Time for another life update!
My birthday was quite pleasant. We had a pleasant dinner at one of our favorite local eateries, ABC Country Kitchen. Great good, reasonable prices, and they are willing to turn the music down to a level where we can hear what each other are saying.
That has been a dealbreaker for us with restaurants before. We eat out together to enjoy one another’s company and that means conversation at a less than shouty volume.
Plus, we are all quiet and bookish type people, and those kinds of people tend to dislike loudness of any sort. That certainly applies to me. Even as a small child, I hated loud noises. They scared me.
So me and my friends bring our custom only to quiet restaurants. And seeing as we are the sort of people that keep going to a place if they find one they like, that means a fair amount of business for the places that meet our standards.
So I had a nice meal of a club sandwich and fries. The club sandwich will always hold a special place in my heart, and not just from the cholesterol.
See, when I was a child, I was a typical Taurus child in that I was what they used to call a “fussy eater”, although “conservative eater” would be more accurate.
It’s just really hard to get us to try something new. We are risk-averse to a fault, and incredibly stubborn, so getting us to try something new can be an absolute nightmare.
This came to a head, more or less, when in the summer of 1977 or 1978, my mother and father packed up all four of us kids and took us on a peregrination to go see my father’s family, otherwise known as the Ontario side of the family.
You know how most family sedans have seating for five? Well basic math should have told you by now that we were a family of six. My parents’ solution? Have me sit in the front seat in between them.
Now just picture that. There’s my parents in both fronts seats and there I am, a wee tot, sitting between them on the bench seat, with no seat belt, no child carrier, no airbags, no anything between me and the dashboard and/or the windshield.
Nowadays, people would absolutely flip the fuck out if they saw a child being transported in such a clearly unsafe and insecure fashion. They would probably all grab their cell phones and the police would get a rush of calls and the next thing you know, my family is getting pulled over by the cops by some cops with no sense of humour at all.
But it was the 70’s, and we were wrapped up in a warm cocoon of happy ignorance.
So there we are, trekking across the country from Prince Edward Island to Ontario, and eating three meals a day in restaurants.
And no matter where we went, I wanted the exact same thing : a hot dog and French fries.
See, even back then I loved wieners!
And my siblings kept trying to encourage me to try new things, and I was having none of it. A hot dog and French fries. Over and over again.
But one day, my sister Catherine saw club sandwich on the menu, and said something like “You’d like this, Michael! It has bacon, and chicken, and lettuce, and you like all those things!”
And I frowned dubiously, but I really had no basis for objection, and so I grudgingly agreed to try a bite of hers to see if I liked it.
And it was love at first bite. Of course it was. Club sandwiches are awesome! I had found a new thing to order and I have loved club sandwiches ever since. And ordering it made me feel grownup. This was not kiddie food. It had lots of ingredients and was all colorful and pretty, and even came cut up into four pieces with toothpicks in them. That, to me, said “grownup food”.
In fact, I am fairly sure that for the rest of the trip, I ate nothing but club sandwiches. Well, one step at a time. It had taken a lot of effort to get me to try one new thing, and it was a lot more nutritious than a hot dog. No point in trying to push it ever further.
Hmmm. This is turning into more memoir than update. Where was I? Oh right, ABC.
So we had a pleasant meal, and I had a dessert, which is understandably quite rare for me. But as a compromise, I had a small dessert. No need to go crazy with it.
And ABC was nice enough to give me my dessert for free because it was my birthday. And Felicity paid for the rest of my meal, so I ate out for free.
And that’s always fab.
Oh, and I should mention that in addition to the usual gang of me, Joe, Julian, and Felicity, my friend, former roommate, and regular reader William “spuug” Graham was there. And I am always happy to see him, because he’s a very sweet guy and we have marvelous conversations about science.
Afterwards, we all went to the BCSFA meeting, which was very fun as usual. Kathleen was nice enough to make a tiny birthday cake out of a brownie and a match for me. It sort of looked like the brownie was asking for an encore.
So how does it feel to be 40? Pretty good, to be honest. I feel better about myself lately. I am learning how to accept myself for what I am, and refrain from torturing myself over what I am not.
I am a wonderful guy. Sure, I have limitations, but who doesn’t? And the things I do have are pretty impressive, when you think about it.
I might just be ready to declare myself to be “enough”.
And then I would be all out of excuses for not being awesome.
And that’s a scary thought!