When I was a young man, I created a superhero. His name was Justice-Man. Click below if you want to read a story about him set exactly sixteen years ago:
It’s hard to read old pencil-on-paper scanned onto the computer (though I’ve had the Space Army up for years), but I just feel like Justice-Man is an important PDR creation who deserves to be on the site. Hopefully someday I’ll get a chance to revisit this character.
I was thinking, it has probably been over a decade since I’ve ridden a bicycle. It feels strange to know this. I had bikes as a kid, like, most of the time, I think. One of my first jobs involved me riding from place to place on bicycles. But then there was this Summer when I was seventeen or so where I had two bikes stolen from my shed, mere months apart, and after that I just didn’t get another one.
I live in the city side of the city now. There are more cars here than there were in Eastern Passage. I’m not sure how comfortable I’d be riding a bike on these streets. I am confident that I would still be physically able to ride a bike though. Remembering how to ride a bike is so easy that there’s an expression about it, after all.
It has also been bizarrely long since I have:
What is the world coming to?
Something I’ve seen many times over the years over the years on television and the Internet is people saying that talking about one’s dreams makes one a bore. Basically what it all boils down to is the message that “Yeah, dreams are weird, we get it.” Well I hate to go against television and the Internet, but I am here to say that I totally like hearing about dreams. I often like hearing about dreams more than I like hearing about actual things that have happened to people.
Maybe somehow the complainers have just been so overwhelmed by descriptions of dreams that it has grown tiresome, but as someone who doesn’t do a whole lot of talking to people (and talking about dreams makes up such a small, small portion of that talking) this is not a problem for me. I love the surreality of dreams so much that my own occasionally remembered dreams are not enough to fill my interest. Hearing about good strangeness from the subconsciousnesses of others is the only way I can think to fill the void.
I’m not, however, one of those people who likes analyzing what the “symbols” in dreams mean. My dreams are typically so bizarre that I have doubt that any such meaning is in there. Plus, the oddness is what I like most about the dreams, so why ruin it?
With this in mind I’m going to repost something from the Contains2 era. Though the dream in question happened years earlier, I had discussed it often enough that the details were still fresh in my mind on Saturday 22 of June 2002 when I posted this:
Okay, I had this dream once, years ago (I think it was in grade ten, so whichever year that was). I’ve had myself a lot of strange dreams (and it seems like 75% of them are set in malls, is there some sort of symbolism behind that?) but this dream is up there in it’s not being surreal, not just being wacky. I’ve told it to many people, and now I’m going to write it up here to prevent me from forgetting even more of it than I already have.
I don’t think it actually started at this point, but this is where my memories kick in:
I’m in my own house, and I’m a butler. I’m going through my various duties and I happen to look out my window. Just as it does in the real world the window has a view of the Atlantic Ocean. Out there, driving on the ocean at the horizon is a bus, which I immediately recognize as the OJ Simpson Bus-Boat. Not finding this at all strange, I go back to work.
But when I look out the window again, I see that the Bus-Boat has changed course. It’s heading directly for my house! I dive away from the window, and I hear the Bus-Boat crashing onto the area in front of my house.
Things get blurry right here again, but I think I talked to my parents for a few minutes about the Bus-Boat having crashed in front of our house. When my memory comes clear again…
A panoramic, birds-eye-view of the Bus-Boat (now that it is on land it’s a boat. A military ship actually, maybe even a carrier) as it is cordoned off by military personnel and helicopters circle it (military or media? I couldn’t tell you). It’s about the size that such a boat would really be, and takes up the length of my street (Himmelman Drive, Boy!). In the real world, the road is curved, but the boat manages just fine.
Things get blurry again and then me and a guy who I knew from school at the time are disguising ourselves as water deliverymen to sneak into the Bus-Boat. I don’t know what happened inside, but when we came out I had found a secret device: An Electric Arm!
I don’t think my memory is blurry here, I think the dream just skipped scenes and suddenly I was wearing the Electric Arm and leading a team of commandos or mercenaries or something. We’re fighting this ogre and he’s got us cornered on a winding staircase that has a big brass pole at its center. The ogre repeatedly charges at us and I hold him off by hitting him with the Electric Arm. Each time I strike the ogre numbers fly out of him and he moves back. Eventually we’re at the top of the stairs and the ogre is at the bottom resting against the brass pole. Brilliantly, I use my Electric Arm on the pole, sending a shock down and forcing the ogre to run away.
I think the dream went on, but that is all I can still remember. For a dream I had like six years ago, I think that’s pretty good. (Wow! I don’t even think I did the math wrong, I think it really has been six years since grade ten.)
If there is any meaning behind that dream, I certainly don’t get it.
What do we have hear? Two English-speaking gentlemen in the Sixties who have a problem. They gotta find space in Montreal to have a World’s Fair, but oh man, they don’t have room! But what if they build it on the water? Haha, how would that work? Oh, they can build an island. And they did. Happy ending.
Okay, this time out, I’m a little stumped. I mean, I do remember this Canadian Propaganda Commercial, I must have seen it in my youth enough times to absorb the information. I recognized the situation and knew the solution, but apparently my mind had managed to forget some of the details.
I didn’t remember it being black and white for example. I see no reason for it to be in black and white. I mean, is it done to evoke the era? If so, you’re kinda pushing it. 1963 still had black and white television as the standard, I believe, but I don’t think anyone associates the Sixties with B&W the way the Fifties were. And anyway, we’ve had Heritage Moments set during the black and white television era that were in color. And we’ve had ones set before that which weren’t told as books. There is simply no need for this “artistic” choice. You lose points for this, commercial. Also, the music is pretty ridiculous, but probably does fit the era for all I know.
Our gentlemen solve their problem by remembering that there are subway tunnels being built, so let us use that dirt for something, shall we? This I approve of. It is a useful synergy of resources. Well done, chaps. Two birds with one stone and all that. While it is almost certain that the conversation never took place in real life as it does here, someone had that idea and that is the point we’re trying to get across. Success there.
I don’t think either of these men is identified. The first line may say the name of one of them, but I can’t make it out. (I think it is “Hey Guy, we’re supposed to be at city hall.” But I doubt that the one guy who absolutely less French would be called Guy with that pronunciation.) A mayor is name-dropped at the end, but in all, I’ve learned basically nothing about any historical figures here. I guess I learned that Ile Notre-Dame was man-made (and that it exists), which I didn’t know. But that’s it.
Anyway, I can see Young-Me didn’t bother accurately storing this one in his brain. Not worth the effort. Two out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake.
Meanwhile, you know what we could all use more of? World’s fairs. Let’s get on that.
So, today is my thirtieth birthday. How about that?
Generally I, Patrick D Ryall, do not bother celebrating my birthday, (and today is no exception apart from this post, really) because age is just a count of how many times the Earth has gone around the Sun since I got born and that isn’t terribly relevant to me. Sure, years are a useful unit of time measurement, but they really don’t mean anything about me as a person. And yet, even with that in mind, there are some things that can be inferred by my turning thirty: The primary being that I’m no longer in my Twenties. I’m now a Real Adult, instead of a New Adult. Or something. I’m in a different category than I was just days ago, is what I’m saying. I don’t know what the categories are called.
Sure, I’ll grant you that today’s society has pushed back Real Adulthood much further than thirty. People probably say things like “Fifty is the new Thirty” so I’m supposed to rejoice that I’m not old. All the thirty-year-olds in movies are likely to be overgrown young people and many in real life seem take their cue from that. People crave their youth, for whatever reason, so they’re constantly pushing the societal definition of youth higher and higher. But not ol’ PDR. I don’t care about aging, really. Some people fret about it and can’t believe that they’re getting old. And you’d think that someone who has been as concerned with his mortality since such a young age as I was would worry, but I don’t. Getting older has more than enough benefits to make PDR okay with it.
For one thing, I have never fit in with my age group. Not when I was a kid, nor a teenager, nor any other time. I never knew the popular trends of the day. I am always late learning about what shows are popular, I never know anything about music, and I have worn the same style of clothes (t-shirts, jeans) no matter what fashion does around me. Now, obviously, my age group is still my age group. They’ve all grown up with me. So my not fitting in with them will continue. But we’ve all continued aging away from the Young People of Today and they’re the real popular culture now. That’s what is so sweet. Someone in their Twenties? They’re generally still expected to be somewhat hip. But I’m in my Thirties, now, so I’m free from that! As I said above, Thirties are still considered pretty young these days, but the difference between me and some teenagers is now so insurmountable that my never speaking to one who isn’t a cashier is perfectly fine. When I hit my Forties, I’m pretty sure, is when I’m actually allowed to be wholly alienated by youths, so I’m ahead of the game there, but I’ll take what I can get. I’ve been an old man in my head since I was around fourteen, so this is just my life is finally catching up.
I’m also lucky that there won’t be any “Holy Crap, I’m Thirty Now” shock for me. I’ve thought of myself as a thirty-year-old since I was twenty-eight. Why? Bad memory, I guess. But in any case, I’ve been calling myself thirty for years in my head (and occasionally out loud when people ask me my age and I don’t want to do math or remember what year it is) so I’ve already moved on to being, like, thirty-three mentally. If, at any point, I genuinely am caught off guard when my age occurs to me, it’s because I’m actually younger than I am.
Naturally, round-numbered ages are a good time to take stock of your life and see how you’re doing. And it’s times like this I notice that I am nowhere near getting married, having kids, buying a house, and winning a position of great social status and material wealth. But I wasn’t aiming for that stuff anyway. There’s some stuff in that list that I’d be down with, but for the most part these goals are just things we’re peer pressured into thinking are important. I’ve not deigned to base my life around achieving any of them. The unfortunate flip-side of this, however, is that I’m also not achieving much in the way of PDR-mandated goals. I’ve not done nearly so much travelling as I’d like, my writing output is improving but is still less than ideal, and I’ve not overthrown the currency-worshipping culture we live in. Perhaps the most alarming thing I do get out of turning thirty is when I remember that I started working my current job when I was twenty-one. I’ve wanted to quit for at least eight years, but I haven’t because I can’t think of another way to not be homeless.
But in the end, I can take that sense of failure as I turn thirty, because I had that same sense of failure when I was twenty-nine and before that. But now I can more liberally use phrases like “When you get to be my age…,” “Back when I was young…,” and “Kids these days…” I mean, sure, I used all of those already, but now it is slightly more justified. And in the end, that’s what aging is about: It’s a license to be as cantankerous and ornery as you want.
