monkey cage and watch closely. Within minutes, the monkeys had achieved what none of their hairless cousins could, and the crate was removed before the animal inside could come to any harm.

I learned from this. When my school sprang for DVD players for each of our classroom televisions, I didn’t even open the box: I just put it in the centre of the room with the monkeys. Sure enough, a girl had the thing hooked up and running before I could even blink.

The problem with this was that I never learned how to connect anything more modern than a big clunky VCR, so when Curtis and I brought home a new flat screen TV and recording DVD player last week, we were stumped. Oh, we could operate the DVD machine with its silvery space-age looking remote, making the pretty lights go on and off and the drawer open and close….but we couldn’t get it to display on the TV no matter how much head-scratching we did. I searched the house, even looking under the beds, but no monkeys were to be found. We hopped in the car and drove to Sears, where we’d purchased the equipment, to find us one.

Bingo. We approached the youngest looking sales rep in a white shirt (his festive red tie perfectly coordinating with the fresh outbreak of pimples on his chin), and admitted our ineptitude. Without a hint of condescension, he politely carried the same model of DVD player we’d purchased, over to the same model of TV we’d purchased, and demonstrated how to make them play nicely together.

As I type this, Curtis is watching The Cisco Kid, part of a boxed set of western DVD’s we bought at Wal-Mart.

Mangi! Mangi!



Four different appetizers (including pork sausage in white wine and moss mushrooms in a delicious dressing); pasta with olive oil, sundried tomatoes, dried chili peppers and asparagus; Italian salad; Italian bread; chicken marsala; Italian style oven baked potatoes with rosemary; a baked vegetable medley of broccoli and peppers; tiramisu, capuccino, orange brandy, and wayyyyyy too much good wine. Not only did we consume all of that last night, but we learned how to prepare it, thanks to our gregarious hosts, Tony DeLuca and Anna Alba.



DeLucas, an intimate restaurant and cooking school that has been a Winnipeg institution since 1969, barely accommodates 40 diners, and sits atop DeLucas bakery and specialty food store, whose crowded aisles you must navigate to reach the stairs to the dining room/kitchen. It is a magical place, filled with savoury aromas and Tony's puckish personality.

What a wonderful evening we had, and we left with recipes for the many courses we had enjoyed. Coincidentally, my English department colleagues have asked me to meet them for lunch tomorrow at DeLucas. Twist my rubber arm. I intend to arrive a bit early so I can buy the ingredients to make that pasta dish for dinner.

Curtis is gonna be one happy hillbilly.

Rebirth



I'm back. I exist again. Thanks to some of my colleagues, the school division has restored my email. New password, but I can live with that. The lines of communication have been reopened between my students and colleagues, and me.

Yesterday, my friend and colleague Kim visited during her prep. We enjoyed a pizza lunch; she enjoyed the comfort of our new recliner sofa and the Christmas decor. (She's going to Mazatlan for the holidays, so isn't decorating this year.) She brought with her some cards and gifts from school: a lovely bookmark and a gift certificate to McNally Robinson from the staff (I LOVE gift certificates, especially for books), a card and variety of delicious homemade banana breads from a student, and a big plush Christmas moose and cards from a grade 12 class that graduated last June. My substitute also wrote a very nice note. I am very moved by their thoughtfulness.

The furniture store, true to their word, sent a contractor at 9 am sharp to assess the damage caused by the delivery guys. The necessary repairs will be quite extensive. An hour later a technician arrived, and determined that the reason one side of the reclining mechanism doesn't close as easily as it should, is that all of the manhandling of the sofa bent the frame.

It's all good. The material stuff doesn't matter; it'll all work out the way it's supposed to. I am bathed in the joy of the Christmas season, and the support of friends and family.

This chick isn't givin up yet.

I Guess This Proves What a Fossil I Am....



November has come and gone, and as I think back on Novembers past, I recall a fond tradition that has fallen out of use: Sadie Hawkins Day. When I was a teenager, we girls planned for a month, what boys we would ask out on a date. The plans were always elaborate and costly, and the object was to make the guy pay in embarrassment for the lavish evening to which he would be treated.

It wasn't normally considered proper for a girl to ask a boy out; she was supposed to be demure and coy, send out subtle signals of interest but make no overt advances. But come November 13, those unwritten rules went out the window. The girl planned the evening, asked the boy, and footed the bill. The boy's role was to accept.

I don't know how universal the Sadie Hawkins corsage was, but it was the centrepiece of the event in my part of the world. It consisted of an enormous plush animal (a bear or monkey, preferably), festooned with floor-length ribbons that had all sorts of things attached to them: baby bottles, all day suckers, clanging bells, kewpie dolls, etc. - the noisier and more ridiculous, the better. The boy had to wear this monstrosity throughout the date, grinning sheepishly as he jangled his way down the aisle of the movie theatre or restaurant. He pretended to be chagrined, but truthfully, was proud if he had the biggest and most outrageous one.

My high school buddy Diane and I double-dated one Sadie Hawkins. I took Robert, a nice fellow I casually dated from time to time; she took Don "Bear" Pestrak, an amiable 285 pound linebacker (a svelte 250 during football season) who was famous for making most of his 250 Honda disappear up his butt when he rode it down the street. It really was quite a sight to see this great mound of denim in a headband scoot out of the school parking lot, atop a small wheel. But that was nothing compared to seeing him bowl with all that junk hangin from his great breast. I wish I had a picture of that.

Times were so innocent back then; this was about as far as most of us went in terms of bending the rules.


Bear and Friends