Midnight Jolt Run

At work,  I have occasionally needed a password reset due to forgetting which program I am currently logged into, or somebody attempting to log in using my computer and not changing the user-name before locking me out due to too many unsuccessful attempts.  No problem.  We have a handy dandy help desk that we call POC, or “Point of Contact”.   I call them up, talk to a polite, nice young man or woman, and within 5 minutes my new temporary password is in my inbox and I can move on with my life.

Unfortunately, I work for a Corporation, and someone decided that a 4 page, 24 question survey about my “experience” was necessary to judge the effectiveness of the service I used.   This survey, even if I didn’t read it and selected “Excellent” for every question, takes longer to complete than it did to actually get my password reset.  This is not the first time they’ve sent me a survey, either.  At the end of the first, I warned them that if they didn’t streamline the process and have a smaller, quicker, more relevant questionnaire, I would make them pay.

They didn’t listen.  So here was my response for Survey # 2:

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Everyone dreams of what they would do with a giant novelty cheque proudly displaying upwards of six or seven zeroes before the decimal point.  Somehow matching those five, six or more random numbers on your little piece of paper bought on a whim at the corner store, you’d put off even checking until you heard from your co-workers or friends that someone in your city won the jackpot.  When you finally do check them and magically obtain a lifetime’s worth of cash in a single instant.  It would be surreal…a true dream like event.

Maybe that’s why so many people like to dream about it.  I think deep down we all know the chances are pretty good you’ll get twenty or thirty bucks back on the hundreds you’ll spend on lotto tickets throughout your life, but just having that hypothetical “chance” seems to be a therapeutic bonus all in itself.  Most folk would pay off debts and travel.  Buy a house…maybe houses for all their loved ones if the amount is big enough.  A flashy car, a shiny TV, maybe even a suit worth more than one’s entire previous wardrobe.

Of course the real fun comes in imagining what you would BLOW your cash on.  If you paid your bills, gave to your charities and already did all the moderately responsible things you knew to do with your cash, but still had a LOT more…well…I know people who would buy islands, travel to space, buy thousands of Twinkies or blow a million in a weekend trip to Vegas.

But for me?  Honestly?  I’d save a few grand to build horrific monoliths of evil.
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Somewhere between realizing that the Power Rangers aren’t real, and seeing your parents or guardians as fallible human beings instead of invincible protectors or tyrannical monsters, you begin to realize that there are problems in the world that do not centre around your ability to have ice-cream for dinner or a receiving a skinned knee.  In fact, as your mind opens up to accept more and more of the horrors around you, I’d dare think that you form a strong consensus in your mind that GI Joe was lying when he said that knowing was half the battle, and that red-and-blue lasers were the other part of the equation.

It isn’t long before you realize that no matter how many bake sales you run, hugs you give and Band-Aids you hand out to people that you can never do enough.  There are always more problems.  Worse is when you start to see the really terrible ones advertised on TV like some kind of rolling guilt trip to haunt your impressionable young mind.  Giving begins as a fun thing you do at holidays or for birthdays, and is transformed into something that seems absolutely vital for the continued survival of the human race.  Maybe it is.  Maybe it isn’t.  But it sure does feel like it when you see kwashiorkor-bellied children suffering bare-footed in the dirt of some God-forsaken shithole in Africa.

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I have felt sadness before.  Loathing and anger are no strangers to my emotional pallet, and I can tell you of bitter swallows of both heartbreak and unrequited desire.  Ahh yes, yet they were always the kind of drink that scalded the throat, lightened the wallet and will…and ultimately taught me a lesson, desired or not.  But this…this is a watered down pint of spirits.  This strange, weak emotive mead is brewed not of the deepest sorrow, nor the sharp tang of regret.  It is stale, and it is hateful and I know it will not allow me to drink deeply of it so I may lose it in a hangover the next day.  I drink of piss-warm egotism, and yet I can’t bring myself to walk over to the toilet and deposit the liquid where it rightfully belongs.

My earliest memories are a jumble of three images.  One was me, crying in my crib, angry at an imposed curfew but otherwise, just darkness, and a semi-out of body experience where I imagine seeing myself, howling into the night, raging against sleep, and eventually…succumbing.

The second earliest memory is of a car crash.  Truck crash, specifically.  I remember in great detail and environmental awareness of the moments beginning with me looking out a window in the Ford pickup being driven by my mother down the highway, and then crawling around on the upside-down-overturned truck cabin roof, avoiding the pebble-like broken safety glass that was everywhere, and crawling out onto the highway to the waiting arms of my mother who had, until that moment, assumed I had been crushed under the truck or thrown free of the wreck into a fence somewhere.

The third is much more green.  Running back and forth around the back yard of my grandparent’s lawn in Fort St. John at the age of…well, I was at the oldest four years olf.  I remember the feeling of the sloped lawn under my feet as I ran from the house to the small drainage ditch that broke the lawn up into a hill and an island when it rained.  I remember the smell of peas and ruhbarb and the taste of fresh carrots straight from the earth and the plesant cold sting of icey cold water right from the garden hose.  I remember countless times over countless years of that same backyard, and the layout of the home attached to it.  My Grandparents home.  With a simple one-story design, with a caveronous, adventure-sparking cellar underneith known only as the “Mole Hole” in which treasures like pickled carrots and mushroom soup lay dormant and pensive upon a noble and brave soul’s journey down the home-made rickety steps.

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There is something terribly exciting about choice, reaction and consequence. In our society, freedom and choice go nearly hand in hand, rolled together in a little sushi roll that promises again and again that it is worth fighting for, worth dying for, and worth having no matter how bitter the taste or allergic the reactions that follow consumption of said maki. We value this perfect simple idea of freedom so deeply that we make it the unsung (and not so unsung) hero, prize and virtue of countless tales, songs, hymns and legends. Maybe it is because we believe we grew from a time that didn’t have choice… (You have to get up and hunt or you’ll starve. You’ll have to find a mate or you’ll die alone. You’ll have to follow what your elders taught you or be stoned or burnt to death) that we forget that this freedom has been around a lot longer than our silly notions of the world have been cast in the die of our so called collective common sense.

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[read part 1 here]

My Daddy once told me that you should never rely on the works and acts of a pair of hands that isn’t still around to own up for them.

I believe this intrinsically, as do many poor hobos like me who have spent the night in a pre-dug camp and ended up getting crushed by rock when the half-assed supports failed.  Even worse is some of the corporations who sling out small fortunes in an effort to professionalize this rock-hopping business.  They’ll cut corners, ignore warning signs and pull out their teams before they can see the results of their poor planning.   The nastier characters, and I do know a few, will set boobytraps that they forget about when leaving, or purposely leave just for a dark chuckle.   Fine by me, I say.  Just more reason to dig your own holes and set your own tent.

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She bundles up in the cute stuff
Armoured in nylons and grey fluff
And an outer balloon jacket far too flat
To hold even a warm breath for more than a dozen heartbeats

Out into the cold she awakes
The one day a year she forsakes
The weather channel a dozen times
And her sudden accidental bravery makes me smile a dozen more
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Reading through Facebook updates is like trick-or-treating.  You walk up to the browser, ring the doorbell / favourite / bookmark, and hope that the first and last thing you see isn’t an axe flying toward your head or your girlfriend breaking up with you by announcing to the world you are a terrible lover and your butt smells like rotten cheese.  Thankfully, due to years of police and citizen patrols the axe thing happens pretty rarely.  The ass-cheese thing depends on you, but we can hope it is also a rare occurrence.

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It’s an art, ya’see.

All in the wrists in those last few seconds.

When I tell the youngsters that you have about a minute to prepare once you see the train comin, they act like a minute is a lifetime, forgetting that those sixty little seconds melt away pretty fast in the cold black of space.

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