I have been told that I am curmudgeonly due to some of my posts. Well, I met someone the other day who is the same age as me (senior) but whose curmudgeonist views make mine the stuff of a Sunday School picnic. He was an upholsterer and I hired him to re do some of our outdoor cushions.
If there ever was a curmudgeon school of thought this man would be the principal. Interestingly, we got on like a house on fire. Funny that. So what does that say about me? Oh, I don’t know. Ask my MP of whom many of my tirades are directed against. Or our illustrious boy Prime Minister. Blah, blah, blah, blah.
We had a great conversation in his driveway, on one of our many early spring cloudy days. Just like our school of thought. Gloomy.
“Where ya from” he says to me
“Ontario…Toronto,” I says
“Me too. Scarborough. Grew up there and worked in my Dad’s upholstery shop.”
“Oh yeah?” says I. “Etobicoke for me.”
“Yeah, My Dad’s business was called the Ontario School of Upholstery but it was no school, I can tell you that.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah and across and down the street a few blocks from us was the Canadian School of Upholstery, but it was no school either. They took their cue from us as our names had some sort of panache to them. Can I say “them,” by the way?”
“Sure can…why?”
“Yeah ,well you never know in this f%^ked up woke world of ours. I hate wokeness. What does it mean anyway? Woke?
“Don’t know. Progressive shyte I think, where you can be, or identify, as anyone or anything you like. Even that horse over there, if you have an inkling for hay and oats.”
“Yeah? A horse? Really?” Chuckling. “Well I have been called a pig a few times in my life.”
He went on….
“But I had a great time growing up in Toronto. Great summers, cold winters but loved the outdoors. Hockey, skiiing, in the winter; fishing camping up in northern Ontario during the summer, if you can stand the mosquitos and horse flies. Brutal. Horrendous. How I miss that.”
“Met my wife there in Toronto but she is from here so we moved back here, to…be…with…her…. family.” He spit. “What family? We never see them. We are only about a 40 minute drive from them but they feel they have to pack a lunch to cross the Malahat Mountain and do forty clicks. Can you believe it? Crikey, I drove more that that to work every day in Toronto…and out here? No, the people out here are a strange lot. It must be the water. Well, you can’t see the mountains in Ontario. It’s so flat, my wife would whine. You can’t see the mountains here either cause of the trees and the continuous rain. But I love my dog. He agrees with everything I say.
“Worst thing I ever did.” He continued. “Come out here. And she hates it here too. Her hometown. Probably gets that from me.”
“Well, how long have you lived here by the lake?”
“Goin on 40 years.”
“What. That’s a long time to be unhappy.”
“Who says we are unhappy? Or me?”
“Well you did…I think.”
“It is all a matter of perspective. Or if you have rose coloured glasses on. Or, if your glass if half empty…like mine is. “But…”and he raised his arm as if making a point of it all….for emphasis. “When everything feels the shits…you don’t expect much, and so you are never disappointed.”
Why don’t you just go back then?”
“Wifey would never go for it now. Grand-kids you know. Nah, I’m…er we are stuck here.”
“Yeah” I agreed. “The politics out here will drive you nuts.”
“Just a bunch of no name idiots.” He continued. “Looney left wing nuts out here. NDP…or Dippers? Dipping into the public till. Useless. Provincial Liberals? A waste of space. Just like the dippers…and scandal prone, just like their federal counterparts. And don’t get me going on those greenies. Aliens from another planet of thought I can tell you that. Just look around you…here? Trees everywhere. And ya can’t cut them down. Protected species they say. Power lines going right through them and across tree branches. We have brown outs and full blown power outages on a weekly basis. Whenever the wind comes up. They worship these trees out here as if they were some idol out of biblical times. Gaia? Phewy.”
“And ya can’t fart around here without somebody raising a stink. No siree Bob. It sucks.”
The Politics here? Suck. The weather? Sucks. Crime? Sucks. The homeless problem? Sucks big time. The Cowichan Valley Regional District? All sucking on our hind tit. For all its worth.” He said with a wide grin on his face. He was both stoic and animated…almost comical. I was not quite sure if he was pulling my leg to get a rise out of me.
“And look at the roads. Potholes everywhere. They don’t know how to fix potholes. They could learn a thing or two from Ontario, I can tell you that.
“We pay our taxes. Exorbitant! And for what? I am on a septic system and a well. No sidewalks and no street lights.”
“You are rural out here you know.” I offered.
I know but why do I have to pay such high taxes. And there is a tax on a tax on a tax. Now we have to pay a tax to breathe. TO BREATHE.
“What is that?” I asked.
“The effin carbon tax. A tax on Carbon Dioxide…C…O….2. Cause we all exhale CO2. So they tax that…or us and the air that we breathe. Canadians are sooo stupid to let this happen. They don’t care as long as they have their 6 packs, Doritos and Hockey Night In Canada. And to rub our faces in it they add the GST to the Carbon Tax. They are taxing everything now because they need more money to maintain their looney left wing social programs. And look at our cities. Victoria? A shit hole. Duncan? A little shit hole. And their fifteen minute cities? What on earth is that? Just another crackpot looney left wing bull crap, I tells ya. I didn’t vote for that. And our schools are terrible. Indoctrinating our kids with woke ideology? Transgenderism, pronouns. No respect for authority or our traditions. Man oh man oh man. Good thing I am old and won’t be around here much longer to have to put up with this shyte.”
“I gotta go.” I left the cushions with him, hopped in my car to leave.
“Okay” he said. “I’ll have these done in a day or two.”
“Great.” says I.
“By the way’ he added, with a wide grin on his face. “Have a wonderful day.”
I drove off, my mind trying to comprehend all that he said. Funny actually. Meeting a real curmudgeon…a curmudgeon’s curmudgeon. And while in deep contemplation I heard a loud bang from the front end of my car as I hit one of the many potholes on his street. Karma?
Kurofune and other books I have written. Good reads with great reviews.
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