I think I’m funny…

So, I think I’m funny. That’s pretty much all that matters, right?

I was having coffee with my sister this morning and while I was making her a cup of coffee I turned on a Spotify playlist of the top 100 Canadian songs.

On comes, “Echo Beach” by Martha and the Muffins, who later became M + M. I’m fairly sure that the father of the lead singer Martha Johnson was my father’s manager for many years, but I digress.

I said to my sister, “do you remember this song!”

She grunted.

So I immediately replied that, “Echo Beach is my second favourite beach after… Son of a”

Then I started laughing until I snorted.

She wasn’t as amused, but hey…

Then came the song “Courage” by the Tragically Hip. So I said to her, before she heard the song lyrics that this song was what she was lacking…

She, of course, glared at me, and then I said to her, “which of the Wizard of Oz characters had no courage?!? The tin man had no heart… The scarecrow had no courage? Right?”

She replied, “No, I think it was the lion… Wasn’t it the lion who had no courage? What did the lion lack?”

My response… “The truth”.

Followed up by uncontrollable laughter and some snorting.

I could Google it, but was it the lion who had no courage?

Trip Down Memory Lane: Sharing Yearbooks with your Children

The other week, I found a box which had my yearbooks from all 4 years of my high school. I was on the yearbook staff for 3 of those 4 years, which meant that not only did I have a personalized yearbook, but each and every picture or article chosen for those years came across my eyes at some point in time, which made it feel that much more personal for me.

I opened up the front cover to see comments and notes written from my friends and classmates, which covered the entire front and back and many pages in between. Notes from people I still keep in touch with, and unfortunately notes from way too many people that I didn’t keep in touch with. Sadly there were notes from people who passed away way too soon.

There were some goofy notes, some general notes, and some quite meaningful and personal notes.

I left the yearbooks sitting on a table and my eldest came to hang out with his girlfriend (not girlfriend), and they decided it would be fun to look through the yearbook. So they sat down and immediately went through and found me in all my high school awkwardness and away they giggled.

They looked through the pictures and giggles some more.

Then they decided it would be fun to see what my friends wrote, and then match them up to the pictures, but…

They can’t read script.

This generation cannot read handwriting.

LLLLLooooooooooooooooollllllllllllllllllllllllll.

I watch the excitement on their faces turn to disappointment.

Thankfully, the government in Ontario is going back to teaching handwriting. This is absolutely hilarious. Yet not funny at all.

Anyone else experience this, or anything similar that we could do but this generation can’t?

My First Childhood Hero: Pele, has Died.

Upon hearing that my first childhood hero, Pele, had died, I was filled with memories of my youth! I found myself thinking about stories I had told about soccer and my love of the sport, and now that there is something called the Internet, I found myself checking back on some of these memories only to find out they didn’t exactly occur as I had remembered… Oops.

As a kid growing up in Toronto who was, how can I say this politely, not so fit, I somehow had a love of the sport of soccer. I know it was 100% because of Pele, but I don’t remember how or why. I know that I begged my parents to sign me up for soccer, and in hindsight… who signs fat kids up for a sport which requires them to run… a LOT. Nonetheless, my parent put me in recreational soccer and I lasted for 3 long seasons. I played forward, but there was SO much running and I didn’t know how to play soccer, let along forward, so that was a bust. My coach put me in goal, but to ensure I didn’t break my glasses, he made me take them off. So our team had a goalie who was afraid of the ball AND who couldn’t see it. I’m pretty sure after a few (maybe 6) goals, I found my perfect spot… the bench. It was the right choice. I looked forward to the orange segments at halftime and I could watch my team and cheer them on and be safe from running and getting hit in the face. I also remember being kicked in the shin by someone with metal cleats and half the skin on my shin was torn off, and me thinking how barbaric this sport was. The iron is that as an adult I played 25 years of organized ball hockey blocking shots, taking cross checks, getting teeth chipped, stitches, and tons of other things strained, torn and separated.

I digress.

I remember late one soccer game, my coach subbed me in on defence and somehow the ball wound up on my side. I took the ball up the pitch waiting for someone to challenge me, and before I knew it, I was almost at the goal line and completely lost with what to do next. I heard my coach yell, SHOOOOOOOTTTTTTT”, so that I did, as I was tumbling out of bounds, and somehow my shot across the front of the goal had enough spin on it to find the back of the net. My first goal! My last goal too, as I immediately realized that I had finally contributed to my team and was content this wasn’t my sport.

But soccer… I played street hockey a ton, and I loved pitching, yet I played organized soccer, and I remember going to see the Toronto Blizzard professional soccer team in the North American Soccer League (NASL) play in Exhibition Stadium. I could have swore that I watched Pele play against the Blizzard while he was a member of the New York Cosmos. Turns out, that didn’t actually happen. Pele played for the Cosmos in 1975, 76 and 77. The Blizzard played at Exhibition Stadium from 1979 to 1984. Oops. I was right that the Blizzard lost to the Tampa Bay Rowdies, and that was the beginning of my dislike of that franchise (the Rowdies, of course, not the Blizzard). I wished that I had the opportunity to see Pele play in person, and while I believe that I did, I think I’m going to continue to tell myself that I did, because I remember seeing him play somewhere, even if it was while daydreaming, on the soccer pitch, wondering why I thought I could actually play soccer.

My 1 goal put me 1282 behind my hero, Pele.

RIP, legend.

The Urban Daddy is Back… Sort of.

Well after a fairly long period of inactivity and about 60 more drafts, I felt it was time to bring back some content to The Urban Daddy.

Here are the groundrules;

1. Since the kids are getting older, they don’t necessarily want me discussing any details about their personal lives, (“I’ll sue!” said one of them), so I’m going to go back to basics and discuss a bunch of random stuff which involve things Daddies do when their kids are getting older, like work, play and everything in between
2. I’m not an influencer. I appreciate the pitches, and offers, but only on some occasions would I go down that road. I don’t write posts for that reason, and if all I did was give away stuff, why would people come here??
3. I’m Canadian. Based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I’m not affiliated with Urbandaddy.com in the US, other than the fact that I was here before them, and I sold them my Pinterest account.
4. I’ve been busy. Some good, more not so good, but I’m still here. I’ve gotten a new career working for a company and filling a role that I absolutely love, so that’s good. COVID is still here, but I’m double vaccinated and I wear a mask where possible so I don’t pass along any germs to anyone. I’ve always wondered why sick people don’t wear masks to prevent spreading their colds. I learned this was a very kind thing when we were in Japan a couple of years ago and asked a local guide why there were people wearing masks outside. I thought it might be due to air pollution, but the guide explained that these people are not feeling well and didn’t want to make others sick… Take that, anti-maskers!
5. I took an online cooking class through George Brown College and their culinary area. It was an intro to cooking and it was vegan and the whole experience was amazing. I used to have a hang-up about cooking – had convinced myself that I was unable to just pick a recipe and follow it – but this course had me making tons of great stuff, like stocks, risotto, my own pasta, and my own tofu. I’m going to take another… Soon.
6. I’ve also managed to expand my volunteering and wound up with a board position on a local hockey league as their registrar… Not going to lie, but it’s a huge challenge, because I’ve been busy in my new paid role, and trying to find time for my volunteer role has posed a few challenges.
7. I had hurt myself quite badly at the beginning of the pandemic (not sure if I wrote about this or not), but I was walking on Yonge Street with my sister, and I stepped off the curb to avoid people, but the street was uneven so I rolled my ankle, and in the process did a crap-load of damage to myself, tearing muscles and ligaments off my right hip, right ankle, and I tore my left groin muscle, resulting in me passing out on Yonge Street, then a few days later in the hospital for a ton of tests and medication when I was unable to move because everything seized up. It took me about a year to be able to get everything moving pain-free and since that time, I’ve been walking about 5km/day where possible. I’d love to be able to lose that COVID weight, then the late-night snacking weight, followed by the baby-weight I gained when our now 16yo son was born.
8. I have a love/hate relationship with the Olympics, so I’ll hopefully have some more words to say about them shortly, other than to say that they always make me cry, and I’m so happy for all Canadian athletes who have won medals, or tried their best.
9. So, yeah… I guess we’ll see how long this lasts. 😉

More Kid Kontent: Gross Commercials, Politics and Tik Tok

Today, April 19th, 2021 is the first Canadian Federal budget in over 2-years. It’s been a hot topic of conversation amongst my friends, my colleagues and, yes, my kids.

At work, and among friends, we are concerned that the only way this Liberal government can pay for all the massive spending they’ve done over the past 7-years is through increased taxation. Increased taxation to Liberals tends to mean, calling taxes anything but taxes, so “levies”, “fees” and other cute names get thrown around, while the Liberals continue to push for increased taxes on the “wealthy”. Unfortunately, “wealthy” in Canada now becomes anyone earning over $80,000, or combined income of “$120,000”, which essentially becomes the “middle class”.

But I digress.

Whatever I know about politics in Canada I have earned through a specialized honours degree in Public Policy and Administration at University, plus an additional 10+ years of working for the Canadian government. That, however, still doesn’t make me qualified to educate my children about government-related matters because my kids know more. They have Tik Tok.

From Tik Tok, they learn a ton. A lot of it is really helpful, and useful, and informative. The facts that these kids pepper me with are factually correct, and legitimate. Considering the chaos around schooling during a pandemic, it’s nice to see the kids are learning important facts, however, some of these facts are a bit, shall we say, too far to the left, and blur the lines between what’s going on the in the US, and what political life is like in Canada.

The extra scrutiny of the Trump Republicans in the US has caused kids to not only tie together Conservativism in the US with Conservatism in Canada, but it also brought along the stereotypes and misinformation from the US, up to Canada. I can’t say how many times, I’ve mentioned that the Canadian conservatives won’t allow guns, won’t discuss abortion and that conservatives are not Neanderthals who treat people different by race, age, sex, religion or nationality. It’s not a thing.

With all of that being said, I do welcome the attention that they now pay to politics, and enjoy the dialogues that we can have around what’s best for Canada and what’s best for Canadians. If my kids know anything, it’s how to spend only the money they have, and not the money they hope to have or hope to borrow, thus making themselves fiscally responsible. They also know that this government in particular is fiscally irresponsible and they do not like the concept that their taxes will be higher as they start to earn money.

When prompted what they would do if they strived to be a high income earner, to start a business, employ and support others and earn as much as they could, they were quite frank in their replies. They would take less money to offer their employees a higher wage/salary. I commend them for that. Unfortunately, when prompted about what they would do if the government took 60% of their income or more, they simply replied, that they would move to a country which took less.

This is my biggest fear with the way this government has gone about their business.

When an election comes, they spend, spend, spend, because they know 3 things. First, that ordinary Canadians appreciate the spending and think the government is doing something for them. Second, they know that if either of the governments are critical of the spending, they would in turn be criticized by Canadians, and third, they know that when a new government takes over and has to balance the budget, by spending less or cutting costs, that narrative doesn’t go over well at all, and can be used as a re-election strategy (re-elect us, because we don’t cut everything like they do).

With all that being said, I expect this will be an election budget, not a pandemic budget, meaning, spending a LOT of money on everything and not making any controversial decisions. No taxes. No cuts. Just spend, spend, spend, without any regard for who is going to pay and when.

Can’t wait to discuss this with the kids, at a more appropriate time.

We started to have this conversation but then one of 2 dreadful commercials came on the TV. It’s a commercial with Heinz Ketchup (a brand we love), in which a potato with a face gets cut up and eaten. It’s enough to not want us to eat potatoes anymore, and just barely exceeds that horrible Pepsi commercial with ice cubes with faces are plummeted into a glass where they melt to death.

As the kids pointed out, we don’t eat as much mean because of the efforts associating the food with a living being that has feelings. After watching those commercials, the kids want to establish a charity to save the potatoes and save the ice cubes.

UGH.