Category: A Very Short Story

From the Short Story Vault

The Sport of Idiots*

There we were with our skates, parkas, toque perhaps, no helmets, gloves or mitts, blue jeans and the like. Red rosy cheeks, with clear warm snot running down from our noses.  Sniff, sniff and sniff again: soon to be yellow tinged icicles hanging, dangling from our nostrils and the cleft of our chins.  But hey, it was healthy snot!  On top of that, tingling toes and burning fingers signalling the early onset of frostbite – but we didn’t care. We were alive and young, and free.  The faster we flew on our blades the warmer we felt and exhilarated by the sweet nectar of being alive.

We would set up a couple of goals and play a form of pond hockey. The sound of slapping sticks or pucks to wooden blades: the swishing, whishing and crunching sounds of our blades on ice were the only sounds to be heard. Of course there was also the odd whooping, whistling and ribbing sounds coming from someone’s mouth when a deek, a fake or a shot of speed was masterfully executed. Laughing, sometimes arguing, ranting and definitely cursing when a puck went astray off the ice and into the snow. Normally we could find it but on those rare occasions when we couldn’t find the puck in the snow banks we came up with our favourite “Barrel Jumping” competition.

“Barrel Jumping” used to be an accredited winter sport, both amateur and professional.  But it was never a winter Olympic event but it should have been. I remember watching it on the Wide World of Sport TV program: that late Saturday afternoon stalwart sports program, “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat,” which I believe is no longer a fan favourite being replaced by the mundane and hyped Monday Night Football and the like. Barrel Jumping was a real man’s sport, sort of like winter’s version of the “High Jump and Long Jump” combined and all rolled into one event except that on completing the leap the competitor either landed squarely on his blades on the ice in triumphant jubilation or crash mercilessly, convulsively into the barrels themselves. Or, with hope upon hope, he tripped himself up after his leap into space falling on to his backside then sliding into the boards of the rink or snow bank.  Unlike the “High Jump” there were no padded landing zones to break the skaters fall just the hard cold ice zone to break ones legs, one’s knees, ankles or pride.  Concussions seemed to top the list as well. Probably a good thing as the more one became concussed the braver one became in this sport. It was like their badge of honour. No, it was not the Sport of Kings but rather the sport of Dentists, Orthodontists, Chiropractors and Idiots.

The premise being that, in spite of idiocy and insanity, it was all about jumping over plastic barrels on skates, on ice of course. The more barrels that were cleared the more adventurous and dangerous it became. It was very popular in the Northern States, particularly New York State around the Lake Placid area; Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine plus the backwoods of Quebec and parts of northern Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan Canada. It was a hugely popular and well followed event. We all had our own barrel jumping heroes of course.

The competitor, or idiot on skates, would circle the barrels like some sort of displaced matador insanely focused on the barrels themselves that were racked side by side on the ice.  Starting with one barrel the excitement and suspense of the fans grew exponentially as the number of barrels increased: two, three, five, eight, ten and on and on it went until there was only one man left standing, or sliding into the boards. The crowds would cheer as each participant cleared the barrels in flight and cheered even louder if one came crashing down into one of the barrels. The cacophony of oooos, aaaahs and groans were the real metric of approval. Scoring was dependant upon the competitor’s misstep and choreographed mishap, which was the real essence that made this event so compelling from a spectator’s perspective. With each subsequent jump the competitors would try and outdo one another for the admiration and adulation of the crowds. Some would twirl, some would spin and some would jump like a figure skater before building up the speed over distance that was necessary to clear the barrels. 10, 20, sometimes 30 miles per hour they could muster, their leg muscles bulging with every stride: their arms flinging in a sideways motion as if giving flight like an airplane or like the birdbrains that they were. The jumper must leap about 6 or seven feet in the air with a forward projection if he has any hope of clearing the barrels.

The competitor must have agility, speed and guts and be intellectually challenged if he is to be successful in this sport. Some would just leap and fall without the grace or agility of a showman. Others would appear to be running in thin air: their legs, arms and skates pumping like the madmen that they were while others had the audacity and fool’s courage to project themselves horizontally over the barrels once in the air, like a human cannonball or like superman in flight with their arms outstretched dead ahead only to come crashing down to earth headlong into the barrelled mass. These guys were a crowd favourite. In essence the sport of barrel jumping was never really about clearing the barrels but about the chaotic showmanship of the competitors and their relationship with the barrels themselves as they went flying in all directions.

Unfortunately Barrel Jumping never became an Olympic sport. Instead we have Rhythmic Gymnastics!

“It was too brutal of a sport” a commentator was heard to say. “No one ever made it as all the competitors seemed to fall on their backsides.

Yessss exactly

 

*Except from “I Thought I’d Died and Gone to Heaven”  

Origin Of A Word!

Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Huh, What is that? Well, back in medieval times a family may have had one bath a week. husband first; wife, second; children in descending age and then the baby – last. Same tub, same water, though somewhat putrid and brown.  Mother was always wary that when the water was subsequently thrown out that the baby was not tossed out with the lot. Hence the expression – “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

And what about that old marital tradition of carrying the bride over the threshold? Well, again back in the golden olden days, houses, or cottages, had roofs of thatch. You can imagine the work in cleaning the floors. Just by the main entrance was a hold – for the thatch, or thresh, as it was called, and the hold a thresh-hold. It was customary therefore to carry one’s bride across this threshold so as not to soil the woman’s petticoats.

Many of our words and expressions have had their roots or genesis hundreds of years ago. Over the years these expressions or words have found themselves in our everyday vocabulary – some good, some bad, some laughable, some sad.

Consider this:

In the 16th and 17th centuries, everything had to be transported by ship, wooden ships of sail. Old wooden transports or scows with rotting timbers, creaking, expanding planks stretching with every yaw or pitch of the ship, every motion of the sea such that the caulking opened somewhat with the result that the ship’s bilges, lower deck and the holds were often times awash in seawater.

Now in those days, like today, the rich folk, the aristocracy, loved their gardens. They loved their great expanses of manicured lawns. Lawns without a single weed – uniformed carpets, emerald green and lush to the touch. Flowers of every kind – a horticulturalist’s dream. We have all seen these magnificent Italian, French and English country gardens. Unbelievable! Unbelievable that these gardens could be so spectacular without the benefit of modern day commercial fertilizers. Maybe so, but they did have manure in those days – huge shipments of the stuff. It was shipped in dry form because when dry, manure is very light and somewhat airy. Nevertheless dry manure shipped in these leaking ships posed a unique but significant problem. You see when dry manure gets wet it becomes heavier and the pungent process of fermentation begins of which a by-product is methane gas.
  
As the stuff was stored below decks in bundles you can see what could and
did happen. Methane began to build up below decks and the first time
someone came below at night with a lantern, BOOOOM!  Several ships were destroyed in this manner before it was determined just what was happening. After that the bundles of manure were always stamped with the letters “S period; H period; I period; T period, such that the sailor always knew what they had on their hands.

This precaution was not always heeded and on one occasion a number of ships in company experienced such a fatal, yet awesome explosion of methane induced fireworks. On historical account there was one convoy of manure laden ships that met a week of extremely rough weather.  As luck would have it, when the weather abated and the ships were back in company, at the most unexpected time “ KABOOM,” one of the ships exploded. It was such an awesome, awful sight to behold. The explosion was so spectacular that one seaman above decks in one of the accompanying ships was heard to exclaim:

“Holy S, period, H, period; I, period; T, period.” as the bales of manure so aptly labelled were flying everywhere. Asked later to explain the scene he so deftly uttered.

“It was like a shower.”

“A shower of what?” he was asked?

“A shower of S, period; H, period; I, period; and T, period.  It was all that he could muster.

Indeed a number of these bales even landed on the fantail of a ship some two miles distant.  So nervous and scared were some of the sailors on that ship that they could barely get the words out to explain the occurrence to their Captain. When asked what happened one of the sailors stammered:

“Sir: there was a huge explosion. There was S, period, H, period; I, period; T, period everywhere. The explosion was so strong that some of the bales marked S, period, H, period; I, period; T, period. hit the fffff fan – tail. It was unbelievable.”

A search for survivors was conducted. As luck would have it, the Captain and twenty of his crew were rescued. They found the Captain himself alone in the water in the midst of about 100 broken and destroyed bales. He was literally and figuratively found to be in the S, period, H, period; I, period; T, period.

Thus over the years, the decades, the centuries the acronym “S, period, H, period; I, period; T, period ” has evolved. You see many of the sailors in those times were illiterate – they couldn’t read or write. That is why the acronym S,period, H period, I period and T period was used. It was easy to pronounce and remember. Indeed over the years the acronym itself entered the English language. It can be found in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (COED, 10th Ed, 2002; page 1324). Many of the expressions found in the dictionary and associated with that acronym today go back to that very fateful and terrible event.

And what is the meaning of the acronym S, period, H period, I period, T period that were marked on those bales? 

Ship High In Transit!

It’s obvious!

Perhaps you were thinking of something else.

 

Originated by anonymous although embellished slightly by yours truly.

Intellectual Passion

In many respects the South Pole at the turn of the 20th century was an environment of no’s.  There was no point of reference.  There was no large geographical landmark announcing, “You are here!”  There was no large hole in the ground staked with a massive pole obtrusion or place name.  There was no marker.  There was no obvious tell tale sign that an objective had been reached.  There was no support for life. There was nothing there but wind: a wind so cold and bitter that it was life sucking. It was as if the wind gods had found a place on earth to vent their anger unabated.  A howling, deafening non – prevailing wind with snow and blizzard and drift that was constant only in its relentless power: a non-prevailing confused and chaotic maelstrom because there was no direction here – except north.  There was no warm southwesterly, steady westerly or an easterly.  Everywhere one turned one was facing north.  There was only the bitter north wind.  And coming from all directions!

 And there was nothing at the South Pole except a frigid, blinding white desert plain projecting a desolate and frighteningly yet awesome picture of nature – at its best and at its worst: a lifeless, broad, flat, monotonous stretch of frozen landscape that stretched as far as the eye could see – in every direction.  In the summer months there were 24 hours of sunshine but with it came an incessant blinding glare.  In the wintertime an eternal darkness fell over the land like a veil of silence in death:  a darkness that was made all the more eerie and dangerous with temperatures dropping off the bottom of the Fahrenheit scale.  And everywhere one looked it was always the same.  There were no distinctions: only wind and drift and snow and ice. 

The south polar plateau was an icy land that was both hypnotically breathtaking as it was nomadically restless.  Ice that was so pervasive, it was everywhere:  ice – in crystallized air;  ice – in frozen breath; ice – in frozen sweat; ice that was over a mile thick; ice that permeated and smothered every secret that the land may hold; ice that moved; ice that scorched a path across a barren landscape; ice that was so relentless and unwavering in its slow glaciated crawl across the south polar plateau toward the Trans-Antarctica Mountains; and ice that fell in precipitous icefalls, down expansive glaciers that were bordered by mountains over 15,000 feet in height.  Towering granite peaks, like sentinels, these mountains protected a high frozen polar ice prairie that was home to a non-descript geographical point of the earth that was the frozen underbelly of the world.  The South Pole was indeed cold and inhospitable. It was a terrible place.

And on this land of ice and snow, on this south polar plateau some 10,000 feet above sea level, tales unfolded in an historical context of polar exploration that have since become the source of legend and myth: legendary tales of survival, of leadership, of endurance, of courage, of success, of heart rendering self-sacrifice, of depression, of defeat, legendary myths and tales of men, of dogs, of ponies, of unremitting hunger, of disease, of death.  It is a place of storied heroism, of foolishness, of fickle and fate, of obstinacy and ignorance, of mental breakdown and stupidity.  It is a place of friendship, of camaraderie, of jealousy, and spite.  It is a place of majestic peaks, of icy crags, of hidden crevasses, of bottomless chasms, of pressure ridges, of untold beauty and horrific dangers and suffering.  It is the vast polar plateau, the Beardmore and Axel Heiberg Glaciers, the expansive Ross Ice Shelf, The Devil’s Ballroom, McMurdo Sound, the Western Mountains, Katabatic wind, Terror and Erebus, the Bay of Whales.  It is the playground of killer whales, the home of the Emperor and Adele penguin, the Weddell seal, Skuas and the Antarctic Petrel. 

For some men the South Pole symbolized gentlemanly fulfillment. The Antarctic environment entrapped them into an addiction of exploration and an escalating sense of superhuman accomplishment.  It instilled a sense of unbridled commitment and fulfillment to a cause that was of intellectual importance and of spiritual poetry and propriety.  Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of Robert Falcon Scott’s men and author of one of the best south polar chronicles written “The Worst Journey in the World” (Cherry-Garrard, 1930) described south polar exploration this way: “Exploration is the physical expression of the Intellectual Passion”(Cherry-Garrard, 1930, page 577). Perhaps it was for men brought up on Victorian values: Victorian men who were intellectually nurtured on Browning, Tennyson, Dickens and Darwin, or influenced by Jowett (Hibbert, 1987).  But for many of these men there was also that adolescent like fearlessness and ignorance of the horrific dangers, subtleties and paradox that was the Antarctic.  Reading their stories, their fearlessness and bravado somehow undermined the intellectual passion and poetic romanticism.  For the Antarctic may be in one instant a beautiful thought provoking place.  But in the next it heralds a terrible, frozen death.  Its death knell is both unsuspecting and indistinguishable, but death nevertheless.   For the Antarctic environment knows no glory.  It knows no sense of gentlemanly conduct.  It has no sense of fair play or understanding of intellectual pursuits or passion. The Antarctic is not a positive place at all. It is an environment of no’s.

 

(c) Shakeyjay 2002

A Depressed State of Mind

 

I don’t want to dwell too much on this place, this wet coast city; needless to say I got a job at a paper, cardboard packaging company that had an international flavour to it. My sister and her partner welcomed me with open arms and made me feel at home. In their old beater, they took me on day trips around the city and surrounding country side. I must admit that when the sun did come out on those rare occasions, the city’s natural, geographical setting was spectacular. Only problem was that these occasions were as remote as a west coast hippy’s tendency to find a job. Me, I worked.

I also met Sandy, my sister’s best friend and our next door neighbour’s oldest daughter. She and my sister decided to come out to the west coast with all the other hippies of this so called summer of love. Go west young dude, and dude-ess was the hippy siren call of the day. So, with a suitcase full of “tie dyes”, with hope upon hope and a restless thumb they all hitchhiked to the promise land.

Sandy lived in a commune in the south east end of the city. It was so cool she told me. Yes it was sooo cool, figuratively and literally, but also run down and shabby: ten of her closest friends living together under one roof. The only enterprising dude in all of this was the landlord. Yet his dependency of course was not the free spirited, enterprising skills of the inhabitants of his run down abode but the municipal government’s largesse of the day affectionately known by all of the caterers of the hippy commune crowd as “Welfare Wednesdays.” And commune is just a hippy expression and a Latin word for shithouse!

Sandy showed me her space, which was in the corner of a large open basement, damp, dark and dank, with just a dirty mattress and a blanket curtain marking off her personal territory: a bare incandescent light bulb her only means of artificial light.  It was sooo cool she told me. And you’re so square, uptight, so un-cool she would criticise me to no end. Get with the program she would insist. Her limited vocabulary was only limited by the amount of drugs she imbibed. The letter “C” was a predominant determinant of their nondescript and boring alphabet and part and parcel of the hippy dialogue and cultural landscape. What she didn’t tell me of course was the amount of times she was robbed of her food and money by her cadre of close but oh sooo cool family of friends.

But what did it for me in this run down abode of a dwelling was an incident that occurred while visiting Sandy. Sitting in the kitchen on the main floor, Sandy was making me a cup of coffee when suddenly the front door was kicked in by some scruffy looking Manson like figure dude of hippiedom, stoned out of his ever lovin but lifeless mind. His eye balls rolling and puffing out of his skull; his dirty unkempt beard gave him the impression of a crazed out Sasquatch, or a mountain man. Someone who hadn’t seen soap in a very long time! Foam seemed to be frothing out of the sides of his mouth. He was cursing to high heaven, tripping out I would assume, in the hippy vernacular. Paranoid perhaps. But what was really scary and sooo un-cool, was the sawed off shotgun that he was wielding in his left hand and forearm. I do hope to God he is right handed I prayed. I couldn’t move. I was gobsmacked. Just as well, as any movement by us in his direction probably would have triggered his aggression, and not in a good way.

And just as quickly as he entered, he turned and left, exiting out of the now damaged front door. Perhaps he had the wrong address I thought.  I almost shit my pants and when it was deemed safe I high tailed it out of there but not before I pleaded with Sandy to come with me. She declined.  “But Damian is sooo cool” she told me. Damian? Damian? Damian is sooo cool? Isn’t Damian a name for a devil? Like a Griffin, a devilish name? I thought to myself.  And with a sawed off shotgun as his calling card? These hippies are sooo prone to self delusion and self destruction. It must be the drugs I thought or the drinking water or the raindrops pounding relentlessly on their noggins.  More than likely it was the Purple Haze in the shallow recesses of their minds or the West Coast Bud where everyone, everybody, crazy or not, is your best friend forever, or buddy. I never returned to Sandy’s commune.

I do believe that in the two month period that I lived there, 60 days I think, that it rained for 59 of them. Exaggerating perhaps but it just seemed so. It was either raining or about to rain or had just finished raining.  And with the rain came the melancholy. And with the melancholy came the empty feeling of loneliness and with the loneliness and melancholy, and vitamin “D” deficiency, came depression. The suicide rate in this city was through the roof.

Bully

Then there was the game of all games: British Bulldog. I think every school on the planet that was tied to the commonwealth played British Bulldog. It didn’t matter if you could even spell it or pronounce it or even read it, especially in countries such as India, or Pakistan, Bangladesh. Oh you say British Bulldog you say. Okay. Let’s play you British Maha-raj-dog you!

This game could be brutal. I truly believe it was the foundation that made the British Empire great or the modern day commonwealth common. And if you were weak kneed, fragile, timid, shy, look out. This was one game where anyone’s, everyone’s disposition or nature, weak or strong, somehow manifested itself in very short order. If you were scared you might as well be wearing a sign that said: “I am scared shitless.”  Okay, let’s go after him. He’ll be the last one standing. It was an unwritten rule. This game was so profound. It provoked the leaders from the followers, the bullies from the bullied, the weak from the strong and the popular from the dispossessed. Too bad! That’s the way it was and was the life of a male elementary student at a Catholic School. Meanwhile the girls were playing May-pole. Or Hop Scotch! Sounds like fun to me!

 So, how did this game go?

Get as many guys as you could muster in the centre of the schoolyard by yelling out British Bulldog. Volunteer immediately to be one of the Bulls, that is, one of the guys in the middle of the schoolyard facing about one thousand of your closest friends who are lining up against a fence at one end of the yard. The aim here was that once the alarm was sounded by the Bull one had to run across the open yard enmass to the other side of the field without being caught by one of the Bulls waiting in the centre of the field of play, of course. Caught? No tackled was more like it. Today I believe they might call this “Capture the Flag” but for us it was a tad more brutal and neanderthal than waving some fag worthy piece of shitty pink or blue ribbon. Tackled, yes, but in those days the schoolyard at that time of the year, again late winter or early spring, was covered with course green-brown grass sprinkled here and there with rock hard but soon to be well textured mushy, smelly dog turds.  That was the whole point of the game though: to scare the beejeezus out of some of the so called geeks of the school.  And once you were tackled you joined your tackle-er and became one of the Bulldogs in the centre of the field. The last one standing was the so called winner of the game. In reality, and by our rules, the last one standing was the biggest loser.

This was definitely the preferred game for bullies in that it was an unwritten rule that the geekiest or so called weakest looking nerdy guy in the school would be the very last one up against the fence. His poor, pathetic perspective of his seemingly small nerdy world would be facing down 1,000 of his closest bully Bulldogs standing in the centre of the field waiting unabashedly to rein down pure unadulterated, adolescent terror on the poor lad. Fun? You bet! A tad mean and ruthless? Perhaps! Definitely. But it was a sure fire way to grow up.

And why would some seventy pound weakling agree to participate in such madness? Simple. At the beginning of the game there was strength in numbers so one geek would feel somewhat safe and have a somewhat secure but false sense of belonging standing there against the fence at the beginning of this melee, with 1,000 of his so called geek buddies.  Unbeknownst to him though it was the unwritten but agreed upon rule by all of the bully Bulldogs that the designated target would be allowed to run free and easy, again and again, bypassing the awaiting but increasingly growing horde of bullies who would manifest themselves into becoming this vast conflagration of idiots bent upon the realization that this was going to be the very worst day in the poor lad’s short life.

Interestingly, while some of the remnants, or targets, realizing what was about to occur in very short order, might turn and run toward one of the school’s doors. Those that did stick it out found out, somewhat ironically, and to their astonished astonishment and amazing amazement, that they earned the respect of some of the biggest bullies, louts in the school. They unwittingly demonstrated that they had the courage, the backbone, the stupidity to stick it out, get a little bruised perhaps, and wear that badge of honourable dog shit that every British Bulldogger wears on their sleeves. Interestingly, soon after, they relished the thought of becoming a Bulldog themselves: one of the guys, louts, idiots, Bulldogs, in eying down some other poor sod who had the misfortune of becoming a target. There must be some psychological determinant to explain away this form of activity, group think, mob behaviour, stupidity with security in numbers. How else can one explain how a horde of 600 Bulldogs ran across this field of death with idiots to the right of them, idiots to the left of them, and so ran the 600 idiots (apology to Tennyson). *

(c) Shakey Jay 2015

* “Excerpt from “I Thought I’d Died and Gone to Heaven”