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Yuck, gross and OMG!

11/30/2020

Hubby and I were raking leaves at the apartment building. We weren’t wearing masks because we were outside and not near any people. When working on the front side of the building we were conscious of the passersby on the sidewalk and made sure to keep a good distance as they sauntered along.

At one point a man walked down the street with a cigarette dangling between two fingers. We had to be more than 15 feet away from him so I figured that was enough. I’m actually allergic to cigarette smoke so I avoid it like the plague. I checked the wind direction to make sure the smoke wouldn’t be traveling our way in case he popped it in his mouth for a drag. Well he did and talk about a shifty wind, the fume he exhaled blew right at us and before we could move it was up our noses and, in our mouths!!! We tasted the bitterness of nicotine on our tongues. The smoke that was in our eyes and in our mouths came from breath that had been in his lungs only seconds before. Yuck, gross and OMG!

I have no problem with people that smoke, that is their business, but with the insidious COVID baring down on us, it is cause for concern.

Personally, I’ve always thought 6 feet distancing was a joke, especially when a little breeze can send airborne particles greater distances. How easy is it to walk into another person’s breath, either on a sidewalk or a gym, any place where people breathe without a mask? Something to be wary of as community spread of the virus rises.

Here's another icky experience I had at the door of the shop when I answered it to find a woman not wearing a mask. Before I could ask her to back up and give me distance, she spoke and spittle came flying out of her mouth and landed on the bare arm of my hand that was holding the doorknob. Now I’ve never been a fan of spit, or any other kind of body fluids like sweat that can migrate from one person to the next but now with COVID, it turned my stomach. I rushed to the sink and scrubbed my skin raw and then disinfected with more alcohol than I’ve ever had in my mouth. Sure, it was my arm, not one of the portals that allow the virus to enter the body, but yucky all the same. That’s how quick being infected can happen, an imperceivable transference and then the shite hits the fan.

Stay safe everyone, stay the blazes home and for everyone’s sake, wear your masks.

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A Cautionary Tale on the Town's Faux Pedestrian Promenade, Main Street

11/15/2020

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After an upsetting incident a couple of Sunday’s ago, I felt compelled to write about the experience.

Many times, especially in the peak of summer we take the back roads to get downtown to my studio. The normally 50 km route is clogged with traffic slowed to a crawl because of parked cars along the sidewalk side and people walking on the harbourside, shoulder of the road, creating a bottle neck most of the way between the pub and The Moorings condos. Substantially reduced speeds, and at times coming to complete stops, is the only way to get through that congested mile. We aren’t rude but the times we’ve wanted to call out the window “This is not a sidewalk”, well we don’t have enough collective toes and fingers to count them. We say nothing because we want visitors in our town to have a pleasant experience, not leave with a negative stain that curtails future visits. Pedestrians seem to have no regard for passing vehicles when they walk shoulder to shoulder, sometimes three to five people deep, right up to and on the white line. While sitting in the passenger seat of our vehicle, I shouldn’t be able to put my hand out of the car window and touch people along the side of the road but I could if I wanted to.

It is not uncommon to come to complete stops in the middle of Main Street as people are crowding our car, not even turning their heads when they hear an approaching vehicle behind them. And worse, when they are walking toward us, they clearly see the car but don’t bother to move further off the roadway, fully expecting the motorist to maneuver around them. We love our town and we appreciate that others do as well. Its wonderful that they come here to support our businesses and take in the spectacular views of our quaint seaside community. But and there is always that but, when you come here there isn’t a magical cone of safety that envelopes you. You need to be aware of your surroundings, conscious of the dangers and act accordingly so we can all go about mishap free and enjoy our day.

So, this particular Sunday, numerous people were walking on the right side of the road as we headed into town. On the left, cars were parked along the sidewalk creating that ever present bottle neck with people walking along the pavement on the right too close to the white line. Vehicles were stopping one way or the other to allow one car through at a time.

For this incident we were moving at a walking pace. A car coming toward us had pulled in behind a parked car and had stopped, waiting for us to pass so they could proceed. Our left wheels were on the center yellow line to avoid the people walking on our right that were much too close to our car. There were two female adults and one child, their backs to us as they headed in the same direction. The child was on the farthest side of them and not holding the adult’s hand beside her.
Then, all of a sudden, the child perhaps 4 years of age, did a figure eight, darting behind her mother and then scooted between the two women, running around the front of the woman on the left, over the white line and into the side of our car. Because we had been at a greatly diminished speed the car braked quickly. The little girl was barely visible below the side of the car but there had been no bump so we hoped we hadn’t connected with her but there had to have been a hair’s width between us. The look on the women’s faces reflected the horror on ours as we waited with our hearts in our throats. The car hadn’t touched the girl and even if it had we were going so slow nothing serious would have happened but with someone more impatient behind the wheel, there could have been a more ominous outcome.

The one woman, we thought perhaps the grandmother, came to the window and apologized, telling us the little girl was okay while the mother crouched to speak to the child, who was clearly shaken.

Gregg mentioned that there was a perfectly safe sidewalk on the left side of the road, which was for just that, walking, and the woman said they planned to go into a shop up ahead. I must say it put a real damper on our afternoon as what could have happened reared its ugly head. The feeling of dread stayed with us long after our hearts went back to regular beating. The little girl sustaining injuries would have been devastating for all involved, something we’d all have to reconcile and live with.

Perhaps we need more crosswalks along main street for crossovers to shops. We’re stopping anyway for those that wander over the white line, and even if their feet might be inside the line, their shoulders, their purses and the shopping bags in their hands are not. It needs to be safer to sightsee in our town if the onus is going to lay solely at the hands of the driver. And yes, I know the driver is supposed to be vigilant at all times but come on people, this needs to be a collective cautionary approach to your safety. When flesh and bone meet steel, the latter will always win. I’ll bet the farm that there are lots of drivers in our town that can relate to what happened, throw their tales on a heaping pile of incidents and near misses. Perhaps Mahone Bay needs to put up signs that say NO WALKING, or WALK AT YOUR OWN RISK on that side of the road with arrows pointing to the official sidewalk across the street, to protect our community in the event of an injury and potential lawsuit, just like the DO NOT WALK ON THE TRACK signs of railway lines, apparently if you don’t warn folks they are free to sue you for their own lack of forethought. It’s enviable, it’s going to happen, I’m surprised it hasn’t already.

And while I’m having a rant, there seems to be a growing trend in our town of crosswalk infringements. Back when I was young it was drilled into me to look both ways before crossing a street and then walk with intent to cross, not dilly dallying when cars are approaching. I also see, rather frequently, cars that have stopped for people in the crosswalk, especially the one by the Cenotaph heading west, then not waiting for the pedestrians to reach the other side before they continue on their way. In case you are not aware, this happens to be illegal, you are supposed to be at a full STOP until the person or persons have completely crossed to the other side.

When in the crosswalk, be cautious and considerate and get to the other side in a timely fashion. That does not mean you have to run across like a hare, but sauntering like a tortoise is really not safe. I have waited for people to walk across and they haven’t even glanced either way to check for cars. They cross without a thought for what might be going on around them. It’s really nice to have that kind of confidence but crosswalk deaths and accidents are slowly on the rise. A crosswalk is not a place for checking a phone, texting or carrying on animated conversations with hands flailing, laughing or worse, wearing earplugs and listening to music. Being distracted by everything other than what is going on around you, such as 3000 lb. plus vehicles on the move, is a recipe for disaster.

Christine Little
Resident

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Giving myself a break.....

11/13/2020

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This December I’ll be turning to page 62 of my life story. Mentally, I still feel the youthfulness of my twenties, but I am conscious of my ever-changing body. Almost overnight my skin is a little thinner, like a soft malleable paper with a shiny iridescence of a grayish mother of pearl. It’s interesting; I see beginning of things in the mirror that I witnessed while I worked in a nursing home. I’m not delighted that I’m soaring towards the end of my life, but I won’t be heading into it kicking and screaming.

I really have no problem with aging and the changes to come, mostly I find it all terribly interesting. Growing old isn’t catastrophic or upsetting, it is an unavoidable part of life that I would rather embrace than fret about; goodness knows I did enough of that when I was younger. I wasted my youth thinking I was a hideous freak of nature and now I am riddled with remorse, that I didn’t show my physical body more kindness when it was a magnificent, youthful masterpiece.

I’ve been a sensitive soul my entire life. Perhaps rough beginnings mapped out the years to come after being denied a smooth entrance into the world. Following protocol of the time, my mother’s legs were tied together during a blizzard when a doctor couldn’t make it to the hospital to deliver me. It seemed the world didn’t want me and when a physician finally came to our rescue, walking several kilometers on snow shoes to reach us, I was blue and gasping a last breath. My poor mother, traumatized by the ordeal, couldn’t relax enough to breast feed me when the same nurses that tied her up hovered around her telling her “You can do it”, thence cheating me of the most intimate mother child bond there is.

Then my homecoming was tainted by an older sibling who didn’t like my intrusion and wanted me returned to whence I came. So, the first week of my life was a trifecta of rejection, perhaps helping to form my weak personality. During my first decade I was bullied even before the terminology was popularized and suffered name calling, slaps, pinches and kicks, turning the pain of it all inward, until I felt ugly and worthless and totally unloved. Maybe I needed more attention than some, maybe with more affection and assurance I wouldn’t have felt like a mutant freak, because as early as three, I began to systematically tear my body apart, loathing the various attributes. What preschooler obsesses about their body, focusing on perceived flaws and magnifying them out of proportion? Why wasn’t I in the sandbox, playing with dolls or bumping up and down on a teeter-totter without a care in the world instead of hanging out in my head, conjuring a cruel and unfair reality for myself?
Everything was clouded by a body image that had been planted with a negative seed and then watered and nurtured until it grew into a tangled mess. At the time I thought I was alone, in an exclusive club; but millions of people are insecure and unhappy with their appearance. Look what happened to Michael Jackson. When he was a young boy, a fan exclaimed how huge is nose was and look how that turned out. Plastic surgery is a multi-billion-dollar industry, that’s not a couple of Hollywood starlets spending their entire paycheques, its millions of people getting a heck of a load of alterations, nips and tucks to find happiness. For me it all started with my chin and legs, two taunts that left their mark like a branding iron. To this day I don’t own a pair of shorts after being labeled “Ole Chicken legs”, ha ha cluck, cluck. After being called this relentlessly, I truly believed that my legs were by far the ugliest in the world.

Then came the “Witchchin” moniker which was even worse because I couldn’t hide my face as easily as my legs. Imagine always trying to position yourself so those around you couldn’t see your profile. For some reason I felt I had to protect everyone from seeing my ugliness so I wouldn’t be judged or thought less of from the horror that was my chin and in turn, protected myself from expected ridicule and further berating. I was taunted by my sister with how ‘no boy could ever kiss me because my chin was so huge, his lips would never meet mine’. Throughout my adolescence, if I was forced to wear shorts, I used to walk backwards and sideways so those behind me couldn’t see my barnyard gams, while holding my chin so those beside me couldn’t see my distorted profile. I was an irrefutable mess.

After those two physical attributes were condemned, I began my own self-destruction. I rationalized that if my chin was hideous and my legs were an abomination, how was all else in-between acceptable?    I remember each physical assassination so vividly, each target a nightmare as I tried to overcome them with subterfuge, camouflaging with added clothing and maneuvers as not to show my flaws. Although I still remember each attack and the ensuing stress, the order is blurred, but here’s the run down. My ears were too large, my nose too small, my lips were paper thin, my eyes too wide apart, but then flip-flop, they seemed beady and too close together, my neck was too long, my head too large, my hair too straight and much too thin (I sure wish I had now what I had then), I perspired too much, oh my the sweaty feet, acne, my shoulders were too narrow, my arms were too short for my long torso, my legs were also overshadowed by the long body, but then nothing below my pelvis had any merit, my feet were weird with my second toe dwarfing the big one, I didn’t go outside much so I had the pallor of a creature of the night, my inner thighs were gapped like a tunnel cut through a mountain, my huge knees knocked, my calves were too thin, my breath was foul, my teeth too crooked and my eye teeth too long, there’s that vampire comparison again, and on and on it went. I was an ugly duckling with no hope of a swan transformation and felt like the loneliest, ugliest and most unloved kid in the neighbourhood, perhaps even the world.

Looking back to my twenties and thirties, I regret having the confidence to wear the little spaghetti strap, black dress because my legs were shite and my arms were too hideous to reveal. The latter one really behooves me because my arms are great, have obviously been lovely my entire life. Of course now they are a bit doughy and have a couple of flaps that wave when I do, ironic isn’t it? If only I could have hated myself in reverse, let the loathing escalate as I ascend to the higher double digits after gravity has its way, while beginning my adolescence in love with my firm, youthful self.

I’d spent years hiding beneath huge shoulder pads in the nineties, making my noggin look like a pin head. After that trend petered out, I was even more conscious of their shortcomings and now the fad is resurfacing for another run but I don’t need them now, I really never did!   I look in the mirror and see lovely shoulders. I even bought a few sleeveless tops last year, mostly from being tired of hiding my body under fabric when I deserve to be comfortable in the heat of summer and a hidden bonus, no farmer tan! I told hubby the other morning that I don’t understand why I was so critical of my shoulders when they are perfectly normal and he said “It’s about time you shouldered aside the self-recrimination sweetie”.....my guy, my biggest fan and always the wordsmith.

I’m saddened that my younger self lacked the proper building blocks to break the shackles of insecurity.   My life could have been simpler, what a different person I might have been, relaxed and comfortable in my own skin instead of fidgeting, concealing and deflecting attention away from my person. It would have been wonderful to not care about which side was showing, one only mildly better than the other, or worrying how the sun or room light was highlighting something I preferred to remain unseen. Now that I’m older I look at myself in the mirror and wish I’d been kinder to me, wish I’d appreciated what I had, perhaps flaunted it, shown a bit of cleavage for goodness sake; celebrated my youth and curves with pride.

We humans are strange creatures, although my story is extreme, it’s not that uncommon. Thankfully, I’m no longer that self-destructive, foolish girl that was hell bent on hurting my feelings. Thank goodness we grow older and become wiser. By the time I’m 90 and time is slipping away like pennies in a pocket hole, the vessel that carries my mind around will be soft and supple, a casing perfectly matched to the contentment I feel inside.

We only get one chance in this mortal frame and I foolishly screwed up the first two thirds anguishing over it, but I don’t have regrets; they won’t serve any purpose now.   So much wasted time, worrying and obsessing about absolutely nothing, at least nothing that mattered.   If there was one thing I could go back and change it would be to love the younger me, embrace my flaws whether they were real or perceived.   All of the energy that went into hiding and camouflaging and avoiding social contact could have been used to power a city for an entire year.

Anyway, such is life. Now that I’m older I shake my head and even laugh at my foils but where do I go from here? Well, I’ll not shy away or cheat myself of life’s experiences because of my body. It is what it is and if truth be told it’s pretty amazing, a miracle of biology really and will be till the very last wrinkle settles into the vast desert of my skin and my very last breath sustains it.   I am unique and formidable. When my breasts are flattened to my chest and tucked into the waistband of my pajamas, and the skin on my knees is resting on my shins, when the cracks and crevices on my body can hold a snack, maybe my keys, when I’m almost bald with a bad comb over or perhaps a wig, when my ears have grown as long as my face and my eyebrows are like bristles on a wire brush, I will be beautiful……..

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Yuck, gross and OMG!

A Cautionary Tale on the Town's Faux Pedestrian Promenade, Main Street

Giving myself a break.....

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