Ditch Doc

My mother tells this story from BC’s north coast. She was teaching a class on archives, of which a hereditary chief of the Nisga’a nation was a member. Mom said he had the sort of regal bearing that makes you feel honoured to be in his presence. As the weekend progressed, it came to light that he had once been an alcoholic, but had dried up and become a protestant minister. In casual conversation, another member of the class asked him about Europeans uprooting native religions and replacing them with Christianity. “Well, I don’t know about that,” he bridled. “All I know is what Jesus did for me.”

As everyone knows, if you break the ice off the top of a puddle and kick it across the parking lot, it makes a noise like a rather musical ceramic tile sliding across the same surface. This works best if the ice is dry and about an inch thick. What’s less obvious, but more fascinating, is that as you continue to kick the ice, and pieces chip off it, the sound rises in pitch through wind-chimes, broken glass, and the edge of human hearing. Then the smallish piece that’s left makes about the same noise as a rock.

I become confused by the number of people who take exception to every war, but always state how firmly they support the troops. The idea seems to be that soldiers are always being tricked into going overseas and shooting people, when they signed up for … something else, I guess. If you disagree with every war for a generation, don’t you eventually disagree with the warrior? But if you’re wedded to the idea that our troops are noble men and women who have given themselves to a noble but abstract idea, you should investigate the possibility that there’s at least some good in the concrete things that they actually do.

To Dz, BL and SF:

If you’re ever stuck with almost no Catholic friends in a community entirely devoid of music, you will understand what a kindness it would be to get just one recording from the old days. That’s all.

I always knew that lying on a spine board for a two and a half hour drive to town would be uncomfortable, but I never thought I’d hear this one:

“Please let me up! C’mon, man! I’d rather sit up for five minutes than ever walk again!”

Facility in ridiculous conversation, especially that held with one’s superiors, revolves around two central points.

1. When others in the conversation begin to speak incorrectly about unimportant things, let them. Sit back and look intent. Avoid the urge to refute their arguments by reminding yourself that even if you’re right, it won’t matter tomorrow.

2. When a superior asserts a blatant falsehood, DO NOT contradict him! Ask a question that forces him to choose between retracting and saying something even more ridiculous.

Wrong:
Superior: “The moon is made of blue cheese.”
Peon: “You’re an idiot.”

Right:
S: “The moon is made of blue cheese.”
P: “Can we expect the discovery of such a large supply to be reflected in a sudden decrease in the price of terrestrial blue cheese in the near future?”

Why is it that when you’ve stayed up til two to complete some great important task, it suddenly seems like the right time to take care of every little neglected job from replacing the burnt out lighbulb to cleaning the oven window?

There’s this idea that Catholics have a lot of kids because they like to consummate their marriages as much as anyone else, but aren’t allowed to use artificial contraceptives, children being the necessary but unintended result. This is backwards. Catholic families are large because Catholics, and the Church, are just nuts about children. A Catholic couple gets married, and consummates their marriage, in order to have kids. On purpose! The teaching against contraception, while perfectly serious, is almost an afterthought, the way it’s an afterthought that when it’s day, it can’t be night.

My new unit chief told us this little gem: Once, he needed to switch ambulances mid-shift in Vancouver. He parked the old one behind St. Paul’s hospital, hid the keys, and went on his way. The next morning, the crew that would normally have picked up the same car found it missing from the station, and not believing the ridiculous story about it being parked behind St. Paul’s, reported it stolen. The man who started the whole thing happened to drive past the hospital, and wondered why most of the VPD had descended on the block. Getting out to ask, he discovered that an ambulance had been stolen, found, and deemed a bomb threat. Why park an ambulance behind a hospital if not to blow it up? The bomb squad was on the point of blowing the car up preemptively when he strode in and defused the situation. The moral of the story: be careful where you park on the evening of September 10.

Once upon a time, in the fair and sunny kingdom of Golden, British Columbia, there was a reporter. In all the kingdom, no other reporter rode to war so galantly, nor yet so speedily. Yea, neither could the very Mounted Police in their fiery chariots outstrip the worthy knight. Returning to his castle, he wrote much slander of the honest Police, and drew their wrath. Then did the wily constables raise a false hue and cry,  and the reporter, with his charmed scanner to his ear, did attend, and did saddle his fleetfoot steed. But great was his dismay when he reached the Pass of No Escape, for then did the Mounted Police, close hid in the bushes and armed with mighty radar, ride out behind with blue and red livery abroad, and throw the book at his head.