July 27–28, 2002 — Show your age

I stumbled to the train station on three hours sleep to meet up with Jeff, Wayne, and Paul. We were taking the train to Oshawa, and then driving to Ottawa from there.

The station was swarming with World Youth Day backpacks. We all had backpacks and sleeping bags, so we looked like WYD pilgrims, too. Someone tried to give Jeff a religious newspaper, but he said that he was down with the devil and didn’t take it. No one bothered us after that; word travels fast.

The drive to Ottawa didn’t seem to take very long. We stopped at a service station after a couple of hours, and I won a replay at pinball. I decided that regardless of what happened in Ottawa, it had been worth the trip.

I went off on my own once we arrived in Ottawa, catching a bus to my dad’s office, noticing that bus fare was twenty-five cents more than when I last visited Ottawa.

My dad met me at his office. I needed to print some button designs onto silver paper since I didn’t have access to a laser printer in Toronto. They were a complete success. With great-looking button designs and a pinball replay, this was turning into a trip to remember.

Then my dad drove me home. Not much has changed. My mom’s obsession with fish continues to take over the house, with a fish-shaped toilet seat cover as the most notable addition since my last visit home. I ate cheese and crackers and remembered the days when I lived in a house with fully-stocked cupboards and not-from-concentrate juice in the fridge. Just when I was starting to forget that there is more to life than fifty-cent cans of concentrated juice and eating grilled cheese sandwiches almost every day...

We went out for a family dinner at Boston Pizza. Everything tasted better because I knew I wasn’t expected to pay for it. And because the prices were all well out of my own food budget.

After dinner, I talked to my sister for awhile while she made jewelry. She made fun of me for my scrawniness. I weighed myself, but I don’t think I’ve lost any weight; I can’t really remember what I weighed the last time I was at home. My sister found a chart in one of my dad’s medical books that showed that I was underweight for my height, though, and I sat through the normal lectures about not starving myself to death.

Then my sister drove me to Nathan’s house so that he could drive me to and from the Cuff the Duke show that night.

I tried to fix Nathan’s computer, but I get the feeling that it’s too far gone for me to really do all that much at this point. I just tidied things up a little. Nathan gave me an ice cream sandwich with chocolate ice cream in the middle for my efforts before we left for downtown.

The show was a lot of fun. The crowd really seemed to get into things after a few songs, and Nathan took a lot of pictures. After the show, I arranged a meeting time for the next day and went back to Richmond for the night.

The next day my dad drove me to the apartment where everyone else spent the night. He also donated a case of beer to the band and a dozen bagels for us to have for breakfast. Jeff drew lewd drawings on the apartment balcony in chalk. Then, eventually, we made our way to the van and started the trip home.

I managed to navigate to the highway, and we made it more or less without incident. Brad was driving and became very excited when he spotted a groundhog on the side of the road. I wondered to myself if Oshawa might have fewer groundhogs than Ottawa.

We stopped at a gas station. I bought chocolate milkshakes advertised as tasting like chocolate bars and, after drinking them, felt a bit sick for the rest of the day. But they were very good. Then we stopped in Gananoque for lunch. We would have gone swimming, but the water was on private property. I couldn’t have swam anyway because swimming gives me ear infections, but it would have been nice to rest my feet in the water.

I slept for most of the trip to Oshawa in a position probably not recommended by seat-belt manufacturers.

We took the train from Oshawa to Toronto, again wishing that we didn’t look so much like World Youth Day participants. It occurred to me that there probably isn’t much better a sign that I’ve let the whole “Catholicism” thing slip a bit than the fact that I skipped the Papal mass in Toronto to see Cuff the Duke play in Ottawa.

It just remains to be seen how many years in purgatory this weekend has earned me.