What on earth do you do if you find yourself in a grocery store line-up behind some old guy that absolutely reeks of a mixture of ...I can hardly even describe it..strong roll-your-own cigarettes; old garage smells, like gasoline and diesel (not the nice gasoline smell), moldy, dirty body, and rotten teeth?
I was behind that guy today. The cashier was backed up as far as he could get to let the old fellow buy one more pouch of tobacco. Tough to be so desperately attached to your nicotine that you don't realize when you're past the breaking point for radiating smoke smell already. It's not even smoke smell, because I like that new fresh smell. It's the weeks-old build-up of a smell that happens when you only have a bath once in awhile, whether you need it or not. None of you kids from today probably know about people from the past who only bathed once a week at best..that was pretty well everybody...My grandparents never had a bathtub that I knew of, it was all basin baths. Most people were quite clean, even so.
I was backed up so far, I wasn't even in the line any more. I'm not sure the lady behind me realized what was going on, because she was so concerned with talking to her little barking dog who was tied up outside the building. At first, I thought she was talking to me, maybe something about the smell, but then I realized she's one of these people that thinks their dog is a human, and with superhuman hearing. That little dog had his boots and winter sweater on and he was just fine, the temperature was mild. He really was cute, but I just don't think he could hear her...He was barking loudly and nervously, because she'd left him tied up out there, but could see her through the glass door. No, he definitely couldn't hear her, I checked with him as I walked by and he told me how bad she was to have left him there...he's a little spoiled I think. I tried to soothe him..guess he was part human after all, because he did calm down for a minute...
The poor cashier had to ask if the old guy wanted a bag and of course the smelly customer leaned over the counter and muttered something, so that the cashier had to lean closer to hear.... I really felt sorry for all of us at that point. For the guy who obviously couldn't smell himself, for the cashier trying to be polite, and especially for me. You see if there's one thing I'm stellar at it's sniffing. I have the most powerful sense of smell of anybody I know. People comment on it all the time. I usually smell things before anybody else. Sometimes that's a good thing, like when I've had three natural gas leaks in my house this Fall. I smelled them all really early and Sask Energy came out within the hour every time. Other times, though like today, I wish my sniffer wasn't quite so brilliant. Being the first to smell when someone has passed gas in close quarters is embarrassing for both you and me. You see, I blush very easily and the minute I smell something like that, I start to blush. You know you did it, but it makes everybody else think I did it, because of my red face. Sheesh..
I got to thinking about what other things I'm really good at and those not so much so. For instance, the other thing I could think of that I consider myself really good at is typing. Boy, that grade nine typing class with Miss Auramenko back in Hudson Bay really paid off. They were manual typewriters and I remember being the person who got to do the typing once for our school newspaper. I think that was back in 1971 or 1972, but I'd have to check my yearbook. I have religiously saved those yearbooks and have to say if they ever do away with that practice, it'll be a sad day. Keep publishing those accounts of your highschool years because, as you will learn as you get older, they are some of the treasures of your youth.
At Saskatoon Business College, I was taking a legal secretarial course and we were now typing on the IBM Selectrix model. With all the practice, I got to typing over 90 words a minute and the rapid calculations class called "Rapid Cal" had me adding up long columns of numbers faster than I ever imagined. I learned Pitman shorthand and could watch the news on TV and write down everything that was said. Transcription might not have always been perfect...you know, confusing words like "young" with "non" proved to be embarrassing when I got laughed at in the first law office I worked because I wrote "young commissioned office" instead of "non-commissioned officer". That lawyer ended up marrying my aunt and he still remembers that.
I made a good friend at business college that I run into every once in awhile, Evelyn Chudyk from Ituna, SK. Another girl, (not Evelyn), that I had to sit beside, always wanted to race with me when we were doing a timed typing test. I didn't even know we were racing....but the teacher noticed and intervened one day and explained what was happening to us. It was a phenomenon that is often seen when typists sit side by side. Like horses at the race track I guess.....I couldn't say that I just thought the girl was being a proper b-i-t-c-__....but no, the teacher explained, we were just being competitive. Oh, okay. Umm hmm. That girl never was my favorite person and it was obvious after we graduated because I never missed her for a second.
I'm not so hot at driving because I have a hard time navigating curves at a high rate of speed. I also can't hardly see at night to drive. I'm no good really at hammering nails, basically hammer my thumbs over and over and wind up with a bent over mess of a nail. I'm mediocre at playing the piano; not great as an artist and painting pictures, but I do love to play and paint, so guess that's what counts. I'm good at riding a bike and playing board games. My kids and their spouses and others play a game that my daughter-in-law often brings to our gatherings..Loaded Questions. A question is asked and then each person writes their answer down. One person has to guess who's answer belongs to who. That gets to be lots of fun. Everyone's answers tend to be extremely telling of their age. Thanks Jen!
I'm okay at playing cards, but not any good at remembering which ones were played....nothing like some friends I know. Take Brian Binkley...man, he's got a mind like a steel trap when it comes to remembering cards played. Unless you're a card shark, I would not recommend getting into any kind of game where money exchanges hands with Brian. He looks innocent, but don't be fooled. Just teasing, Brian is a great guy. His little brother Jerry tends to be a card himself, and a good pool player from what I knew of him over the years. These guys are both friends and neighbours from way back and I know they won't mind being mentioned. Cindy and Brian are world travellers and I think Jerry and Bev are pretty much the same way. My family and theirs have known each other since the 1960's. Isobelle, their Mom, sewed me a dress one time. It was turquoise with black lace trim and was the most elegant dress I had ever owned. That's another grade six story.
I'm pretty good at crotcheting afghans and now after sewing eight housecoats for Christmas gifts, I guess I'm getting better at sewing. At one time, I took a blue jean sewing class from ..I think her name was Darlene Buhler, in Hudson Bay. I always figure if you're going to do something once, you might as well really do it, so I made four pairs of blue jeans all at the same time. A pair for each of us in my little family. I sewed my little kids' names on their back pockets and in those days they absolutely loved their personalized blue jeans. Carmen was about two and Warren was about five. I also sewed a pair for myself and my ex-husband and although I wore mine lots, he wasn't exactly thrilled with his...they did sort of look home-made, were a darker navy than the cool faded Lees and Levis that were in style, and yeah, maybe his were a little too short.....
I'm reassessing whether I'm good at painting the outside of buildings...I used to think I was because that way if I spilled paint it wouldn't be as bad as indoors. A few summers ago, I was involved with painting the outside of my Mom's cabin. There's a deck all the way around and unfortunately, I'm not sure what happened, but I wound up stepping down off the step ladder into the paint tray, and spilling paint everywhere, plus I got to wear it. So now forever, we have a big stain of light turquoise paint on the brown deck. I might have to move painting buildings into the mediocre to poor category.
I'm a good eater, but a bad dieter. Enough said about that and on to the next topic. I took a golf lesson once to learn how to follow through with the swing from Pete Lukoni in P.A.. I've played golf several times, but usually feel bad if I hold up a group waiting behind me. I know when I'm out of my depth, so I eventually learned if I belt something into the bush or the water, I need to take an extra point and suck it up and move on. That was a hard lesson to learn after standing there swinging and swinging and basically digging a hole and finally walking away defeated and with a very red face. You're not supposed to dig holes on a golf course. (Things got better at the BBQ when I won the prize for worst player). I felt better after that when they laughed with me and not at me, and the beer didn't hurt either. They were more interested in the dutchman who was eating his steak raw, and of course, so was I. Yuck!
I'm good at walking and appreciating the fresh air and outdoors, so that's one of the things about golf that I like. So, I know I'm not a great golfer, but bless you my old friend, Pat MacAuley, who tried to convince me one day on the fairway that I was a "natural" because she knocked her ball into the trees and I shot mine straight as an arrow. You know, I really believed you for about 8 seconds. Still...maybe with practice, someday, even I can get better.
I got to be a good lead and sweeper in curling, but haven't played now for years. I learned alot from those games. I remember one particular bonspiel that I curled with the Washburn sisters-in-law, Cheryl and Colleen, (Colleen was the skip) and us winning everything right up to the final draw on Sunday night at 6:00 p.m. The place was full of spectators by then. I prided myself in being able to lovingly throw those smooth, finessed draw rocks that would once in awhile land dead in the house....This bonspiel though, the skips were into nothing else but a hit -- hit game. I could get the gist of why, but felt useless. Try to sweep those rocks flying down the house so fast you couldn't possibly stand up and having everybody screaming "sweep" anyhow. I generally slid back and forth on the ice, so carefully, but this game, there was no time to slide, you had to race up and down that ice like a gazelle (sp?), you know one of those animals that moves fast. I was scared of breaking my neck.
Colleen was a fabulous player as were all the teammates..I was on edge because some guy was sitting at the window scoring us on our curling errors....I never asked what my score was beause I was basically scared to ask. Anyhow, at one bonspiel, I won a coat tree, and I think that might have been the one.
One other time, my kids were sitting behind the glass while Mommy curled. When I went to check on them, they were rhythmically and very loudly hitting their winter boots against the back of the wood bleacher in unison, chiming at the top of their lungs, "Jean Jean Made A Machine"....Anyhow, curling was alot of fun in my days in both Hudson Bay and Prince Albert.. Today, I would be surprized if I could get down into the hack.
We subconsciously know what we do good and what we don't do good, but with practice you really can become better at just about anything. Life is a self-fulfilling prophecy, so don't close the door on anything you like, there is always hope.
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