saying something nice like everything will be alright

Dodo wrote to me last night. Between hockey seasons he has time to write twelve lines twice a year. And the twelve lines make me equal parts happy to hear from him and frustrated that writing reduces him in this way. I think if I hadn't known him in real life, known how smart he is, in fact, I would think he was just another dumb jock, especially since he wastes the first two lines telling me about hockey as though I hadn't told him every day for those seven years we worked together that I don't care. What's more interesting is the successful escape from the classroom, the successful operation of a business - even if it's a hockey school - and the fact that his wife and Dodo birds are well.

The first time I met Dodo's son he was four years old and Dodo left him alone with me in the theatre while he went to the gym to put away hockey nets. Little Dodo wasn't interested in hockey nets and wanted to stand on the stage instead. Dismaying, no doubt, to a man who rightfully would have played in the NHL if only he'd been eight inches taller.

Little Dodo reached for my hand as he climbed the steps the way that children do, the ones who've never had a reason to be afraid of adults, afraid of strangers, and made his way to centre stage. I turned on the lights for him and watched him squint for a minute while he thought of what to say. He settled on shouting the word echo a few times, which is, I think, exactly what I would have said too. Then he came back to me and sat beside me in the audience seats watching the empty stage. I asked him if he could sing. He said, I'm only medium at that. I said, Me too.

Then he looked at my shoes and narrowed his eyes. You have the same shoes as my sister, he told me.

I nodded. Dodo had mentioned that too.

He said, She's two, you know.

I laughed and after looking irritated for a second, so did he. When Dodo had pointed out that I was wearing the same shoes as his daughter he hadn't said it with quite the same indignation. Laughing at my shoes seemed to make him feel better about the problem of an adult person wearing velcro.

Suddenly I remembered trying to explain the fact that I'd never in my life seen my parents in their pajamas, while my English teacher corrected me, telling me I'd never seen them in pajamas after a certain time of day. He wasn't listening. They didn't leave their room in pajamas.

Dodo's son is in eighth grade. Dodo says he's taking Drama now. Echo.


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At the train station this morning a woman was sitting on the paved steps speaking out loud to herself in French. I tried not to listen but I couldn't stop myself. The fact that I understood the words doesn't mean that what she was saying made any sense.


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Last Saturday night I went, with the Fine Arts department, to see A Chorus Line. I really think it's one of the most boring shows ever written. It was painful. Just before the curtain went up one of the ushers came over to yell at two of the women who were with me because they had moved over to occupy some empty seats that afforded a better view. I don't think it was so much that her request to move back to their original seats was unreasonable as it was the way she spoke to them as though she was ordering a dog off the furniture that made the experience so uncomfortable. (I wouldn't talk to my dogs in that tone of voice.)

After the show was over these women went back to find that usher and told her how much they didn't appreciate her approach to them, how they would be complaining to management. This kind of thing mystifies me, how people manage these kinds of confrontations. I'd rather cover my ears and hum. Which is why I never find resolution.

The upshot now is that we've been given five free tickets to see another show. Goddammit.



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