None of This Was Planned Page 8

  I told you not to read this.

  We never know if the one who loses everything is us. We don’t even know it when it becomes so. Only those who keep their minds know when someone else has lost theirs.

  A baby does not know it is a baby. Someone sitting in a wheelchair staring at a wall does not know the wall is there.

  As I said, this is depressing. The only reason I am writing it is because I live with it and have for years. This is not looking for sympathy. So many, many are doing what I and my wife are doing.

  It is just to say to those in this world who are living with those in another world, those in the other world know you are there even if they don’t say it or acknowledge it or even hint at it. Even if they are not sure who you are, they know you, or at least they know someone is there. And you are making it easier for them, just as cuddling a baby makes it easier for them.

  The husband with the wife holding the doll is not just living out his wedding vows; he is giving someone who has nothing everything, and that is a very good thing.

  No more about this.

  No Graffiti

  If you walk along Main Street between 25th and 27th Avenues you will see no graffiti. If this is not so and you do see some, come back tomorrow. It will be gone. That is because Bryan Dyck will hunt it down and make it disappear.

  Bryan is one of my favourite people. He did what we all wish for and does what most of us would never do. Here’s the story:

  Long ago, in the age of hippies, Bryan was a printer in Vancouver. He had long hair. He was a free and easy, tall, thin child of either the universe or 4th Avenue, which is where all the children of the universe in Vancouver hung out.

  It’s funny, but if you went on an archaeological dig along 4th Avenue now you would find no trace of the counterculture that thrived there. It is now a trendy stretch of fashion stores and bike shops and outdoor apparel, along with some very upscale groceries and wine shops. The ghost of a hippie would die before going there now.

  Anyway, Bryan was a hippie and this was in the era when the government was trying to bring metric to the good people of Canada. It did not want to be the only other country besides the us where folks counted by twelves and used their feet to measure space.

  How the us runs most of the biggest of everything in the world and still does not have the metric system is a tribute to their ingenuity. How far is that from here? It’s 12 inches to a foot, 5,280 feet to a mile and 25 miles to a gallon. What’s a gallon? What’s a foot? And if you don’t have a ruler you can guess what an inch is by closing your pinkie and using the length between your middle knuckle and the knuckle before your fingernail.

  In truth, I grew up with the knuckle measurement and it is so ingrained in my head that I still can’t picture what a centimetre is. And Celsius makes no sense to me. But I know one knuckle is an inch.

  And that is one reason I am still working and Bryan is not.

  Bryan took one look at the metric system and said, “It is good,” or something like that.

  It made sense and it was simple and since he was a printer he made a thin pamphlet explaining the system of ten. This was before computers, of course, so he actually used paper and ink.

  And he used pictures, photos like those in high school yearbooks. There were pictures of him holding up ten fingers, and pouring one litre of water and stuff like that, which made understanding metric simple. We should have had more hippies as teachers.

  Bryan sold his pamphlets for a dollar back when a dollar was paper and was worth a dollar. He was known as the Metric Man.

  But he got lucky, and in a way that could happen to you if only you did something that attracted the luck.

  A reporter saw the pamphlet, interviewed Bryan and wrote a story about it for a Canadian news service. Then the big luck came. Someone in the us saw the story and since that country was thinking—not thinking very hard, but thinking—about going metric Bryan wound up on a us television talk show.

  He was there only a few minutes, but it was enough for him to sell a warehouse full of pamphlets.

  He made enough money to retire. He moved to Hawaii for a while and then came back to Vancouver and Main Street where his wife opened a small consignment store.

  Bryan was and still is very dedicated to his wife and the store and the street where it is. Although he is still a rich man he puts on coveralls every morning and grabs a couple of cans of paint and searches for graffiti.

  “The graffiti folks are cowards,” he says. “They do their work in the dark and ruin someone else’s property.”

  Bryan hunts down the sprayed initials and ugly markings and paints over them. “The way to get rid of graffiti is to make it disappear,” he says, and he says it often.

  The graffiti bums like to see their work. If it is not there for them to gloat over or brag about they eventually go away. It is not easy, but it works.

  And then Bryan picks up the litter along the street, including the curb. And then in the spring and summer he plants flowers in the dirt at the base of the trees that struggle to live along the street.

  And through it all he is friendly, smiling and never bitter about the cigarette butts or the paper that gets dropped or even the graffiti. He just makes his part of the world better.

  The only thing he can’t change is that paint in Canada is sold by the gallon. The manufacturers don’t want to lose the us market, so when Bryan goes to the paint store, like all of us, he has to buy a can that holds 3.79 litres or one us gallon.

  Go to Main Street some morning and talk to the Metric Man with his gallon of paint. You may be inspired to retire early or change part of the world—not bad no matter how you measure it.

  A Young Cyclist and an Old Clock

  A little further up Main Street, at 22nd Avenue, is a rain-worn homemade sign. It reads “A-1 Cycle.”

  You cannot see bicycles when you look in the front window. The window is filled with living, breathing leaves.

  “I’ve had that plant for twenty years,” said John Quon. “And that one for thirty-seven.”

  He loves his plants. The thirty-seven-year-old one he got when he opened the store. Behind them are rows of bicycles, so many you really can’t walk through the shop.

  “Half are for sale, half for repair,” he said. “My son can fix anything.”

  Now a couple of things: in my past life I visited this shop four or five times. Each time I came away with a wonderful story.

  John started the shop after running a grocery store for, well, forever. He and his wife wanted something where they could take off a day. “You can’t leave food alone, but bicycles are different.” He opened the store long before bikes were like Starbucks and sushi. He struggled.

  One time I saw the grandfather, son and grandson working in the same shop. The grandson was playing with tires. Recently I went back and learned he is in university. What happened? That line is only there for me to be amazed at.

  I met O’Neal there. O’Neal rides every day. He rides to the top of Mount Seymour and then flies down. On the same day he will ride to the top of Cypress Bowl and then catapult down. Okay, he stays on the road, but the image is great. Between these rides he works. I don’t know exactly what he does but it is indoors and he shuffles paper and he does not like being indoors.O’Neal has only one name. O’Neal. He remembers all his friends’ birthdays and calls them while he is on the road. You can hear the wind screaming past the phone on his chest while he rides. I don’t know if that’s illegal or not but it is a thrill to get called by O’Neal on your birthday.

  In the rear of A-1 Cycle shop, John’s son Rob keeps track of O’Neal’s mileage. Kilometreage doesn’t have the same ring to it, but he has cycled over a million kilometres. Super neat story.

  I was working with cameraman Jim Fong in my new life . . . but let me digress for a minute. Remember the title of this book? None o
f This Was Planned.

  That was the choice of the publisher, Howard White. As I’ve said before, he is quite a guy. He drove a bulldozer to support his dream of publishing. Dirty hands, dirty clothes in the world of publishing. Neat guy. Good story.

  But honestly, I did not think the title was very good when he told me. It’s too long and what the heck does not planning have to do with this? I did not like it.

  He said he decided on the title after reading the first few pages.

  “What do you know?” I thought.

  I wanted: This Is My Last Book.

  He said, “No. Suppose you change your mind.”

  I said, “But I have nothing to say.”

  He said, “Trust me.”

  I am glad I am not a girl. Can you imagine how many times they hear that?

  Anyway, I was with Jim Fong and passing by A-1 and I said, “That is a neat shop.”

  He replied, “My brother-in-law owns it.”

  “What? Stop.”

  We did not plan that.

  Past the plants, past the bikes, “Hello Mr. Quon.” Jim is very polite. “I would never call him by his first name,” he said.

  We pass the senior Mr. Quon and go in the back where Rob is spinning a wheel to see where it is out of alignment.

  “What’s new?” asks Jim.

  That is the world’s second most universal question, after “How are you?” First health then news.

  Jim skipped the first question because he could see Rob was healthy. Also they had had dinner together a few nights earlier.

  “Nothing,” says Rob.

  That is world’s most universal answer to the second most universal question.

  “Wait,” he said to his brother-in-law, and he rushed into the showroom, which is packed with bikes, because his father was climbing on a stepladder. His father is nimble but at eighty-seven he should keep his feet on the ground, don’t you think? His father doesn’t.

  “I have to wind the clock,” said his father.

  The old, dark wood clock with a pendulum is hanging on the wall so high up it needs to be fed by a giant or someone on a ladder.

  John is up to the top, where you should not stand, and has opened the front glass of the clock and is turning a key, which he has brought up with him.

  “It’s old,” he said.

  What is old? That is me thinking philosophically.

  “It’s over a hundred years old,” said John, who was now coming down.

  Luckily for me, Jim—that again is John’s son’s brother-in-law—has his camera on his brother-in-law’s father. Relationships are beautiful.

  The clock was bought by John’s grandfather. Wow! In Canada. Of course, it looks Canadian, the kind of Canadian you see in museums, not in bike shops.

  Then John inherited it, and when John went to China, long ago, he took the clock with him.

  Then John came back to Canada and when he did he brought the clock back with him.

  “So it has been across the ocean twice,” said John.

  It hung there on the wall and we could all hear it going tick, tick, etc. It connected so much together without anything being said.

  And there was another story from the A-1 Cycle shop.

  Smile or Not

  We who write the news do not create the news.

  Okay, sometimes we do.

  Do not. Do so. Not. So!

  I have heard that all my working life. And all that time I have said, with just a tinge of defiance and anger and hostility and controlled nastiness, “No. We do not.”

  I fully believe that. If you see two people dead on the street from bullets or cars or explosions, they are just that, two people dead on the street from something.

  On the other hand, some reporters try to make things sound better, and some worse, just like real people.

  If two people—men, women, kids, doesn’t matter—are gossiping about someone else they could say, “He’s a bum. He did something really bad and I hate him,” or they could say, “He’s got a bum rap and I don’t believe he did anything bad. I kind of like him.”

  That is the way of life. Reporters on the other hand try to keep their feelings out of it—unless they are human.

  Today, February 22, 2016, I saw a fellow downtown trying to get a dog to move. He was not doing well. The dog would not move.

  This is beautiful. This is life. The immovable force meets the force that wants it to move.

  I have a Chinese print on a wall in my house. It has been there for thirty years. It’s a picture of a large immovable water buffalo pulling backwards against a little kid who has a rope through a ring in its nose.

  The kid has the advantage because the ring would hurt but the buffalo has size and strength and is apparently accustomed to having his nose in pain.

  No one wins. That’s life, I say to anyone who asks, and most do ask because the print is right by the front door and you can’t help seeing it if you are coming or going.

  The dog and the man I saw today were the same. It is kind of funny, an eternal struggle between two opposing forces.

  The difference was the man was big and the dog was small, which made the sight of it funny, at least to me and I believed to anyone else who likes to watch the big guy losing to the small guy.

  “Can we take your picture,” etc. You know the rest of it.

  “Yes, of course, but just the dog, not me,” he said.

  That always takes some discussion. “But we need you. And you will make others feel good.”

  Then the agreement.

  Of course I want the fellow there because that is what is humorous, unless you are the fellow.

  He is dog sitting for a friend. He is being kind. He took the dog out for a walk. That’s nice, but now the dog does not want to go home.

  The dog is a mini bulldog. It is strong. It is determined.

  “I’ll have to carry it,” says the fellow.

  Wonderful, I think. The perfect ending for a story about a dog that will not walk.

  Just then the dog takes a few steps.

  “He’s walking!” says the fellow.

  Then he stops and the man picks up the malingering purebred and walks away.

  It is nice, but a little weak for a story, I think. Then at the same time not far away we see a woman trying to fly a kite. She is failing. There is no wind.

  She runs, but is really just dragging the kite behind herself.

  This is good, too. Two people who can’t get done what they want to do. It is something we all deal with once in a while.

  We talk, she says she is trying out several kites because she works in a toy store that sells them and she wants to be able to tell customers what’s up.

  She tries again and fails again—and again and again.

  “If I were a kid I’d give up and say, ‘Mom, I don’t want to do this,’” she says.

  A breeze comes up, just a little one, and she runs again and this time the kite goes up; not far, not long, but up. Then it crashes back down. She tries once again and . . . plop. Nothing.

  That is all we need, I think. Two stories of human failure. Two things that everyone can relate to. Two things that did not go the way they were supposed to go. It is like watching someone slip on a banana peel. It’s funny, right? Okay, it’s not if it is you.

  Later I am in the edit room where truth and honesty get searched for in the pictures.

  “It’s funny,” I tell Sabrina Gans, the editor. “It is what we all go through.”

  She puts the pictures together. We watch.

  After a series of failures with dog and kite, the last pictures in the story are of the kite being carried by the woman and the dog being carried by the man.

  Sabrina is watching the work she has put together. She is quiet. That is not good.
You know the saying; if you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all. Sabrina is saying nothing.

  “Actually, it is not funny,” I say. That is not uplifting. “Even if you can relate to it that doesn’t make you feel good,” I say.

  “No, it doesn’t,” says Sabrina.

  Sabrina has two small children at home. In raising them she tries to encourage them to be the best that they can be without taking away from the truth of who they are. Her editing is the same.

  I think of one of my most favourite lines in all my favourite lines in rock and roll songs: “Take a sad song and make it better.”

  It was in a Beatles song written by Paul McCartney, who scribbled out the words to cheer up John Lennon’s son after Lennon had abandoned him and his mother for a new love, Yoko Ono.

  Five-year-old Julian did not understand most of what the song was about, but he could hear the message to take something bad and make it better.

  That was nice. The only trouble was he didn’t hear his own name because Paul McCartney thought it sounded better to say “Hey Jude” rather than “Hey Julian.”

  Some music historians say he changed it because Julian was sometimes used instead of Judas, which was a secret name for heroin, and he didn’t want that allusion.

  That came after “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” which everyone was sure secretly meant lsd, even if the Beatles denied it.

  But this is such a side note. I wasn’t thinking of any of that, only trying to take something sad and make it better.

  “Suppose we ended with the dog walking and the kite flying,” I said.

  Sabrina said, “That’s good.”

  “That’s good” sounds better than silence.