A Bear and a Distracted Driver

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

In the Rockies today, driving un-distracted, I saw a black bear with a yellow ear tag sneaking across the transCanada highway. I slowed, moved to drive behind him over the center lane. The tag meant, “Don’t stop! If this bear gets dangerously used to humans it will need to be put down.” An oncoming blonde my age saw the bear and me and gave a salute-wave as she passed.

Also today I saw a noble deer at bay, with a broad black nose. He stood, thought better of crossing the highway, and spun about to nimbly return to the forest.

Today I saw a sign by an interesting brown road joining the highway, in the middle of nowhere, “School bus Stop Zone.” Are you curious? I regret I didn’t turn off to coolly explore whatever might be up that less traveled road. No, for although I am on holiday until Monday I had to hurry home by Wednesday afternoon. Sorry.

That’s because over a year ago I had a dozen cars stopped behind me at a red light. Green. A nanosecond passed. The distracted driver behind me, who was on his “hands free cell phone” and had “just broken off with his girlfriend” suddenly noticed the green light and stomped on the gas. Good thing my headrest was precisely adjusted. Too bad I was trying to suck a sour candy with my jaw wayyy out of line. Good thing his girl hadn’t told him she was pregnant—he could have seriously crashed my car. Instead he only impacted my life—now I have to cut my holiday short to see my doctor; my jaw is in dire pain.

“Save the bears!”

 If you are a girlfriend, then please don’t be what alcoholic husbands call an “enabler.” Don’t enable your boyfriend to call you from his car in traffic, whether he is moving or still. Tell him there’s no fire, you’re not pregnant, and there’s no reason he can’t wait to call you until he is safe, and legal. It would be the loving thing to do.

Sean Crawford

June

Now on the pouring rain side of the mountains

2014 

The Longest Day

Context

This week at our Friday FreeFall the prompt was "The Longest Day," since Friday was on D-Day. Someone wrote about Dieppe, since it too happened, by military reckoning, on D-day at H-hour. It was a sad morning as many of us remembered our relatives... literally gone, or here in body but gone in mind... Freefall writing, as the name implies, is where you just write like mad after hearing a surprise prompt. It can be powerful because it is so messy; you just write your way into it, without any editing or inner censor.   

Prompt-The Longest Day

It’s a long day. The trick is to attack at high tide—for the brass, that means more clearance between the hulls and the obstacles. For us it means more chance to survive because if we can keep our heads above water there is less chance of drowning—not in water, anyway, maybe in the hot coppery stuff.

It was a long day because I was skipping out. I was miserable and depressed and I had no telephone so no one could phone me and they would have thought I was in school anyways. Like every teen I had a transistor radio and every hour I would hear the news of three guards held captive—or did we say “hostage” in those days? I later heard that my dad had to hold on with all his might to keep a knife from his throat. Luckily another con came and held the con’s arm away.

I don’t even know if I benefited, really, by staying away from school. I don’t suppose I got caught up on trying to understand algebra or cleaning up my place. Once I hallucinated that I heard my dad’s voice. But he wasn’t around, he was at work, at the penn, what we kids called the joint.

He didn’t get any extra money for being held hostage, but he did get an early retirement out of the deal—just try getting any favours from the department of soliciter general.

The hours trickled by, oozed by, stealed by like some digital clock that didn’t register seconds or minutes, only ticked over for hours.

I suppose I read. And at last I was at the armoury where everybody is devoted to excellence and luckily we didn’t have any drill training because my mind would have been too distracted. Or no, in those years I would have thrown myself into things. Today it is so easy to memorise a serial number, in those years we all thought our middle aged NCO’s were crazy to expect us to remember the number of a rifle we were issued for just one night.

The battalion orderly room had a telephone to the outside world, the phone was in the phone book, and the whole battalion learned that my father had been freed. Not like Mary Steinhauser. And we all climbed the long stairs to the mess and drank our manly beer and forgot about it. For we were strong and young and immortal.

My father landed ten days after D-Day, went to Bremmen, the furthest reach of the Canadian Forces, and got to come home soonest as he had been so long in the war. Now he’s in a wheelchair in Bamfield pavilion.

Sean Crawford

June

2014