Out-Of-Pocket

   car keys
   apartment fob
   tickets
   map
   It has been an interesting summer. On a variety of occasions, I have had to deal with a host of at least temporary emotional traumas related to the insecurity around having thought that valuable items were safely ensconced in one of my pockets, only to discover that, indeed, they were not.
   Pockets seem so safe. They never leave you, they are not detachable, they don't slowly come loose over time and then drop off when you least expect it. When I want something to be both safe and accessible, I stick it in my pocket. I am now starting to re-think this....
   It all started a little earlier on in the summer when my oldest son, Bryant, left me the key fob to his building, so that I could get in there to feed his cats while he was off on one of his many European vacays. I was out and about carrying the fob in my pocket one day when a semi-homeless person asked me if I had any loose change, for coffee. Generally I say "no" to such requests but as I've mellowed (muddled) with age, I occasionally acquiesce. In the process of digging out some loose change, I remember feeling the fob and attempting to switch pockets with it. After this transaction I headed home where I discovered that I no longer had the fob! I went back and re-traced my steps but no fob to be found. I eventually was able to borrow a fob from one of Bry's friends and, at that point, guarded it with my life. Stupid pockets!
 

These things had wings this summer!!

 A few weeks ago I was in the middle of a forest, hiking a section  of the Avon Trail. I was carrying a map of the trail, in a plastic ziplock bag, in my front pocket. and had been periodically checking it. At one point, though, when I reached down to check it, it was gone! Fortunately, I had just recently looked at it so I knew it likely wasn't too far away and, in short order, about half a kilometer away, I found it, nestled by the trail. Whew!
   On that same hiking trip, I randomly decided to check my pockets for my car keys, the ones with my son's now-borrowed apartment fob attached. Not there. Extreme panic. I was about ten kilometers away from a car I was going to have to walk to and then not be able to drive when I got there. On top of all this, I was about sixty kilometers away from home. Throwing up seemed like an option. When I forced my panic to subside just a  little, I did find the keys in a totally different pocket than the one I thought I'd left them in. Another huge whew!
   A couple of months ago, Doralyn and I went downtown to see a comedy show at the Grand Theater. I stuck the tickets for this in my back pocket and covered them with my shirt. We walked about six blocks to get to the theater and as we entered I went to my back pocket, only to find them gone! Some cursing went on in the theater lobby and the two of us immediately started retracing our steps. Right away we came across a street person who was meandering our way with our tickets in his hand! I immediately started digging through my wallet to reward this man and handed him a twenty. We turned and started to walk away at which point he requested an extra $10 ("for the bus"). Doralyn handed him a fiver and we were on our way.
   There we have it---way too many sad tales to do with pockets and the things that magically fly out of them!
   

The Bear, #MeToo, and, well, me too....

   True story.
   A few years ago, I was walking through the forest, alone, and I came across a bear. It was a mother bear and she had a cub with her. From all I knew of wilderness safety, this was a bad combination. I stopped dead in my tracks and watched them. My mind, however, was racing a mile a minute. It was going through all the small bits of data it carried regarding bears--- their tendencies, behaviours and inclinations.
   I had been in close proximity to wild bears before but it was always from the safety of a car, stopped by the edges of mountain highways. I had never been on foot, alone, with only the fresh morning air between me and a bear.
   What I knew in that moment was that the bear was the one who would be deciding what happened next. I knew I could neither fight nor outrun it. 
   Without the presence of the bear, the situation was as

benign as you could have made it. The sun was filtering down through the treetops, the forest was moist and primeval, and the air was easy to breathe. With a bear and her cub added to the equation, however, I was suddenly faced with some terrible possibilities, the consequences of which might leave my life seriously compromised or, possibly, over.
   The mother bear saw me at the same time I saw her. Neither of us lost eye contact for what seemed like an eternity. Blessedly, the cub had no idea I existed and was intent on exploring its surroundings. Its curiosity took it across the trail I'd been on and back up into the forest. The mother briefly continued to look at me but then decided to follow her cub. I gave them a minute to get further into the forest and then I hurriedly continued on my way.
   It did not occur to me then but it strikes me now that this must be what it's like for women to travel a landscape which, as much as the forest is made for the bear, is almost entirely advantageous to men---men of many ilks and dispositions.
   I, obviously, am a man and part of a subgroup which benefits from a great many things not always afforded to women. Of all of these, personal safety is perhaps the area in which there is the largest chasm of difference. For the most part, men go where they want with no fear. Until, perhaps, you are in the forest with a bear.
   When you are in the forest with a bear, you are at the mercy of whatever natural instinct strikes them. You have no idea when (or what) they might have eaten last, what the nature was of the interaction they had with the last human they saw, or, more simply, whether they were having a bad day or not. If you are lucky, you get to safely share their environment with them. If you have picked a bad day to be in the forest, then you are maimed or dead.
   In a way, is this not the same for some, many or even all women? Whether or not it is at the forefront of their fears, is it not at least subliminally there, whispering warnings? As benign as the setting may be, if you are a woman in close proximity to a man you are unfamiliar with is it not that much different than coming across that bear in the forest? And how many hundreds of thousands of women have found themselves in the forest, on a bad day?
   

It is now the era of #MeToo and #TimesUp. In an age when communication between people is both instant and constant, women have been able to rally around these hashtags and share their stories and fears. Because of this, both collectively and individually, they have found the ability to rise up against the evil which men sometimes do and have almost always gotten away with. #MeToo has also exposed the pervasiveness of male sexism---at any given point in their lives, pretty well all women could justifiably claim to have been victimized in some way, shape or form.
   In part because of #MeToo, patterns of male behaviour have been laid bare, open for inspection, and many of us men have been found lacking. We have also been found complicit---many times by simply looking away. We have heard stories from other men about the many ways they might have abused women, or continue to do so, and we have remained silent.
   In the ongoing aftermath of all this, many men, I believe, are now looking back at their past interactions with women in an attempt to determine whether at some point they might have strayed. Some men may have done this in an effort to predict possible fallout headed their way. Other men, simply in an effort to understand how their attitudes and behaviours in the past can be changed for the better.
   As a man, you can learn if you pay attention. I have a female friend on Facebook I've known for many years. She has an amazing smile, in my opinion, but she rarely uses it when she posts photos. In the past, I have gone out of my way to point this out to her, while commenting on the occasional pic. It has only been since the emergence of #MeToo and the accompanying discourse on latent sexism, that I've come to realize how inappropriate it is for me to do this, regardless of how well I know this woman and and how light-hearted our exchanges seem. So I've stopped making this mistake and am actually contemplating an apology. It is simply not my place to offer an opinion to someone on how they can more closely live up to what my expectations are on how physically attractive I think they could be.
   This seems like just a small thing to me but I also think it is indicative of what hopefully the new climate around gender roles is bringing---men rethinking how they act and react around women. And if you are on social media and you are paying attention, women will actually provide you with do's and don'ts.
   For a moment, back to the bear in the forest. 
   I drew the comparison between me encountering that bear in the forest and women interacting with men in common, everyday environments. I'm not sure how far-fetched or unrealistic comparing those two things may sound to you but the fact of the matter is this---for that length of time I was in that forest with that bear, my life was basically upside-down. Whatever vestige of male privilege I'd carried with me prior to that moment slipped away into nothing. No amount of physical strength or intellectual reasoning was going to come between me and that bear. If the bear thought it had any good reason to seriously hurt or kill me, well, that's what was going to happen. I would have done nothing wrong but having been in the wrong place at the wrong time, with a predator. Is this not sometimes what women face? 
   I'm going to present yet another metaphor or scenario which, as far-fetched as it might sound, I think might actually be applicable. As women walk around in this world they are faced with about 50% of the rest of the population being male. Out of that 50%, perhaps 75% of men are capable of performing whatever act of violence they wish upon whatever women they encounter. As a man, I can only think of one sphere of existence wherein, on a daily basis, I might have to live my life faced with similar odds of having to face violence or possible death. Prison. 

Is this what it's like for women, in a man's world?

   These are not numbers which will ever change and I doubt that many of us view life this way. But, for many women, this is a reality and for many women it will become a reality. As men, we need to understand our role in all of this and come to grips with some of the changes which need to happen.
   This will probably screw us up. How we treat women (how we treat people, in general) is something we started to learn basically as we were lying on our mothers' bellies for the first time. We learned from how our mother treated us and then watching how she was treated.  We have witnessed the many ways power can be used. We have spent our lives watching how the people around us used or abused relationships and we have formed behaviours around all this which will now be difficult to change. There will be confusion and there will be anger and we will rail against what seems to suddenly be an injustice we don't understand.
   Make no mistake about it, though, women will force a change.  Women will save themselves. Along the way, men will need to provide fewer reasons for women to be wary of us. We will need to come to grips with masculinity also meaning protecting, enabling, and respecting as much as it does anything else. We can do this if we just think. What we can't become, or continue to be, is the bear in the forest.
   
   
   

   

Black Coffee

   This is sort of about black coffee but really it's not about black coffee. The actual black coffee is truly the smallest and most insignificant thing about this little story I'm preparing to tell you.
   One day last week, I made a regularly scheduled visit to my chiropractor, Zeinin Haji. Zeinin is this wonderful woman who, a few years ago, took a man whose hips could barely get him across the livingroom floor and changed him into a viable, functioning human being once again. Because of this, I tend to pay attention to what she says.
   Last week, in the middle of an adjustment, she suggested I might be better off if I lost five pounds. In chiropractic terms, she thought it would create a better "balance". What I found remarkable about this was that she has never said anything to me about my weight before and, believe me, I have needed to lose five pounds pretty well since I was fifteen!
   When she said this, I immediately became suspicious that perhaps she and my wife, Doralyn, had been involved in some conspiracy. I had noticed that Doralyn had been in for an appointment with Zeinin about an hour before I got there. What a coincidence that Zeinin was now talking to me about my weight.....hmmm.
   After the adjustment, we sat down and Zeinin drew me out a bit of a pie chart with proteins, carbs and fats on it and suggested a diet higher in protein and with a little less of the others. We then agreed that I would try and lose five pounds by my next visit, in a month, and that my overall goal might be closer to thirty pounds. Not unreasonable.
   Here's where the black coffee comes in.
   At some point while we were talking about small and simple things I could do to lose weight and be healthier, Zeinin suggested that I could start drinking my coffee black. Now, the whole time she'd been talking to me, I had been gently nodding my head up and down, in total acquiescence. When she mentioned drinking my coffee black, my head started swiveling back and forth sideways. I have never taken my coffee black. I can't stand the taste of black coffee. Over the years, I've had pretty well every combination of milk, cream, sugar and sweetener in an attempt to be healthier but I always drew the line at drinking it black. In my mind, right there in Zeinin's office, I'm thinking no way.
   I headed for home after the appointment and was standing in the kitchen, telling Doralyn about it. She swore up and down that my name had never come up during her earlier appointment with Zeinin. Which is now kind of beside the point because when it comes right down to it, I do need to lose a whole bunch of weight and Doralyn reminded me that I've been promising her for years that I would be a healthier husband for her. At that point, I mentioned to Doralyn about the black coffee. I told her what my reaction had been when I had heard black coffee described as a healthier alternative. Right there in the kitchen, I more or less told Doralyn there was no way I was going to be following that little bit of Zeinin's advice. At this point, Doralyn turned to leave the kitchen and as she did so, looked over her shoulder at me, smiled sweetly and said, "Perhaps Zeinin thinks I'm worth it!"
   With this one short phrase, Doralyn more or less nailed me to the cross of my love for her.
   I stood there in the kitchen after she left with my mouth (or was it my soul) hanging a little open. Of course she's worth it! This was, and always has been, the undeniable truth to it all and all the responsibility around this had just been very clearly distributed right back in my lap. Clearly, where it belonged.
   I followed Doralyn into the livingroom, smiled, looked down and pointed my finger at her (as I tend to do every time she amazes me with something) and told her, "That was good!"

She seems worth it, doesn't she??

   The next morning, I drank my coffee black. I made more black coffee and took it to work with me. I then drank black coffee all weekend long and I drank black coffee today.
   Along with all this black coffee, I've been eating lots of protein, fewer carbs and healthier fats. I've been to the gym twice and hiked and run. I've lost about five pounds but it's five pounds I knew would come off quickly once I started to really pay attention. 
   The black coffee, with its missing milk, of course, will likely always be one of the smallest parts of me being healthier. With all the things I can do to be more mindful of my health, however, black coffee may be the touchstone of them all!
   

Doodles and Drawings: Part Two

   You were warned! A couple of days ago, I posted a series of pics of drawings I'd done using Microsoft Paint, a few years ago. I suggested that there were more on their way and here they are!

   Okay, I think that's more or less the last of them. When I posted the first batch, the comments ranged from "neat" to "disturbing". Well, they didn't really range---one person said "neat" and another person said "disturbing". It was actually my wife, Doralyn, who said "disturbing" and who would really know better!