Bob, this one's for you:
I have never been much of a science student, which in my day meant Terry Mazeika trading my English skills for her expertise in biology in order for each of us to pass. While I struggled away with ions, protons, neutrons and electrons, Terry toiled with metaphor, allegory, bathos (which she thought meant drowning in sorrow), and, bathos's cousin, the mock heroic. I just realized I wrote the mock heroic, which is so insiderish—like when I lived in Port Credit and we used to say, "We're going to the Dixie Plaza." [Mind you, it was Bob who first pointed out this regional habit.]
Anyway, I have never been good at science, and had to ultimately drop out of both physics and chemistry. (The only thing I remember about either is the word oscillation, and that's because someone showed us oscillation in action.) I do recall more from my biology classes, however, like the day we were dissecting fish and how I opened mine up and began squealing, "My fish swallowed a pen! My fish swallowed a pen!" (At least a week went by before I realized that I had been set up.) My best friend Sandy cried, too, when we had to dissect frogs, and in fact she got up from our double desk and left the classroom for the rest of the period.
When I finished high school, despite having done well enough in most other subjects, I still felt stupid because I had been such a complete failure in the various areas of science. How fortunate for me, then, when I found out that George Brown College held night classes in astrology. This I was sure I could do, having devoted so much of my young life in the Seaway Restaurant matchmaking people of all ages and interests based on their signs. (I didn't know anything about sun signs in those early years, and now that I think about it, I have forgotten most of what I eventually did learn.) It didn't hurt, either (or at least not yet) that I had fallen for a Toronto astrologer (of whom mareseatoats later asked, "Mystic, or mistake?"), and what with the combined charts of his Leo/Cancer/Cancer and my Aries/Aries/Scorpio producing a bouncing Gemini/Pisces/Gemini ("Quadruplets!" I shouted), everything seemed in perfect alignment.
I shall leave that story for another day and instalment (there's only so much stomach-churning a person can abide in one afternoon), but I can say with certainty how buoyantly I left my shift at the knives and scissors counter at Eaton's Department Store and headed off twice a week for my class, dreaming of a life with my new boyfriend (who, unbeknownst to me, was producing all kinds of astrological babies all over town), the two of us living in a third floor walk-up in Cabbagetown (which was then merely Cabbagetown, and not the well-preserved heritage pocket it has since become).
What I have been able to do, which I think is rather astute if not exactly Scientific American material, is produce analyses of sun signs based on their relationship to words (i.e., in other words, the best and worst of how people write). I don't want to reveal here the full results of my hard work, as I am sure one day I will win great accolades for my current work-in-progress, Behind Every Great Wordsmith Is A Sun Sign Just Waiting To Leap Out, (or my alternate working title, When Your Solar Plexus Vexes), but I can give you a little taste so as to whet your zodiacal appetite, as it were (and is). Here are some of my findings. (I offer up the zenith and nadir of each):
Aries: dogmatic/passionate
Taurus: imperious/judicious
Cancer: prurient/energetic
Gemini: ponderous/humorous
Leo: vain/vibrant
Virgo: disparaging/innocent
Libra: acerbic/benevolent
Scorpio: stinging/sweet
Sagittarius: callous/joyful
Capricorn: cruel/loving
Aquarius: bombastic/witty
Pisces: covetous/intelligent
Anyway, the subject of astrology came up last night, and I was taken back (in my head) to a time in Prince Edward Island when a day or so before my twenty-fifth birthday I had to have a laparoscopy. How surprised was I, then, to come home from day surgery and discover that my husband had arranged a special birthday party for me. At least twenty people were crammed into the tiny living room of our thin-walled turquoise house out on the old Cottontown Road, and apart from the bubbling abdominal gas, I sat almost comfortably in my chair, having a splendid time. Someone —I think my boss's daughter, who was likely the only person there who could afford one—gave me a pink-flowered Keepsake Azalea (which I wasn't able to keep very long, given my, as you would have expected, botanical challenges), and Michael M. sat in the corner in his grey and burgundy Velcro shirt and khaki pants, being especially funny, and funnier, as he drank down his bottle of Jack Daniels.
About mid-way through the party I went to the bathroom. As I sat on the toilet, I thought I ought to look down and make sure nothing untoward was coming from me, given that I had just had surgery in my tender bits area. How shocked was I to discover great swirls of steam rising from the toilet bowl? I stood up, hanging on to the wall to regain my balance, terrified. I came out into the living room, and asked an acquaintance named Crystal (whose last name —no lie—was Cross, as in Criss Cross) if she would come into the kitchen for a little minute. (I thought it easier to break the news and therefore remain calm in the presence of someone I did not know well.) I told her I had a medical emergency, and I asked her if she could spirit me over the bridge to the old Charlottetown Hospital. We conspired briefly and, telling everyone we were off on a cigarette run, we dashed as fast as her 1962 Mustang would take us.
Fortunately the waiting room was not busy, and I was whisked in fairly quickly because I had just had that laparoscopy. The doctor had me hop up on the gurney, and he asked me what my trouble seemed to be. I told him, as calmly as I could, "Spontaneous combustion." He said, "What?" I said again, "Spontaneous combustion." "How do you think that is possible?" he asked. "Doctor, I do read," I said. "I might not have a scientific mind, but I know what steam coming from my vagina means. Furthermore, I have two young children, and it is my birthday, and if you want me to live to see another one—if you want my children to know their mother—I think you ought to get on this right away."
"I'll tell you what," he said. "There's a woman down the hall who believes that whenever there's a full moon, as there is tonight, she grows hair on her chest and her feet, and becomes a werewolf. We are just now waiting for an ambulance to come and take her off to Unit Nine. If you would like to go with her, I will make arrangements. If, on the other hand, you would like to go home and enjoy your birthday, you have (here he looked at his watch. A person never forgets these things) ten seconds to leave my hospital. Before you make your decision, I would like to fill you in on one small detail: when warm urine hits a cold toilet bowl—and tonight is a chilly enough night after all—it produces steam."
Who knew?
I left.
The only memories I have about the rest of the night are that Crystal and I bought cigarettes on the way back home; I told no one about the incident for at least a dozen years, and, later that night, when Paul offered Michael a peanut butter and clam sandwich, Michael projectile vomited across the entire living room and all over my Keepsake Azalea.
I'm just burning doin' the neutron dance
I'm just burning doin' the neutron dance
<:^)
[Archived] Thursday, August 13
Posted by Jennifer Coffey at 11:41 PM
Labels: Personals
