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Saturday, January 14, 2012,  2:20 a.m.

This is my 28th blog. Sort of like the numbers on a calendar page for the month of February except for leap years....and after two hip replacements I now have given up leaping! 

I guess I am treating these pages as a way to get my thoughts, reactions, family history and a variety of other things down on paper without actually having any paper. Now I am really starting to show my age in this modern technological world. I often wondered if the choices I made years ago were the right ones or not? I am a lot different person now than when my 12-year marriage ended thirty years ago. I went to school either full time or part time for 28 years of my life between 1949 and 1996. That was a lot of learning and likely even more than a student that did a PhD. I earned four undergraduate degrees and wrote an MBA entrance as an LD student at one point in the early 1990s but I have to admit that I decided, after taking something like eight hours to do it, I would find it a boring follow up to the two undergraduate degrees in business that I had completed already. I decided to do something different by then as my wife and I had separated and I had time on my hands having departed from other interests. I ended up taking some night courses in film, another of my many interests, and after another ten courses and transfer credits completed a BA in film with a lot of clay modelling, painting, drawing and printmaking studio courses thrown in at the same time, meeting a desire to expand my art talents. I always wanted to go to the Toronto Film Festival and only made it once for a couple of films in the early years. I don’t even think they had a red carpet back then. I always promised myself to go back again however my devastated financial situation and poor health would not allow it in later years. At the same time, I always seemed to filter back to school at some point or another when situations were bad in the economy or the need or time permitted it. I always enjoyed the competitiveness of learning. Busy is not the word for my life and I have to admit, it took its toll on me along the way and probably made it very difficult for my wife and kids who eventually moved on. That was more than thirty years ago now. It was after that when I was single and dating again, that I realized that it was not fair to a woman to bring her into the type of life I had chosen for myself. Lonely ?...at times perhaps but no great complaints about a lack of acquaintances in a ski club, a service club and wherever I was at later times in my life until my health began to give way again about ten years ago. I think 5 years of university food on a strict budget did not help much. I guess I got used to living alone and I did not let it bother me as I was too busy concentrating on how to survive the next few years as the economy went really bad. My medical history would surprise anyone. I have probably spent time in at least a dozen hospitals over the years, had as many small to large operations not to mention minor repairs, x-rays, scans and many more visits to undergo just the tests necessary to understand what was going wrong in my body. Good think health care is free in Canada for the most part. Even though I have been through so much, I continue to live on, though be it with some definite problems.

In my younger years before I married, I also used the hospital in a different capacity. It was a universal source of young females wanting to date others. In some respects, the leaving home syndrome to experience life was not soley related to universities, but also the live-in nursing schools attached to hospitals for the 18 to 21-year olds. . I used several hospital nursing schools in three cities for dating purposes. It was a common trend back in the free 60s and early 70s and was a lot of fun for both the young guys and nurses. We seldom had a dating problem after passing observance during a few telephone conversations once we had asked earlier in the week who was looking for a date that weekend.

Going back to the devastating economy of the late 80s to mid-90s, I was just reading a history of a ski club that was written in the year 2000 on its 50th anniversary and it suddenly dawned on me that my decision to return to school in 1991 and remain for five years was a good one since I was virtually living on air for three years up to that point. At times I could barely afford the gas to pick my kids up for the weekend. As thing got bad and companies were getting rid of middle management. I did not know then if I was going to survive much longer even with some social assistance at times when things were really bad. Fortunately, my ex-wife and her second husband, moved west and for a time removed the expenses for me. It was a blessing in disguise. When I left university for good, work took over again but because of latent effects on the economy, markets had still not fully recovered. My decision to go into teaching ended with my hearing deficiencies which became apparent in the classrooms during teachers training sessions. While I wanted to teach children with learning disabilities having finally identified the problems that plagued me with learning all my life, my hearing problems, even with new hearing aids made that impossible. I did not meet objectives and once again, I found myself living in a basement room somewhere until I could find a better situation. Somehow, I always end up next to the furnace room except for a cold winter when the city turned off the electricity thereby cutting heat. Although it toughened me, it also moved me from being a day to night person while I tried to get through to spring. .All these events tended to somehow affect my life. It was the 6 hours of heat and electricity overnight that allowed me to begin to write my first book so something positive came out of the wee hours of the night in a cold winter in Toronto that I will never forget. At least it was warm there during the night when the electricity and furnace were on and I had power for an older IBM Selectric typewriter. You remember the one with all the interchangeable heads offering a complete variety of type styles or are you too young? It was a fun machine and allowed me to do a lot more typing over the next ten years until I got my first computer in 1991 thanks to a government program for students with learning disabilities. My next move was the purchase of a computer on a government grant for students with learning disabilities. That was nice. It cost me nothing. A few years later I got another one to replace the first as technology improved and eventually a laser printer for my reports. Today I use a cheap rebuilt-rebuilt that cost me less than $200 to put together this time using a 12-year old casing and older parts. It seems to keep on humming. .

Over the years I have outlived a great many friends and acquaintances that died in their fifties and sixties. Perhaps it has been the fact that I was never bored that kept me going either trying to find work, helping others as I could or making opportunities for myself, even though the opportunities never really panned out. I remember those old friends I made along the way as vividly as if we had seen each other only yesterday. I also remember those supposed friends who took advantage of me during my lifetime and taught me how not to trust others, something my learning disablities taught me to do as a young child without my knowing it. For those and many other reasons, I have only a couple of close friends these days and a wonderful connection with my brother’s family that has gone through thick and thin with me over many, many years.

Perhaps it is my great desire to live and a willingness to keep fighting no matter how hard things get that keeps me going. My education took up a lot of hours in my life as did all of my volunteering to help the less fortunate. I also spent time in my community as an ardent participant in sports, both winter and summer. I was a contributor to the community through a local service club and went on to become a member of the National Executive as one of eight District Governors in Canada. Late each November, we brought a little happiness into the lives of local children as we brought the Santa Claus parade to the town. It was part of the magic of Christmas that I participated in twice in the City of Montreal in the 1950s as a pirate in the Eaton’s Santa Claus Parade, once walking, once on a float. I never forgot the excitement of those days and still fondly remember the spiced donuts and hot chocolate they gave the kids. I loved sweet stuff, anywhere and I fondly remember the Belmont Amusement Park and the annual visits to the old Montreal Forum to see the circus. I knew how important these things are for kids of any background. Where I was living in my thirties and forties in Markham, Ontario and even after I moved to North York, I continued as Santa Claus for fifteen years in the annual parade and before that move I was a cable television parade commentator. I also organized the judges at the same time for another five years and otherwise ran several candidates for election to the town council there and later in Pickering. I was always doing something that I was good at except being a husband and father. Unfortunately, I have to say I learned that from my own father, not a good example to lead. Such is life but simply, I was too involved in my own interests which my wife did not share for the most part and barely tolerated. I was president of an early York Condominium Corporation in 1970s from when we bought our first townhouse. I did that too for a lot of years. I probably should not have been so involved outside of the family as I was married to an English raised Air force ‘brat,’ to coin a common American military name for children who move around the world. She lived in England and Jordan in her youth, with summers in Germany and spent years at a live-in private school for girls while her father, a military doctor, lived out his life climbing almost to the highest ranks of the RAF military medical system from service as a RAF station doctor in WWII to becoming a high-ranking doctor who attended the Queen’s Garden Parties, there in case of emergencies I suspect but also to represent the British military for a few years before his death. The more I think about those years, I realize that we were really unsuited for each other right from the beginning as we were both coming out of other relationships that had devastated us at the time. Regardless of anything else that happened along the way, I would always say she was a great mother to my children and I regret that a combination of my shortcomings and the economy failed me. Life is an interesting journey, no matter how it turns out. All being said and done, at least we got to live a fair length of time in it. Many millions upon millions of people did not live as long as I have so far. Their lives ended due to war, Mother Nature catastrophes, crime, road accidents, job accidents, epidemics of various sorts, shooting, street drugs, disabilities, other sicknesses and a thousand other things. They never got that chance. Someday, I might write a book about a not so average guy who had to survive in a world that did not make it easy. But then again, we all have interesting stories, for the most part, just different. Maybe one day I will die too, but not today. I still have a lot more things on my “bucket list” still to do. Come to think about it, one of those is to go to bed now that we are past 2 a.m. in the morning again. I hope to get at least five hours of sleep this time around. Have a great weekend. I get to do this again on Sunday.