You know here’s the thing. God Bless Us and all our failings. Grumpy Old Men have spent our entire lives navigating a changing social, political, cultural and economic landscape. Now don’t get all up in my face, I get it. The changes were decades in the making and long overdue. But it has been overwhelming at times for my generation of men and the Grumpy Old Men we have become.
You can’t be woke, until you can see. And you can’t ‘see’ until you wake up. It’s the challenge of every generation. Mine was no exception.
Life’s three certainties? Death, taxes and change. Well, Mark Twain coined the first two. I might have added ‘change’ but hey, who among us can’t relate. And it’s relentless as well, sometimes smooth and easy in the transition, other times convulsive and tectonic but always, always change. At least as I reflect back upon my path.
“Hello”, I addressed a woman sitting on the next lounge chair. It was January 2019 and we were in San Pancho, a small ocean side town in Mexico about twenty minutes north of Sayulita on the Pacific coast. I had not yet met the woman, it was just a polite non-intrusive salutation that would, I knew, unlock the answer to the unstated question, “Would you like to talk?”.
“Rowe Patricia Penton” she said in her gentle Sophie voice. We’re calling her ‘Rowe Patricia Penton’. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. ‘Rowe’ was my mother’s maiden name and ‘Patricia’ is Mac’s given name, ‘Patricia Ann”. What an honour. My mum died some time ago but I could feel her smile shining down on little Rowe, so honoured she would have been in that moment.
Ainsley never knew the story her grandfather told her. Her great-great grandfather Sir Archibald Kirby-Macdonell had perished in 1900, drowning in the waters off Chrome Island near Deep Bay BC. He was trying to join the greatest love of his life.
Fumiko Watanabe never new the story Mr. Tanake told her. Her grandmother Asami Abako had died in Deep Bay, BC. Some said it was of a broken heart after her true love perished in a terrible storm off Chrome Island in 1900.
Radio careers rested on ratings. And listeners could add in ‘comments’ when they sent their survey back. I’ll never forget the first one I read: ‘PEYTON IS THE WORST THING EVER IN KELOWNA RADIO. HE MUST GO!’
Writing for profit is a fool’s game. I don’t, I write for myself. Some of my writing is profound, some is important, but most of it is neither of those two things. I am at my best as an observational humourist, filtering the mundane through the ‘amusing’ lens and writing.
David Sedaris is a great American observational humourist and he has unknowingly guided me as I spelunked my way through many a dark, confusing writing tunnel. He taught me to stop worrying about inspiration. He says that human beings are very funny, hilarious at times. The knack he says is to get better at seeing it. He is right, if I have grown as a writer it is because I am better now at ‘seeing’ us as we are, simple and complex, shallow and profound, tragic and hilarious. We are endlessly fascinating, a never ending source of writing inspiration.
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