Stray Blog

I invite you to join me as I go out and experience the world … through the eyes of a small-town Canadian kid. I have spent the majority of the last two years in the United States, and will be heading to South Korea in August of 2008 to teach English.

Here is my philosophy: Anyone can see the world as a tourist. While a temporary vacation or trip to somewhere far away can be nice, it can be a somewhat shallow and superficial thing that provides little understanding. It is a much more challenging and meaningful task to immerse one’s self in a unique culture, learn its language, eat its food, laugh at its jokes, and uncover its humanity. There is a big difference between seeing the pages of someone else’s book and actually reading them. Well that’s just about as cheesy as it gets I’d say. And I didn’t mention anything about cheap booze, foreign girls, and feeling like your life is just one big vacation. But the key to a good philosophy is to sound like a big-shot know-it-all and to leave out the dirty details and basic psychological reasons for why people actually do what they do. Anyway, on to my story. High five!

I was born in Any town, Ontario, Canada (pop. 8000) on September 1st, 1982. The first word I ever said was bathtub, followed by hockey. Yes, hockey was my second word. Many Canadians are socialized into the sport of hockey very young, and I was one of them I guess. As for bathtub, I was clearly a hygienic toddler, which has translated into a relatively well-groomed young adult. I believe that I was a fairly proficient youngster, but early on in elementary school I developed a trait that continues to haunt me to this day: good at a lot of things, great at nothing. And we all know that good is the enemy of great. Another thing that haunted me for a long time: my diminutive size. I was a tiny-ass kid, what else is there to say? Bigger kids and bullies in elementary school made sure that I knew that I was small, and I think as a result of that I crawled into my own little shell, which I wouldn’t get out of until after high school (And still feel half-inside sometimes). But this is not a pity party. Goulet!

Church Church played a big part my upbringing: I frequented a pentecostal church, and tried to fake sick to get out of going as much as was possible.

Borat

While I did appreciate learning about how to live in a moral way, and how to treat people properly, I struggled with how hardcore and intense the whole pentecostal experience is. The speaking in tongues, the yelling, the whole thing about hell, it was and still is too much for me to handle. For an idea of what it’s like, check out the documentary Jesus Camp.

Video Games Another thing that was important to me as a kid, and isn’t anymore, was video games. I finished my run with a Nintendo 64, so that gives you an indication as to how long ago I got out of the game. The first game I remember playing was some football game for the Nintendo, which was revolutionary at the time with its yellow passing arrow.  Nowadays most of the games on my Nokia cell phone put this game to shame (If anyone knows what this game was called let me know). The most memorable game I ever had was a college football cartridge – after you turned it on it played some music and provocatively announced : “Welcome to College Football – you are gay”. Trust me, I turned up my wood-panelled tv as loud as it could go and put my ear next to the speaker and played it over and over to make sure that, yes, my Sega Genesis had just said that I was queer. If anyone reading this had a similar experience – please let me know so that I might be vindicated. Anyways, here is a list of my top 5 favourite and least favourite games of all time:

FAVOURITE 1) Sonic the Hedgehog in all of its many, glorious forms (especially the Genesis versions)

2) Goldeneye 007 for the Nintendo 64 (was a legal and more addictive version of crack)

3) Super Mario 64 (more important than sleep when it came out)

4) Sports Talk Baseball for the Genesis (“throws to first, throws to second, throws to third.. repeat”)

5) A tie between Fifa Road to the World Cup 98, Mario Kart, and anything that came out for the Virtual Boy

LEAST FAVOURITE Well I couldn’t really think of any off the top of my head, but the one that told me I was gay has to be up there. If you can think of any games that stick out in your mind as totally sucking, please let me know.

School My education has always been important to me, and I think I have been able to use school to grow as a person. From kindergarten to grade 3 I attended Kingsbridge Elementary, home of the Blizzards. The school has since closed but I remember that it was in a corn field, and was small enough so that everyone and the staff could fit in one picture. I don’t remember much else about Kingsbridge, except for the fact that it was there that I was introduced to the phenomenon known as Oregon Trail.

The bulk of my elementary school memories take place at a school known as St.Mary’s, which I attended from Grade 4 to 8 after a family move. St. Mary’s is 1 of 3 elementary schools in the town that I am from, and the lone catholic school. After starting at St. Mary’s, I recall taking some kind of test of IQ. My score on this test would have a major impact on the rest of my time at St. Mary’s, as I was given the label of “gifted” based on this result. Now I never really knew exactly what this meant, but who was I to complain when the “enrichment group” got out of school to play games and have barbecues (I recall several petitions to end this group and stop the special barbecues). I also was exempted from traditional spelling and math classes, and in retrospect I think that my math capabilities were stunted because my other math genius friend and I spent math time running around the gym. These exemptions and nerd parties in place of studying probably played a role in my returning to the level of a highly mediocre student in high school. My chronic and downright dangerous addiction to Magic Cards probably didn’t help either. Just kidding about the Magic Cards … About the time that they were becoming all the rage my mom got a hold of them and took them straight to our church’s pastor. They were deemed “of the devil” – so that was that.

Now, high school. An awkward time in many a young person’s life, and I was no exception. I recall being scared about just about everything. I was scared about people, I was scared about having someone hearing me talk, and I was scared about the food in the cafetorium. Yes, it was called a cafetorium, which is a combination of the words cafeteria and crematorium. So don’t blame me for being scared of the food. The one place I felt very comfortable was playing sports, and at one time or another I played hockey, soccer, badminton, tennis, curling, and golf. I was more or less good at all of these sports, but not great. I take the most pride from my time as the skip of the oft-forgotten curling team, which is kind of like being the quarterback of the football team, sans the cheerleaders or the popularity. My real taste of popularity came when I wore my “Trivia Team” varsity jacket around school. As high school came to a close I was forced to make a decision about where I would go to university. I hadn’t really been particularly motivated in high school by any of my classes, but I had enjoyed sports, so I was convinced by my guidance counsellor that something called “sport management” might be the subject for me. I left high school for Brock University, in St. Catharines, Ontario, with the following list of impressive athletic accomplishments, and little else:

• Being a member of the first St.Anne’s team to ever win a hockey game
• Winning Toronto Raptor tickets for sportsmanship in a tournament, despite losing 3 straight games and scoring 1 goal total (But, by staying out of the penalty box, we were the ‘real’ winners)
• 5th place finisher – Western Ontario Badminton doubles
• 4th place finisher – Western Ontario Curling Championships
• Breaking my arm in the first soccer game of the year, a 7-0 loss, and missing the remainder of the season
• Most incorrect answers offered consecutively in one session / longest blank stare following a question asked – Quiz Bowl ‘98

Now it would be wrong of me to portray my athletic history as entirely dismal, as that was not quite the case outside of high school, but nonetheless I move on to my time in college.

Looking back, my time at Brock U was mostly well spent. My time playing sport was limited by my limited skill, so I was forced to do other things that were foreign to me like socialize with people. And so, after a few years, I got better at that. That makes it sound so simple, but just sitting here and thinking about everything that goes into 4 years of school, it is ridiculously difficult to try and summarize it all in one paragraph. My first year I was mostly interested in my first serious relationship, which carried over to second year. My second year I lived on top of a dive bar known as Front 54 in Thorold, Ontario. I mostly tried not to get shot on “Underage Fridays”. Before third year my relationship ended, so I decided to go back to residence on-campus and pretend that I was a freshman again, but kind of like for the first time. My focus third year was on partying, and I got better at that as time went on. My fourth year was my first in a student-house, in the student-ghetto, and I took an internship with the local junior B hockey team. And then I graduated. That’s Brock in Coles Notes form. During my fourth year at Brock I had made the decision that I would attend Graduate School for sport management, and travel faraway to do so. To America. I’d heard it was the land of the free, and I knew that they knew sport. I applied at West Virginia, Bowling Green, Louisville, and Florida State University. I ended up at FSU, and spent around 2 years in Tallahassee. What a trip, to say the least. I won’t go into too much detail here, because there is an entire category of blogs dedicated to my time in the USA. So look there, and Go Noles. So there you go, my academic career to this point. You may be interested to know that I am considering doing my PhD within the next few years and becoming a professor. Speaking of jobs, here is a list of everything that I’ve done up to this point in chronological order.

Try and pick out the 1 job that I made up: McDonald’s Cashier / Fry bitch Pharmacy Cashier / Drug Delivery to Old People by car Tree farm tractor driver / “land modification” Inn maintenance worker / “Hotel beautification” Summer Day Camp Rec Programmer / glorified babysitting Youth Prison Media Relations – Hard to explain Photocopier repair / delivery – ink boy Chimney Sweep – catching the black lung Intramural Hockey Ref – fight breaker upper Flower delivery boy – seasonal Junior Hockey Assistant Director Intern – nice title, little responsibility Outtrip Director at camp for special needs – summer of chaos at $.05 per hour (Go Belwood) Pet food store cashier – passing time Nursery landscaper – more menial and painstaking “land modification” Social Science Research Educator: Great title, great job, great pay Weenie sales, Paradise Vendors. I dressed up as a pirate to sell hot dogs. Tennis / Racquetball Instructor, FSU Intern, Seminole Boosters Fundraising Mentor, FSU Athletic Academic Support Facilities Assistant, Wake Forest University

To be continued… To contact me, send an email to strayblog@yahoo.com