The Cutting Board - Happened in Spring 1987

Occasionally, but not often, my parents would attempt to pair me off with the child of a work colleague in an attempt to jump start a friendship. Occasionally, we’d hit it off, but most of the time, these pairings were somewhat contrived, as the only thing we had in common most of the time was our age, and the fact that our parents knew each other.

Sometime around February or March 1987, my father says that one of his colleagues has a son around my age that he thinks I would get along with named David, and asks I would like to spend an afternoon with him and if all goes well a possible sleepover. Dave lived on the Hong Kong Island in a place called the mid-levels. The mid-levels were a large concentration of apartment buildings just outside the Central Business District. It was where many of the ex-pats living on the Island stayed. If they were very rich, they could live in the residential area of the Peak, which was the mountainous area of the Island.

So it was decided that I would meet him on a Saturday morning. I bought my British stamp album with me as I had planned to go to my stamp dealer at Silvercoard Shopping Centre in Kowloon to buy some more 1960’s commemoratives, which was what I had been working on.  I waited at the entrance to the Star Ferry on the Island side for David to arrive. After a while, a tall, slender guy with dark, straight hair approached me and asked me if I was Chris. I indicated that I was and he introduced himself as David. We immediately hit it off and began talking about anything and everything. I explained that I wanted to go to get stamps and he seemed interested in the concept of collecting these little pieces of paper. He accompanied me there and then we spent a bit of time hanging around in Kowloon before he suggested that we head over to his place.

We headed over to his place on the Island, which was on the 19^th floor and arrived shortly after lunch. I met his parents, both very nice people, Richard and Sue I believe their names were. Richard was David’s actual biological father, while Sue was his stepmother. Dad and Richard worked together in the Marketing department of what was then City Polytechnic of Hong Kong. After a nice lunch, we offered to help with the dishes and just before this Richard and Sue had asked me if I wanted to sleep over, to which I said “yes” very enthusiastically.

At this point, I need to digress and explain how many apartment kitchens in Hong Kong are laid out. Usually, you walk in and to your right, you will have the fridge, the gas stove and most of the cupboards, while to the left will be the sink and hot water heater. Hot water was usually provided by way of wall-mounted, flueless gas heaters, which required you to have a window open in order to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning. Consequently, the windows to the kitchen would usually be located on the same wall as the sink and usually at sink level. Most kitchens in Hong Kong did not have a lot of counter space. Instead, people would usually place a portable butcher block counter unit at the end of the kitchen and at the very end would usually be a doorway, which would either be the pantry or the Amah’s (nanny’s) quarters.  Kitchens did not have dishwashers, with everything usually being done by hand.

Dave’s parents kitchen was no different from this. On the drainboard sat a white wire dish rack, which was directly across from the open window. I elected to wash, while David elected to dry. I began to wash the dishes and place them in the rack. One of the items I had to wash was a solid walnut wooden cutting board that must have weighed at least 10 pounds. It was about 9 inches by 15 inches and 2 or three inches thick. It was massive. I washed it and placed it in the rack, and continued washing more dishes. David was grabbing the plates and not the cutting board, which was lying on the side of the dish rack closest to the window. After grabbing 2 or 3 plates and putting them away, he went to reach for the fourth plate.

All of the sudden the weight of the cutting board was greater than the counter weight of the dishes on the side closest to me. Before we could do or say anything the dishrack flipped backward from the weight of the cutting board toward the open window. The cutting board slid out from the dishrack and through the open window, falling 19 floors to the bottom of the building. The whole thing seemed to happen in slow motion as we both watched in amazement. We felt  powerless to stop it from happening. We could hear voices below and we were horrified! I leaned over and looked out the window, watching the cutting board fall toward a group of Filipino nannies that had gathered in the courtyard below. The cutting board reached the ground and smashed into a dozen pieces with a loud bang. From what I could see, nobody was hit, but I was just terrified to go down there and face the adults. Especially I knew we had just broken the law. I knew that we were going to get yelled at by a lot of adults at the very least. I muttered something about finishing my O-levels from jail, and proceeded downstairs with David to face the music.

But when we got down there, people were completely chill. We walked up to the group of nannies and adults and asked to speak with someone who was the lead adult if you will. A dark haired white man with a mustache stepped forward and we profusely apologized for what had just happened and asked if anyone was hurt. He had said no, that people had heard it fall and moved out of the way. He assured us that accidents happen and not to feel bad at all. I had to pinch myself to ensure that I wasn’t dreaming.

After that followed one of the best sleepovers in living memory. We played board games and I got to watch both of the Airplane movies for the first time. I laughed so hard during Airplane that at one point, while drinking an orange pop, mid-sip, I burst out laughing and sprayed pop everywhere. We all hung out in the living room and then eventually went to bed. I awoke to a really nice breakfast, made by Sue. Eventually I went on my way asking for David’s phone number, which I obtained.

Sadly though, I would never see David again. I cannot remember exactly why, but I think Richard and Sue left Hong Kong shortly afterward, taking David with them.

The Snowball - Christmas 1980

When I was 8 my family moved from Kelowna BC to the married residence at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby BC, which is just outside Vancouver – about 350km west of Kelowna, which is in the interior of BC. The married residence was called Louis Riel House – a large multi-level concrete slab apartment building that was built into the hillside. I had never seen a building like this before where I could be on the 3^rd floor at the top of the hill where this was the ground floor, or I could be on the first floor at the bottom of the hill, and it would still be the ground floor. We lived on the top floor – the 8^th floor. It was a great place to make fiends as there were other children in virtually every single apartment in the building. I had made friends with three boys in my first few months there: Alex who lived on the fourth floor, Adam who lived on the third and Ruben who lived on the 5^th.

Alex and Adam were both troublemaker types. Alex was the son of a single mother and when I first met him he was a bit of a bully towards me, but over time he softened up and we actually were able to play together. Adam and I were in the same class, and he was the sort of kid who was always pushing the envelope.  I remember one time in music class when Mrs. Earle had us singing songs and Adam was changing the lyrics into sexual or bathroom phrases and singing those instead. He was caught of course, when Mrs. Earle abruptly stopped the music and singing mid song and Adam didn’t notice and kept singing. He didn’t actually get into trouble for it but was given a very stern talking to.  Ruben was more my type – mild mannered and easy going. We spent the most time together out of the three.

As I have alluded to in other stories, the main thing to do around campus was explore. Apart from the university campus itself, which was absolutely humongous from the perception of 9 year old boys, the entire university was surrounded by forest on Burnaby Mountain. These woods were almost completely unspoiled. There were some trails to explore, which led to old overgrown playgrounds in more than one area. One of our favourite activities was scrounging construction debris and building tree forts in the woods, which we managed to do more than once.  

Despite this, there were times, especially in winter, where we ran out of things to do to amuse ourselves. Now I should mention at this point that the roof of Louis Riel House was fully accessible to anybody and could be reached by a series of external concrete stairwells on the sides of the building. I highly doubt now that it is accessible, as I cannot imagine the university being willing to risk liability for people going over the edge of the building. But like I said, my childhood represented a different time. The roof was an awesome place – flat, and covered with wooden decking and railings around the side. The view from the roof was incredible and we often liked to go and run around the roof playing tag or hide and seek, as the HVAC vents and intake vents provided lots of hiding spots. Other times, we liked to just look out and see the view or look down, as at the highest point; the roof was a good 80-90 feet up, which was insanely high to us.

One winter afternoon the four of us were playing on the lawns in the snow when we started rolling a small snow ball in the snow. Much to our amazement, it began to grow. The more we rolled, the larger it got, until we eventually had a snow boulder larger than the base of any snowman we’d seen and that was taller than we were.  After we’d made it we were stumped about what to do with it. Then suddenly Alex gets a mischievous smile and says “let’s take it up to the roof and drop it off”.  The other three of us were like “naaah. How would we ever get it up there? This thing must weigh a ton.” But Alex did not let it go so easily. He told us to try and lift it with all four of us trying. Surprisingly, the four of us were able to lift this giant snow boulder – not high off the ground, but certainly enough to get it up the stairs on the outside of the building. So we carefully rolled it over to the stairwell, making it even larger in the process. When we got there we lifted it with all our strength and began to carry it up the stairs. Fortunately for us there was a landing and a corridor on each floor that led to the other side of the building where the stairs continued, so that with each floor we were able to rest and recoup our strength as we rolled the snowball along the corridor. Eventually with much effort, we got it up to the roof on the 9^th floor.

We rolled it over to the edge near the front of the building. We looked down. There were two walkways that led up to the entrance to the building and both appeared to be empty, though we could not be completely sure in the case of the walkway to the right, as there was a large hill at the front of the building to the right of the entrance that hid most of this walkway. We waited a few minutes. Still nobody.  Alex then motioned us to life the snowball, which we did. Then it was one-two-three- heave!, we tipped it over the edge and just as we did so a bald bespectacled man emerged from the right walkway. We yelled out and he stopped and looked up. Just as he did so the snow boulder hit the ground and exploded, sending snow outward at what must have been a 10 foot radius. It had landed to the left of the entrance to the building. He angrily shouted: “Hey! That wasn’t cool!”. But other than that he did nothing except enter the building.

To this day I am surprised that he didn’t come after us, given the immense danger that we had placed him and anybody else who came toward the building in. Of course at 9 we were too young to understand the concept of momentum and therefore had no idea that we actually could have killed someone that day. This would not be the only time I would nearly kill someone. The next time will form the basis for another story: The Cutting Board. 

Stamps - Early Spring 1978

These little pieces of paper that we use to send mail became my first love for reasons that I have never been able to fully comprehend. However, it is a common trait for those of us on the autistic spectrum to fixate on a particular interest and to obsess over it. The interest is usually something inanimate. For some it can be model trains, bottle caps or stamps like me. Sometimes the obsession is with a human innovation or development like the world’s subway systems. And then sometimes it can be an obsession with other living creatures like insects, dogs, cats or birds. Unlike neurotypicals who are often interested in other neurotypicals, other people are not something we usually obsess over, except for those close to us. It is not that we don’t like or enjoy the company of other people – we do – very much. It’s just that we can become over-stimulated after a while and need some time to ourselves. In that respect we are very much like cats. I think that most people do not understand cats at all. Many think that cats do not love and are aloof and detached. I beg to differ though after raising my male cat Viktor from the time he was a kitten. I think cats have very deep emotions and love their owners deeply. But I have noticed that if you pet them too much or hold them too tight, they become overstimulated and need to get away. But there are so many times that Viktor seeks me out and wants to be with us, that I can see that he cares for us deeply. It’s just on his own terms. And so it is with those of us who are on the spectrum.

As my stories so far illustrate, I was a handful for my parents. I was always curious, easily bored and always needed to have something to do or collect. By the time I turned 6, mom was getting really tired of having to throw out all the crap I had accumulated in my room, and then having to deal with my epic meltdowns that would inevitably follow. Little did they know that soon, I would be consumed in by a world that left far less of a mess and was much easier to manage. They were about to know a different Chris from the one who bounded around the house and bounced off the walls – a Chris who would sit for hours fully engrossed, never making a sound.

My mom and dad had a large rosewood dresser in their bedroom. On top of that dresser sat my mother’s jewelry box, and beside that sat a large dish in which she kept various things like pocket change. One day, while I was in her room and standing by the dresser I was greeted by a sight that fascinated me: staring back at me was an orange portrait of Sir John A MacDonald, who I would later learn was Canada’s  first Prime Minister and next him was a green portrait of Wilfred Laurier. These pictures, were on some then current Canadian 1 cent and 2 cent stamps. The year that I saw these was 1978.

         

I was captivated by the engraving and the artistry inherent in the late David Annisley’s sketches. To me they were beautiful works of art. I would soon learn that these two stamps were only part of a set that included sketches of the other prime ministers of Canada, all in different colours. I wanted to have them all and to see all the neat colours. My interest in collecting stamps had begun. There was something about the thrill of the hunt – going through bags of stamps on paper trying to see how many different stamps there were and looking at all the different designs and colours that would occupy me for hours. That thrill has never left me.

My first foray into this fascinating hobby was with a little plastic sack of stamps on paper and a paper back world stamp album that I bought at Coles bookstore with my parents shortly after I found those stamps on my parents dresser. Shortly after that, I celebrated my 7^th birthday and for my present, my parents gave me a Harris Canada album. It was a big sturdy printed album housed in a two post vinyl binder that had spaces for every stamp ever issued by Canada up to that point. Then we went to Coles and bought a large pack of 100 different Canadian stamps and some hinges. I had hours of fun taking each stamp, placing a hinge on the back and then looking for the matching picture in the album. Eventually as I ran out of stamps to place, I gravitated to the local stamp shop in Kelowna, which was run by a Mr. Millpacher, a stocky man with a large beard and a nice wife, who was happy to give me the missing 3 cent Borden and 4c McKenzie King stamps from that first prime minister’s set for free. Every week, I would take my $2 weekly allowance and ride my bike down to the stamp shop – a good hour away by bike. The shop was located in a small strip mall that had a Dairy Queen. In those days, Dairy Queen hamburgers were the best – juicy and charbroiled, not the filler laced dry excuses for burgers that they are today. For my $2 allowance, I could have a small burger and a drink and then head over to the stamp shop where Mr. Millpacher had a 2c box. I would have enough money left over to pick 25 stamps out of his 2c box. This was my weekly routine until we moved from Kelowna when I was 8.

Whenever we would move to a new city, my first order of business was to locate and visit the nearest stamp shop. I was always successful in finding one. However, most did not have a 2c box and by the time I was in my teens, I had a larger allowance to work with, but I also had other concerns that competed for my money, mainly my desire to be accepted by girls. Despite these competing demands, I never lost my love of stamps and I never stopped collecting.  Not long after I started collecting, I would dream of becoming a stamp dealer. It was a dream that would fall by the wayside in my teens and would be briefly revived again when I turned 18, before falling back into obscurity until just this year.

I will never fully understand why stamps hold such appeal for me. Sure, I can say that it is because I love the artistry and the colours, but that doesn’t really cut it when it comes to understanding how I can love something so completely that I cannot be happy without it in my life. There comes a point though where I believe that we can accept ourselves as we get older without having to fully understand every force that drives us. That is the point where I am at now: I accept my love for stamps unconditionally and seek to have my life center in sharing the magnificence of this hobby with the rest of humanity. I owe everything that I am today to these wonderful paper objects: my knowledge of the world – its places, its people and its cultures comes almost exclusively from stamps. If I didn’t directly learn about it from stamps because I saw it on a stamp, then I was inspired to go look it up because of what I saw on a stamp. 

Postscript to the Last Several Stories

The last group of stories have touched on several aspects of life on the spectrum, which include a desire to attain some control over my environment by collecting things and possessing them. Chris's Crap illustrates how this took hold. I thought that I could find a use for each and every thing that I took home. My imagination was such that I could always see a possible use for something no matter what it was. I know now that this wasn't normal, and it set the stage and prepared me to eventually develop the desire to collect and study postage stamps. This story also touches on the relationships that I formed with many, many older men over the years. There would be many more - neighbours, teachers, friends of my parents and parents of friends.There are some that were so influential to me that they will feature in other stories.

One thing that his group of stories along with the other stories does illustrate is how different parenting styles were back then. It was the age before over-protective helicopter parenting became the norm. It would be tempting to think that there were no helicopter parents back in the 1970's, but that would be wrong. They definitely did exist, but they were so rare that when a kid had them, it was very obvious to everyone in class or their circle of friends and they became the subject of ridicule. This would be along the lines of kids talking to one another like this:

Kid 1: "Hey let's go ride our bikes down to the vacant field. We can dig some holes and build some dirt ramps and do wheelies"

Kid 2: "But I am not allowed to go to the field without my parents."

Kid 3: "Yeah Justin, your parents don't let you do anything. I'll bet they don't let you go to the bathroom by yourself either do they? Hey John, Justin's mom still wipes his bum!! Ha! Ha!"

Justin: "Stooopp!! (running off)

My second ex-wife Kay was often astounded at just how often I was allowed to go off exploring or wandering off alone when I was a kid. To read my stories in the light of what is considered a normal level of due care and caution it sounds like I had little structure. Again, that is not true. We had rules. Not to talking  to strangers was one. A stranger was anyone my parents either did not know, or had no recourse against if something did happen. Adults in the neighbourhood were fair game for this reason alone, and were not considered to be strangers in the strictest sense. The random dude in the park wandering around picking up butts off the ground and drinking from a beer can? Not so much. Like most kids, I occasionally broke the rules. Another one was that we had to tell mom and dad where we were going and give them an address and a telephone number so they would know how to reach us. I do not believe that in nearly 17 years of living at home that they ever used this information, as the stories reveal, but they very well could have, and we knew that.  I believe that having that much independence and responsibility was critical to my development.

The Chris's Crap story also illustrates how gullible I was at that age, to believe what the guy told me about the chainsaw, but then at the same time, I asked him about dying without understanding what I was asking him. I did so because I had seen other people ask this question when someone was hurt on TV and so it seemed appropriate to me. Of course the man could see that I had no idea what death was by the sheer ridiculousness of the question, so he decided to have some fun, but was completely unprepared for my response, which was not appropriate, given his answer.

Swimming Alone illustrates tunnel-vision-like focus that sometimes causes me to block everything out except what I am focusing on to the point that I can fail to notice what is going on around me. This is often accompanied by a stubbornness. In this story I just had to know what that tap on the toilet did, even though dad said not to touch it. I disregarded this because I could not see how it would lead to something bad happening. But even when something bad did actually happen, I never realized it and actually played in the water, completely oblivious to the damage the water was doing. I suspect even at that young age, that most kids probably would have gotten a parent right away as soon as they noticed water where there wouldn't normally be any.

Curiosity is normal in kids, but Eat a Peck takes it to extremes - extremes that I never did see in my son, or any of his friends while he was growing up. So I suspect that it wasn't entirely normal to be curious enough to almost eat dog shit.

The Interview illustrates a situation where I should have been able to take cues from those around me to judge how I should behave and how completely I failed to do this. When the wine came there was certainly nothing wrong with having one glass - like everyone else. When other people said "oh this is too sweet for me. One is enough." it is possible that one or two of the guys were actually expressing their opinion and really did think the wine was too sweet. But what is much more likely is that everyone could see that the guy whose wine it was really liked it and they really didn't want to drink all his good wine and leave him with none. So they tried a bit, and politely declined to have more. I took what I heard literally and assumed that people were not having more because they didn't like it. The guy offered it, and I liked it. So I could see no good reason to stop drinking it. This is one example of a social faux-pas that I took many years to understand and overcome. It took a lot of work for me to get to the point where I could internalize that what people say is often not what they really mean and it is because they are trying to protect the feelings of the other person. In this case, if people showed the guy that they liked his wine it would be uncomfortable for him to accept it back. BUT if they could convince him that while it was nice, it was not their thing it would be much, much easier to convince him to take it back. Other subsequent stories will show just how long it took for me to understand this important social rule.

I'm not sure how much the Jumbo Sundae illustrates the spectrum - perhaps  in terms of how terrified I was of swimming between the ages of 4 and 8. I liked it because I think most people can relate to a simple story of how to teach a child not to be greedy, 

Chris's Crap - Several Months of 1976

Another logical aspect to my insatiable curiosity that was to become my trademark, was my penchant for collecting things – anything at all. It didn’t matter what it was – old car parts, lawnmower parts, broken down kitchen stuff. Whatever junk you can possibly conceive of, I wanted to collect it. Even the junk mail was heavily coveted by me as well. I called the junk mail “tickets”. So every day around dinner time after dad got home, I would eagerly ask him if he had any “tickets” for me. I shudder to think what must have gone through his head some nights: “Do I lie and just throw this junk out? Or do I let him add it to the growing mess in his room?”. I think most of the time he opted to be a good sport and truthfully gave me the mail. I can even remember a time when I spent 4 days in an oxygen tent because a violent allergic reaction to my brother’s dog Seamus had stopped my breathing. I vividly remember my excitement when dad appeared beside my hospital bed with my haul of tickets. Back then there was a lot more junk mail than there is today, as it was not considered to be the nuisance that people view it as now. I’m always amazed at the sensitivity people have to this sort of thing today and I’m even more amazed that there are laws to shield people from intrusive marketing, because I can assure you that no such thing existed in the early 1970’s. But I digress.

In addition to the “tickets”, one of my favourite things to do was to make friends with every old married man in the neighbourhood. They were so cool because almost all of them owned huge amounts of tools, had workshops and they all liked to work on their own cars and do their own repairs on their homes. Most of them were happy to have the company of an inquisitive little boy asking them a million questions and drinking from their fountains of wisdom. Of course this was before I knew anything so I actually DID listen.  Now, in middle age, I realize that part of this has to do with the fact that many of them had no children, theirs being long grown up and this was their chance to show off their knowledge and have a little company at the same time.  I loved it because they whenever these men were working on their cars or on a building project, there was ALWAYS a prize that I could take home at the end: an old car part, or a scrap piece of wood and what have you.

I remember one time when there was no prize, but I was intrigued by the man that I met. He lived about 6 doors down the street and on the day that I wandered over, he was cutting cherry trees on his property with a large chainsaw.  He was a tall rough looking, tanned man in his late 30's who wore a pair of light blue, grease stained jeans and one of those black and red checkered lumberjack flannel shirts that nearly every construction worker in the 1970’s wore. His rough, red chiselled face was framed neatly by his long, black, straight hair that he kept in a ponytail. He welcomed me and said it was fine for me to watch what he was doing. I watched mesmerized as he cut one tree after another, as a cigarette dangled from his mouth as he cut. Eventually it was time for him to refuel the chain saw. Of course, I did not understand any of this and he knew that. He happily took the opportunity to pull both my legs – hard.

He put down the chainsaw and walked over to his large red International Harvester pickup truck and grabbed a large red Jerry can with one of those long yellow nozzles out of the back of the truck. He unscrewed the gasoline cap and filled the chainsaw tank before going back to the truck to retrieve a much smaller can. He unscrewed another cap on the other side of the chainsaw and poured the thick brownish liquid from the can into the saw, before replacing the caps and walking back to the truck. The chain saw had a gas cap with two holes in it to allow excess gasoline to escape if the pressure in the gas tank was too high, or if it was too full. The oil also dripped and ran down the back of the saw from its heavy use. So almost as soon as he filled the gas tank and put the cap back on, small spurts of gasoline started squirting from the gas cap. “Why is that stuff squirting out like that?” “See? It’s going pee-pee just like you do.” He said. Then he pointed to the back of the saw where the oil was dripping down and said “And this one’s going shit.”. I was unfazed – probably because I didn’t really understand what he meant. So I just remember nodding. Eventually he started up the saw again and began to cut the felled trees into logs. As he did so, at one point the saw slipped and he let out a loud “Fuck” as he stopped the saw. I saw him nursing what would have been a relatively minor flesh wound. But again, my little 4-year-old mind knew nothing about the severity or lack thereof when it came to injuries. “Are you going to die?” I asked very curiously. “Yeah, I think I’ll probably be dead by tonight.” he said in a very deadpan, matter-of-fact tone.  Again, not really understanding what death was, I said “Alright then. Thanks for letting me watch. See you later.” and off I went.  It was the first and only time I saw him actually. Oh my, I am just realizing…Nah, I’m sure he was fine.

My biggest source of prizes though would come from a nice old man who lived right across the street from us – Mr Davis must have been well into his late 60’s when I met him as he was long since retired and his children were all grown up with children of their own. His wife Dorothy was a lovely woman with a heart of gold. They were a devoutly Christian couple who had moved to Kelowna from Regina, and lived at the same house right up until they died I think. I don’t know when this was, but I did go for dinner with them shortly after I turned 18 and started going to university. They were still alive and well at that point, but that was in 1989 – 27 years ago.

The first house that we lived at in Kelowna had a large basement that was completely unfinished. Over a period of months, I had taken it over and had stored all my prized items down there. It became known to my relatives and family friends as Chris’s crap.  For months and months, I stored absolutely everything that you could possibly imagine down there that nobody would want. My mother, bless her soul tolerated this, but only barely. Eventually, the basement floor – about 450 square feet was completely covered about a foot deep in Chris’s crap. So one day, mom had had enough. She had dad take me out for ice cream so that I wouldn’t freak out while she did what she had to do.

I remember getting up the next morning and excitedly going down to the basement to play with my prized toys. I got about half way down the basement stairs when the sight of a completely bare basement floor stopped me dead in my tracks. I froze with complete and utter shock. The pain of loss was unbearable and sent me into an epic meldown: “maaaaahhhhhm what happened to all my toooyyyys????” I wailed in complete and utter disbelief. She came down the stairs and held me close to her and said “honey, we had to get rid of this stuff. It just wasn’t safe anymore. I know you are mad, and I really am sorry.”. That wasn’t good enough for my little aspie mind and sense of justice, so I believe I responded to her words by stamping my feet. It was the ONLY time I ever did that with my mother, because what followed was a spanking with a wooden spoon. I was allowed to use my words, but I was not ever allowed to stamp my feet.

In the years that followed I would go on to collect other things that didn’t cause my mother so much grief and would manage not to get them thrown out most of the time. Within 2 or three years of this incident I would discover one of the first and most lasting loves of my life: postage stamps.

Swimming Alone - Happened Sometime in 1974

Our family lived in Winnipeg for two years from 1973 to the end of 1974. At the end of 1974, we moved to Kelowna, BC where dad got a job teaching at Okanagan College. I think this move coincided with the failure of Transair, but I am not entirely sure.  The story I’m about to tell is the incident that prompted the move from the house in Winnipeg, or so I’m told.

Being insatiably curious and hyperactive, I kept to my own schedule, which, needless to say, was completely different from the remaining members of my family.  Usually, I would be up hours before everyone else and exploring the many nooks and crannies of the house and all the interesting things it had to offer, and there were so many things! Mom and dad had decided just a few weeks earlier to re-model the kitchen. To prepare for the renovation, they had just ordered custom kitchen cabinets of maple, back in the days before affordable Ikea kitchens. These cabinets had been delivered and were sitting in the rec room that was in the basement in preparation for their eventual installation. 

One evening I was in the bathroom with my dad taking my bath and getting ready for bed. As I was drying off and getting into my pajamas, a curious sight caught my eye: a little shiny metal tap just below the toilet. “Daddy, what is that?”, I asked. “That is a dangerous thing that we do not touch.” He said. “Why?” I asked. “Because bad things will happen.” was his full answer.  Now this was one aspect of the grown-ups around me that just frustrated me to no end – they didn’t make any sense. Obviously the tap was there for a reason and I had, JUST HAD to know what that was. It simply didn’t make sense to me that someone would build this house and put in a tap that no one could touch. So I decided that the next time I was alone in the bathroom, I was going to turn it to see what happened.

So the following Saturday morning, I woke up early and headed down to the basement and went into the small bathroom that was right next to the rec room. I walked up to the toilet and studied the tap carefully. I turned it counter- clockwise as far as it would go.  Nothing happened, which completely surprised me, because dad had said something bad would happen. I had to go, so I used the toilet quickly and then flushed. By now, I had forgotten about the tap, and walked away to go explore the kitchen cabinets. Little did I know that the toilet mechanism had become stuck and the water kept on flowing into the tank without stopping. As the tank overflowed, the water began to spill over onto the floor and within what must have been just a few minutes, the bathroom floor was covered. As the water began continued to flow, it began spreading from the bathroom into the hall and then finally reached the rec room, soaking the floor and slowly seeping into the new kitchen cabinets - thousands of 1974 dollars worth of cabinets.

This was another new experience for me as I normally had to go to the park with my parents to wade in a pool. This was just great! I could wade in the water to my hearts content while my parents slept upstairs. I sat in the gradually rising flood waters, splashing about happily. I particularly liked the fact that I didn’t have to wear those awful water wings while played.  Eventually I got bored and decided it was time for mom and dad to get up.

So I headed upstairs to mom and dad’s bedroom. When I got there I headed over to mom’s side of the bed and gently roused her. She stirred and with a gentle moan and stretch, she opened her eyes and got the shock of her life. “Why are you all wet Chrissy?? What have you been doing?” she asked puzzled. “I’ve been swimming mommy.”. “It’s too early for you to be going to the park darling, and you know you aren’t supposed to go there without your brother.” she said. “I wasn’t at the park mommy. I was in the basement!!” I exclaimed with great excitement, a huge grin escaping from my face. Her jaw just dropped and then within a few seconds she looked like she was going to cry.“Mommy, mommy, what’s wrong?”.

Eat a Peck - Sometime in 1973 or 1974

Around the same time, as I was dealing with my dislike of having to wear clothes, I was becoming fascinated with the world around me. I thought it was a particularly good idea to put things in my mouth to see how they would taste. This was another thing that seemed to freak the grown-ups out, again for reasons that I could not comprehend.

There was this one time that I went exploring in the garage and I discovered a large metal can that was very heavy. I was still able to carry it though. After much struggle, I managed to get the cap off. I was still way too young to notice the skull and crossbones on the can, much less comprehend what it meant. I wanted so badly to taste the liquid inside because it smelled so sweet. I managed to get the can up to my lips and with a tilt, the liquid came toward my waiting lips. At that precise moment the can was knocked out of my hand by my dad. “Joan! Call poison control! Chris has just tried to drink diesel fuel! There was absolute pandemonium as mom was frantically on the phone explaining to the person on the other end what I had just drank. Before she could finish what she had to say the paramedics had arrived. I was rushed to hospital and had my stomach pumped. It turns out of course that I had not actually managed to drink any diesel fuel that day, but had merely managed to get a trickle of it down the front of my jacket.

My curiosity was insatiable though and despite this close call, I would continue putting, or trying to put strange and exotic things in my mouth. Another close call involved a large dog in the park, who had stopped and deposited a large pile of excrement. I had never seen this before and again my little aspie brain thought it would be a good idea to sample it. So I casually walked up to the big, steaming pile, my eyes transfixed on it. I stopped just in front of it and stared at it for about 30 seconds or so, taking it all in. As I bent down, another man who was in the park noticed me and he bolted toward me with lightning speed, scooping me up of the ground as he yelled “Nooooooooo!”.  And so it continued, with practically everything I came into contact with.

Then one morning on the weekend, my dad decided to go do some weeding in the garden and mowing the front lawn. He had made plans to have lunch with his then best friend Michael later in the afternoon. But for now, it was time for him to get to work, and I decided to join him in the garden. I was wearing a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. As soon as I got into the garden, I decided that it would be a good idea to play in the dirt. So I walked into one of the flower beds – the one that had the garden hose close to it, and sat down. The ground was moist and muddy as dad had just finished watering the flowers that grew in the bed, and he had drenched the ground with a good amount of water. I loved to pick up handfuls of the wet, muddy dirt and squeeze it, watching it emerge from between my fingers. I proceeded to get it all over me – in my hair, all across my shirt, on my bare skin. Then, I thought I could make the mud into pies. So I began making little mudpies with my hands and when they were done, I took generous bites of them. They must have appealed to me greatly, because when Michael Sanders finally appeared, walking up the front steps to greet my dad, he was confronted with the sight of me covered in mud, with all manner of mud and gravel coming out of my mouth and running down my shirt. 

Bewildered, he looked at my dad. Dad just said “You’ve got to eat a peck of dirt before you die.”. That has been a favoured saying in my family ever since.