The path not taken...

Lately, I have been spending some time reflecting on the paths I took that brought me to where I am today.
I am not sitting alone in the dark, obsessing about my past (my psychiatrist said that is a bad thing), but on occasion I will pick a certain topic and re-visit decisions made years ago.
Some of the decisions I made were quite good – marrying my wife was one of the smartest things I have ever done. I wonder if she can make the same claim – somehow I doubt it.
The dumbest decision I have ever made was to smoke cigarettes. What the hell was I thinking?
Smelling bad, spending hard-earned money and damaging my health apparently was a cool thing to do at that age. Ah, the stupidity of youth never ceases to amaze.
With the half a century mark less than a year away, my latest reflections have been on the career choices I have made and if I could go back 30 years I would smack myself upside the head to knock some sense into my cranial region.
I really had no specific drive or direction in my younger years. The only thing I was even remotely passionate about was riding motorcycles, but there were not a lot of career options in that area.
In high school, we were told to avoid any sort of trades. There were so many carpenters, welders, electricians and plumbers out there they could not buy a job.
Nowadays, trades are like a workplace Nirvana with workers being snapped up faster than an expense cheque in the Senate.
After high school, I wandered aimlessly through life for a while, wondering what the heck I was going to do next.
I spent a couple years working in a sawmill pulling lumber off of what was called the planer chain.
Basically you spent eight hours a day stacking wood onto a big, green cart. When the cart was full, you pushed it into a pick up area where a forklift driver grabbed the pile of lumber. You then pushed the cart back to the planer chain and resumed filling it with wood again – and again and again and again...
I quickly realized I had found the true definition of boredom.
I became engaged and after enduring yet another short-term lay off, I knew I wanted a lot more out of life than piling little pieces of trees day in and day out so I looked for a more interesting job option.
I met a guy who was a newspaper photographer and he had all sorts of fun at his job, so I spent a couple years in college before embarking on my own newspaper adventure.
Over the years I have been a photographer, reporter, editor, columnist, coffee maker and have done pretty much everything but have a paper route.
I must admit, at times my new career was a lot of fun. It was great to always be going out and doing things, meeting people, taking in different events. Unlike the sawmill where you knew what you would be doing every single day, each day in the newsroom was different from the last.
But the newspaper industry has taken a few knocks lately and despite having some fun on the job even after all these years, I am thinking a different career might have been a better move.
Like gangster, or politician – oops my bad, that is basically the same thing.
I would say I should have followed my youthful dreams, but I did not really have any.
But if I could go back to the mid '80s and give myself one piece of advice it would be this: stay at the sawmill, make good money and invest every penny you can in Microsoft stock.
By now, I would be the ruler of my own island in the Caribbean.
Sigh, the path not taken...

copyright 2014, Darren Handschuh  

Are you ready for the Average Joe Olympics?

There should be an Average Joe (or Josephine) Olympics filled with events that happen on a regular basis.
Just the other day I was in training for the Oh-darn-here-comes-the-garbage-truck sprint.
This is where you are sipping on your morning cup of java, reading the paper and getting ready for another exciting day at work when you hear the garbage truck come around the corner half a block from your house - 30 minutes earlier than usual.
This kick-starts a sequence of events: first you mutter a few (unprintable) words under your breath as you put down the coffee and scramble toward the front door.
If you happen to be wearing slippers, you will hopefully not injure your feet as you stumble down the front stairs onto the cement walkway and grab the cans full of discarded items.
If you are not wearing slippers, there is no time to grab footwear, so suck it up Princess.
You must then carry the heavily laden bins of trash to the curb. This is where the event would be broken down into various categories - like the 100- and 200-metre sprints in the real Olympics - because the distance you have to lug the trash cans depends on how long your driveway is.
Obviously, people with longer driveways will have to train harder than those blessed with short driveways.
There could also be the cut-the-lawn-before-it-rains-because-your-teenage-son-forgot-to-do-it-when-he-got-home-from-school-and-now-he-claims-he-has-too-much-homework-even-though-he-spent-an-hour-texting-his-girlfriend event.
This is good for your cardio as you push a 70-pound lawnmower around your yard as fast as possible.
Like the garbage event, there will be different categories to accommodate the different-sized lawns. 
But not all Average Joe Olympic events involve tests of physical prowess.
The we-have-to-have-our-children-in-different-places-at-the-same-time event requires a completely different skill set.
This one involves strategy, a knowledge of the destination routes and  clear thinking more than physical attributes.
Trying to be three places at once seems impossible, but I have seen my wife do it on several occasions and I am always amazed how she gets everyone where they are supposed to be when they are supposed to be there.
Team events could also include the clean-up-the-house-before-the-unexpected-guests arrive competition.
Teams would get a phone call someone will be 'popping by' in a few minutes and they must then tidy, vacuum and do something with the dirty dishes they 'were going to get to later.'
This one requires co-ordination, organization and above all a cool head. Panicking will not get things cleaner any faster.
My wife would excel at this event because when she gets into a cleaning frenzy, there is no stopping her.
Throughout the Average Joe Olympics there would be surprise competitions such as the I-need-to-bring-a-dozen-cupcakes-to-school-today event.
This is one of the most stressful of all the competitions because it will be sprung on the contestants 15 minutes before the child has to be in school.
Contestants must quickly weigh their options: is there any sort of acceptable substitute in the freezer? Can the cupcakes be taken to the school later if I make them now?
Competitors will get extra bonus points for either one of these, but they will also earn points by rushing to the store and picking up a dozen cupcakes while muttering under their breath.
Translations of these muttered statements will not be made public, so contestants can feel free to mumble away.
There will be substance testing at the end of each day's competition, just to make sure contestants are properly medicated.
Those not in compliance will be given a glass of wine and directed to the nearest couch, recliner or lawn chair.

copyright 2014, Darren Handschuh  

How do I feel? I feel like not talking.

I have never been really good at expressing myself.
Talking about 'feelings' was just something I never did growing up. It was a family tradition to keep your emotions bottled up because my parents, especially my dad, never talked about his feelings and emotions.
If he did not want to talk about something, he didn't. It was a simple as that.
Then I married my wife and was introduced to the very different side of the coin. While my family never talks about anything, her family never stops talking.
They talk about their feelings, emotions, thoughts and whatever else they can come up with – for hours on end.
They talk and talk and talk. And then they talk some more.
This was incredibly foreign to me. And the way my family dealt with things was equally foreign to my wife who would be baffled and often frustrated at the lack of communication of my kin.
But it was not just my parents, it has been going on for generations.
My grandpa came to Canada directly from Germany about two years before the Second World War started.
He could see what Hitler was doing in the country and as he was studying to become a Lutheran minister, he could not sit by and watch what the Nazi party was doing to the church, so he set out for the new country.
My grandma came from Romania and was a hard woman raised in a hard land. Neither were really in tune with their emotions and neither were really the touchy feely types so they passed that down to my father who passed it down to me.
I then ran smack into a wall of chatter when I met my wife and soon learned her family lineage took a much different and much more vocal approach to dealing with the issues of life.
They are not shy about diving into emotional oceans of any type and can't seem to let a matter rest until it has been talked to death.
This has taken many years to get used to as the Missus expected me to participate in the emotional love ins and express my deepest feelings.
Um, no. I don't want to – was always the wrong answer.
At first I was supposed to just 'share' and tell her how I was feeling, and how this made me feel and how that made me feel.
She expected all these sentiments and heart-felt thoughts to flow like water down a river.
She soon learned there was a drought in the Land of Handschuh and it took a lot of years before the rain began fall and the water started to flow.
She was determined to make me one of them – you know, the talkers.
To some degree she has succeeded. I am much more open to discussing things now that I used to be, but I am still a long way from the eloquent vocalization of her kin.
Oh well, we have only been married for 25 years. You can't rush these things.

copyright 2014, Darren Handschuh 

Junior learns a life lesson

It's fun to watch one of your children have a life realization.
I got to enjoy one of those when Junior was talking about his menial part-time, after-school job.
But before we get to that moment, a little history is required.
My parents owned a nursery when I was growing up and that meant I was called upon to help out – a lot.
Being the first-born son I had responsibilities the eldest son was expected to meet. Basically, it was my job to help shoulder the load of running a business while my dad still worked full time.
Weekends and after school meant putting in some time on the end of a shovel, a rake, pruning shears or simply moving potted plants around. In general it was doing your best to make sure none of the stock died.
Oddly enough, people did not want to buy a dead tree – go figure.
I must admit, I was not always thrilled with the arrangement, but I sure did enjoy the income.
I was the only kid in Grade 8 with a job, but without that job I would not have been able to afford dirtbikes (which I loved), or cars (which I loved) or fancy rims for the car (which I loved) or a stereo so loud it would make your ears bleed (which I really loved.)
Yes, there were many benefits to working in the nursery. Of course, the downside was I had to work in a nursery.
And really, what teen actually wants to work.
I knew a guy who went off on me one day about all the stuff I had. At the time, I had a car and two dirtbikes, and he was envious of the cool toys in my possession.
After listening to him rant for a minute, I became somewhat agitated and pointed out that I worked hard for all my stuff and while he was sleeping in until noon on weekends, I was up and doing manual labour for several hours already.
He then looked at me with all sincerity and said, “But, I don't like to work.”
He believed if he did not like to work, he should not have to.
"Who the hell does?” was my exasperated reply. For some reason he felt he should have as much as I did without having to work for it.
Sounds like a prime candidate for the Senate if you ask me.
Anyway, because Junior wanted a car, ski pass, brand-name clothes and all sorts of things, he needed and a job and after sending out applications he would lament about how 'cool' it would be to have a job at your fingertips like I did when I was a teen.
Eventually Junior did get a job, a manual labour job and after one particularly boring day under the hot summer sun, he came home and proclaimed, “Manual labour sucks.”
This is that life lesson moment I was speaking of earlier.
I must admit, I pounced on that statement like a lion on a three-legged gazelle.
"Oh reeeeeaaalllly. So you mean it would not be cool to have a manual-labour job at your fingertips. It would not be cool to come home after school everyday and put in a few hours of work. Hmmm, interesting, because I recall you saying on several occasions how cool that would be.”
For one of the few times in his life, Junior had nothing to say.
But to his credit, he has stuck with his manual labour gig and purchased a car of his own.
He then was introduced the world of insurance, repairs and the ridiculously high price of gas.
He also learned how important an education is and the better educated he is the farther away from manual labour he will be.

copyright 2014, Darren Handschuh  

A hunter, a killer, an angry furball

Gilbert the Cat is not a happy feline.
But his discomfort was caused by his own paw.
You see, Gilbert is a hunter, a killer, a wild beast that tracks, slays and eats mice and birds.
He does not have to because we do feed him delicious and nutritious cat food whenever he wants it, but that predatory heritage is hard to shake and he still prefers to grab a meal on the go whenever he can.
I watched him catch a mouse one day and realized cats are more heartless than a gas company executive.
He did not just catch the mouse – he tormented it. He would hold it down with his paws for a while and sit there and look around while the mouse said the rodent equivalent of a Hail Mary or two, or three, or a million.
He would then let the mouse go and the little guy would take off like his life depended on it, which it did, only to have the cat grab him again.
A couple times, Gil would throw the rodent in the air and try to catch it before it hits the ground.
He was having a grand old time. Gilbert that is, not the mouse who obviously went between moments of hope of escape to the dread of being captured time and again.
Then with a final crunch of his jaws, the mouse was done for. Gil chewed his head for a little while before grabbing Mickey's cousin between his front paws and essentially pulling the insides out. I did not know cats did that, but it seemed a very efficient way to prepare a meal.
The icky bits were left in a pile on the front lawn, while Gilbert strutted away feeling proud of his kill.
More than once I would head out in the morning and find a pile of feathers or mouse remnants in the yard, another victim of the killer cat.
They will never know it, but those birds, mice and whatever else the cat managed to catch, kill and ingest administered a measure of revenge in their deaths.
They gave Gilbert worms. Big, white disgusting worms. We did not know he had worms until he barfed one up the other day.
Yup, it was pretty disgusting. As if cat puke is not gross enough, to see a white wiggler writhing around in puddle of kitty barf takes it to a whole new level.
So we called the vet and bought some potion we have to squirt down his throat twice a day, much to his immense displeasure.
I don't imagine the stuff tastes very good and I am not about to try it to find out, but it is his own fault. If Gil wasn't so enthusiastic about hunting and killing things, he would not have to endure the eye dropper full of this brownish liquid.
I hold him wrapped in blanket while the Missus – who is a nurse and can transfer those skills to the animal realm – squirts the stuff down his gullet. He  makes a very unhappy sound while thrashing his head around and trying to spit out the offending liquid.
He then gives us an evil glare like it's all our fault he has worms. I am sure he is plotting some form of revenge and I always look in my shoes before putting them on.
The vet said he needs the 'treatment' for a full week, so twice a day I wrap him up, hold his head still and the Missus squirts the medicine into his mouth.
The vet said when the worms die they will come out in his poop.
“You should check his bowel movements for the next week or so and keep an eye out for them.”
No.
I will simply trust the medication did its job and the cat is worm free because as fun as looking at a pile of cat poop sounds, I have other things to do – like anything.

copyright 2014, Darren Handschuh  

It's just a bruise, it's no big deal - isn't it?

Being married to nurse has its good points and its bad.
The good is you are living with a highly trained medical personnel you can run to for advice and healing.
More than once our living room looked more like an emergency room as my son and his skateboarding friends all lined up to have their injuries tended to.
One day, there was four of them patiently waiting to have their wounds tended to.
Skinned knees, elbows, scrapes, bruises and a variety of other injuries were treated by my wife who has been a registered nurse for 26 years.
She has worked in the real emergency room of a hospital in a small town we lived in for a while, she has cared for seniors, palliative patients and for a few years she specialized in wound care.
This is where she would look after people who just had an operation or injury and got to perform such lovely tasks as draining a wound, which is actually more disgusting than it sounds.
I learned many years ago not to ask her what she did that day because the answers are not conducive to keeping your dinner down.
Tales of seeping blood, puss-filled sores (my personal favourite) and a whole raft of maladies are discussed by her and her nursing comrades with the aplomb of someone chatting about the weather.
To them, it is just another day at the office. Meanwhile I am huddled in the corner of the room with my hands over my ears trying to think of puppy dogs and sunny days to get the horrid nursing tales out of my mind.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
But when you are injured, it is great to have an expert on wound care living under the same roof – most of the time anyway.
The other day I bruised my leg doing martial arts. As the most senior member of the club (in age, not belt ranking) it can be a challenge to keep up with the young pups as they bounce around the training area with the kind of energy and agility only youth allows.
On this particular day I took a knee to the thigh, creating a rather large, purple bruise.
In the club I train at, a bruise or a black eye is referred to as a souvenier and I have had many souveniers over the years.
Anyway, the young pup I was training with accidentally landed on my leg causing a bruise I casually mentioned to my wife.
ÒYou should keep an eye on that. It could cause a blood clot.”
ÒHuh?”
ÒIt is a hematoma, and if your leg starts to turn red and swell up, you better get to a doctor. There was this one patient I had with a bruise on his leg, got a blood clot and died.”
It took less than a minute to go from me telling her I had a bruise on my leg to her telling me I could get a deadly blood clot.
Up until that point I just thought it was a little boo-boo. No big deal.
Now I have to worry about a blood clot making its way to my heart or brain and sending on a one way trip toward the bright light.
I am really quite confident the bruise is just an minor 'owie' and nothing to be concerned about. It is not the first boo-boo I have had in my lifetime.
But when you are married to a medical professional, they tend to look at the worst-case scenario so they are prepared for any scenario.
The downside to being married to a nurse is sometimes she really freaks me out with all the possible medical disasters that could happen. The upside is, she knows about all the  possible medical disasters that could happen.

copyright 2014, Darren Handschuh 

My little girl is not so little anymore and I don't like it

I guess there is a double standard.
When my boys were younger, I had no problem with them growing up. Older sons meant more help for me around the yard (well, that was the theory anyway.)
It meant they could take on more responsibility, be more independent and with each passing day they were one more step closer to striking out on their own and forging their personal path through the world.
It is inevitable that they become masters of their own domain. It is repeated constantly throughout not only the human kingdom, but the animal world as well.
In certain animal clans, sons are eventually considered a threat to the papa and he 'encourages' them to leave the pack. Some animals take it to an extreme level.
If a papa bear finds another male in their territory, woe be to the invader. He will go after the other male with all the ferocity he can muster, no matter the age of the other bear and even if it is his own offspring. Momma bear will step in and defend baby bear. And papa bear better watch out because hell hath no fury like an angry mom.
We humans tend to be far less aggressive in encouraging our young ones to venture out on their own, but when they come home and find all their stuff in boxes, that is usually a pretty good sign it is time to go.
I have not done that (yet anyway) because I want to support my kids through post secondary schooling and other challenges, but rest assured there will come a day when I will go papa bear on them if they decide living in the parental den is easier than creating their own.
I may be human, but humans are mammals and mammals are animals and animals eventually kick their offspring out into the unsuspecting world.
So I had no problem with my sons soaring through their teen years. I had no problem with my boys becoming men. I looked forward to it on many occasions.
So what does this have to do with a double standard? I also have a daughter and for some reason there is a whole different outlook for 'daddy's little girl.'
I don't want her to grow up and become a teen and act like she is all grown up. I certainly don't want her to look like she is all grown up.
Some of what I am feeling may be because she is the baby of the family and it is hard to watch your youngest grow up, but a lot of it is she is my little girl.
It struck me like a freight train the other morning when she was heading off to school that my little girl is not so little anymore.
What was that stuff on her face? Make-up! What! She is not old enough for make up. She is barely in high school.
And what do you mean you and your friend want to meet a couple boys at Timmies? Boys are icky, remember? Boys are gross.
At one time, her room had pictures of fairy tale princesses on the walls, then it was teen heart throbs (such as what's-his-name, you know, that Beaver kid.)
Then one day she took down all the posters and asked if we had any spray paint. Um, OK, feel free to express yourself, it's your room. She invited me to look at her 'new' room and it was the bedroom of a full-blown teenager.
Posters had been replaced by groovy spray-painted drawings, there was not a dolly in sight and her music has gone from Veggie Tales to the latest pop songs.
I know my little girl is not a little girl anymore, but that does not mean I have to like it.
Now if you will excuse me, I have to put on my martial arts uniform and sharpen my collection of knives – one of those icky boys is stopping by.

copyright 2014, Darren Handschuh