Misadventures of an (Almost) Average Canadian

By Evelyn Grey

Ms. Grey relates her memories to share the many twists and turns of a life’s journey. Everyone has at least one good story in them, a unique voice waiting to be heard. Collected within these pages are not one but many good stories filled with fun, embarrassment, love, fear, joy, and pain. Though the details are individual and personal, the highs, lows, and in-betweens are highly relatable as we all travel such myriad paths in our lives. Far from generic, these tales are often full of raw, poignant emotion and are balanced out by an underlying tongue-in-cheek humor that is sure to delight readers with laugh-out-loud misadventures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jun 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781982229979

Evelyn Grey

It is often said to write about what you know, as this is where the strength of any story — and storyteller lies. Truer words could not be written about this author’s work as she recalls memories, experiences and adventures down the winding road called ‘life’. All of Ms. Grey’s stories are related in an honest, open voice; to read them is to get an insight into her inner person, but more importantly into the inner person of oneself. In her opinion, Ms. Grey’s qualification as a storyteller is that she is extraordinarily ordinary in every way, growing up in a conventional way, with thoroughly standard looks, intelligence and skills. Her most notable achievement to date has been to stay unmemorable and unremarkable in all aspects of her life as she moves around the country, working whatever jobs come to hand for survival, and possibly…accidentally… becoming a very relatable icon of Canadian averageness.

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Copyright © 2019 Evelyn Grey.

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ISBN: 978-1-9822-2998-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-2997-9 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 06/20/2019

CONTENTS

Grandmother’s Garden

Childhood Dream

1980s Memories

Felonious Feline

A Maple Leaf in the Lone Star State

Battle of the Bugs

The Cacti Connection

A National Mockery

Civic Duty

Accidental Asian Star

Getting over It

I Like You Better on TV

Prairie Summer

Eddie’s Needles

Rough Ride

Call the Authorities!

Summer Romance

15-Minute Convict

A Ducky Day

More Than I Wanted to See

Trial Mockery

Basic Nonsense

More Basic Nonsense

Beam Me up, Scotty (There’s No Logical Life down Here)

Turtle Power

Ups and Downs

A Journey of Less

Hot Wax versus the Sasquatch

Be Careful What You Wish For

This is dedicated to my wonderful grandparents for their constant love, encouragement and support—and endless nagging for me to do something with my writing.

GRANDMOTHER’S GARDEN

T he best of my childhood memories revolve around spending part of summer at my grandparents’ house. My grandfather, though a hardworking, good person, was a hulk of a man with a deep, booming voice, who frightened me as a kid. My grandmother was a soft-spoken, even-tempered, tiny woman and possibly the world’s best babysitter. Their brown one-story house was situated in a quiet, gated community. It featured winding roads that were fun to cycle on and led to goose-populated lakes and parks, sandy and rocky beaches and wide swaths of blackberry bushes. I was always there with my older sister and sometimes got to visit with cousins who lived nearby. A rare treat could include a drive to the nearby roller rink or waterpark on a hot afternoon. It was a childhood paradise!

There was always an adventure to be had. On the nearer sandy beach, the water was shallow. At low tide, it felt like I could walk for a mile on the sand, chasing baby crabs and searching for the most perfect shell to add to my collection. The farther beach required adult supervision due to the rougher, deeper water, but it was bordered by huge logs and rocks that made a fantastic driftwood fort. When I had the chance, I spent hours hauling chunks of wood over to boulders to make rock and wood caves to crawl through, like some beach dweller creating an entire home of interconnected, ultra-rustic rooms.

Even around the house, there was entertainment to be had. I never did learn how to properly play dominoes, but I spent afternoons creating elaborate setups of rows of dominoes across every surface I could get away with, just to have the pleasure of watching them rhythmically topple in a preordained pattern.

And then there was my grandmother’s closet! At the time she belonged to some star organization—I could never remember its full name or purpose. I think it had a lodge or religious affiliation and involved volunteer work and singing. But more important to my young girly self, it required wearing nice outfits. My grandmother had a little girl’s dream of dress-up clothes—all kinds of fancy-looking dresses, cute little hats, a drawer full of various dainty gloves, pretty shoes and lots of large, sparkling costume jewellery. Since she was a petite woman, I could fit into her dressy clothes with a bit of creative belting.

My sister and I spent our best afternoons at home donning Grandma’s finery while having our afternoon tea and cookies, pretending we were old-fashioned English ladies with our invented version of genteel etiquette.

Our clever grandma could even find ways for little kids to make themselves useful in her glorious garden, which surrounded the house in two layers. Flowering bushes went right up around the house. A wide path of grass encircled the house, and another border lined the edge of the property of trees and bushes.

If we were too noisy inside, our grandma handed us each a salt shaker with orders to hunt the slugs that would otherwise feast on and damage her roses. There was a strange, icky pleasure in finding the giant banana slugs, flipping them belly up to sprinkle salt on their undersides, and watching their bodies hiss, bubble and shrivel up. Then there was the balancing act of using two sticks to carry them to the nearby ditch, saying, Eeewww the whole time while making dramatic, contorted faces and pretending to be grossed out. Unless, of course, I was feeling naughty and wanted to bug my sister. Then I’d use my bare hands to touch the giant slugs and attempt to touch and slime her. Most games of impromptu tag started out as failed attempts at sliming. In my defence, my sister was older and faster than I was and taught me how to behave this way in the first place.

I remember the lush textures and smells of the garden, the riot of colour and the bold hummingbirds and monarch butterflies that fluttered around my grandmother’s head but shied away from me. Even the giant fuzzy bees loved her. I never once knew of her getting stung as she worked her magic among them.

There was an occasional wandering deer, a family of racoons, even baby skunks that were ever so cute, but the mum must never be alarmed, or you’d better run for it! That was a lesson my grandpa’s king German shepherd, Max, learned the hard way. He spent a week chained in the far corner of the yard for snarling at the wrong critter hiding in the bush. That’s a smell I’ll never forget!

Max was such an enormous dog, I could ride him like a pony. He carried huge broken tree branches around, not in the normal doggy fashion but held by the end, sticking straight out from his toothy jaws like a three-foot-long cigar. And tug of war with him took both me and my sister on the end of the rope, and half the time he still dragged us around the yard like squealing rag dolls!

There were birds aplenty, the most memorable being the tiny dark sparrows making their half-bowl-shaped mud homes under the eaves. Being brown on brown, it was hard to see them, but if we listened carefully, we could follow the peeping sound of the baby birds to find them. Mustn’t get too close, though, as the protective parents would screech and dive bomb our faces in the most unnerving manner until we moved off.

My grandmother still holds the greatest piece of my heart. She didn’t just teach me baking, sewing, good manners and kindness to plants and animals; she taught me the most important of life’s lessons: how to give and receive love. She nurtured my creative spirit like my soul was her rose garden, planting hope there and tending to it so it could grow, even when life gave me drought and rocky ground. The roots of my grandmother’s love went deep, and her grace and kindness have always survived within me.

CHILDHOOD DREAM

I ’ve heard people say childhood was the best time of their lives and they wish they could do it again. But with strict, religious parents, my childhood is not something I would want to relive. However, the years I spent growing up on a small farm in Alberta had some perks.

We grew hay and alfalfa and made extra money boarding horses. While shovelling poop was an unpleasant chore, everything else about caring for our charges was enjoyable. Eventually, after proving myself with a year of hard labour, I earned my very own pony. True to form, I wasn’t allowed to pick my own; my dad simply bought whatever animal was nearest and cheapest. It was a recently captured, barely trained, ill-tempered beast, which is likely why my dad got a good deal. No one else wanted their kid on something more interested in injuring the child than working with her. I wouldn’t have been surprised had I found out he had been returned a couple times.

But he was beautiful. Aside from being a bit chubby, he was nicely proportioned. His coat had random patches of white, coppery red/brown, dark chestnut-brown and some black. His mane and tail were long and flowing, white where his coat was white, and black where his coat was coloured. He had a silken pink nose and eyes as dark blue as the distant mountains he always gazed toward. It was this tendency to sometimes stand apart from the other horses, pressed against the fence and staring off into the distance, that inspired his name: Daydreamer. I imagined he yearned for his herd, home and freedom as he stared with poignant longing over the fields.

I too sought solitude and longed for escape. I dreamed of growing up, tying my belongings to my saddle and riding away to the wild forests of the Rocky Mountains. I thought I had found a kindred spirit in my pony. Pity he didn’t feel the same way.

While Daydreamer enjoyed running the large back field on our farm and the company of the other horses, he was very slow to warm to me. He didn’t like the saddle, didn’t like the bit and sure as hell didn’t want some little brat on his back, trying to tell him what to do. While not outright rebellious enough to kick me or buck me off (I think he was just too lazy to bother), he was chockful of nasty tricks. If I stood too close and turned my back, he bit my butt! When I tried to brush him or put on his tack, he shifted his foot to step on mine. He put enough weight on it so I was trapped, and he wouldn’t move no matter if I shoved, yelled or slapped his rump. Usually, I resorted to pulling up on the longer hair near his heel, relieving the pressure enough to yank my foot out of my boot in order to get free. I wish I’d known back then about steel-toed work boots. I could have used a pair!

While carrying me, he would suddenly sidestep and bash my knee or pinch my leg against trees or fence posts to try to dislodge me. Or my favourite stunt, a random dead stop from a fast trot with his head lowered, so I’d slide down his neck. I quickly developed strong leg muscles and a keen sense of balance in the saddle out of sheer desperate need.

And boy, did that pony get me into trouble. He was as clever as a raccoon and taught himself how to open gates, paddock doors and even the tack room. With his