America: The land of textiles and Reaganonics, Part Two

Well that last one was long and rambling, wasn't it? So where was I? Remember when I said that my friends and I could tell you the president of the USA but had no idea who the Prime Minister of Canada was? Well, is it any wonder when I swear we didn't learn any of that in school? Seriously, we didn't. Oh sure, I finally figured out who Trudeau was, and then there was that thing where Joe Clark became PM but fucked it up or whatever and Trudeau came back, but it's not like we ever had any real lessons in political history the like Americans. Hell, we didn't really do Geography. I remember having to learn these long, boring factoids about the fur trade, and all of this bullshit about upper and lower Canada - i.e. Ontario and Quebec, but why would that interest me? Seriously, as a kid in B.C., we learned nothing else about our country than that. Had we had something relevant to learn, like about what happened in our own backyard, it would have been interesting. B.C. history is fascinating. Haida culture is amazing. But we didn't get it. But learning about stuff about Ontario and Quebec in the 1790's? Well, out west, we mistrusted those places, and we resented them. All that crappy tv and music came from Ontario, and Quebec was to blame for the French channel taking up a position on our dials - the only good thing about the French channel was that there would always be movies with nudity and sex on the weekends, but you'd have to sit through a lot of Rene Simard concerts first until the movies would come on, and since you couldn't speak French, you never knew just when they were leading up to a good scene, so it was also ultimately frustrating. But I digress....

I remember clearly having to do this hideous social studies assignment in grade 4 - I was in a 4/5 split, like I was every year, and we had to pretend we were fur traders in good old upper and/or lower Canada, and write a letter home to our families back in England. WELL. I remember trying to fake it - it was all so boring that I couldn't follow much, and I guess I talked about beavers (not the good kind) and Indians, and such, and since I was stumped, I finally said "well, my feather is running out of ink, so I better stop. Love you all!" I remember that at parent/teacher interviews, my teacher dug that out to show my dad and they had a good laugh. I thought it was ingenious, myself.

Anyway, you know how Americans seemed to know all about their own history? Hell, those fucking Brady kids were always acting out civil war shit and Peter was taunted with his Benedict Arnold characteristics, and whatnot. As for us, I didn't know jack shit.

And it's not only history - it was geography too. When I found out we were moving to SK, and I told people, my peers had NO FUCKING CLUE where that was. I am serious. Not a sniff. It was like I said I was moving to Butcher Holler, except the odd kid would have seen the movie to know what that was. NOBODY in my class knew where that was. 20 plus kids. Grade 6. Good job, Social Studies consultants.

So then I finally move to SK. These 'billies at the creepy school I went to didn't question where I came from, but it was definitely a step back on the evolutionary scale, this creepy, rough school I went to. My teacher, the alcoholic Mr. M, who had a Ukrainian accent, stunk of rye and brill cream, was missing the tip of his left hand "fuck you" finger, and just YELLED so much, we were scared shitless, well, he was obsessed with "Geography." We did a whole hour of Geography each morning, and that consisted of us reading this chapter from our textbook, from 1948, and summarizing it. Then we'd take it up to him, he'd yell and slash sentences, we'd get the runs, revise it, and on it would go. ANYWAY. I remember my first day. We start geography, and I start reading, and the whole thing is about fucking GEORGIA and the Carolinas, and went on and on about State history and what the "main textiles" were. I didn't know what the fuck a textile was, or why we'd need to know what they were in these states, but that entire year, I became fluent in textiles and southern states and flags and a whole lot of bullshit. The point is, you ask? Well, even though I didn't grasp it, it was about AMERICA. Not about Canada. So you cannot blame me for being American leaning. I knew enough about goddamn cotton to choke a horse by grade 7, but couldn't tell you with any certainty if it was wheat or rye in field 2 minutes outta town. Go figure.

So while we learned about America, they didn't learn about us. Which annoys me. I am going to jump out of the chronology of these posts to mention that back in 1991, I went to North Dakota with my wife and my sister and bro in law. My sister and bro in law met these two old ladies in Perkins restaurant in Minot. Minot is like 90 minutes from the SK border, if that. Anyway, these ladies said they always wanted to go to Canada but "were scared of the bears." They thought bears roamed wild. I am not making this up. Even though I could tell them the gross national product of fucking NEBRASKA, they were scared of bears 90 miles from them.

And let's also fast forward to 2 years ago. Picture it - a hot, sunny Sunday in St. George, Utah, a paradise that straddles the Nevada border. You'd think that people in paradise would be smart, wouldn't you? Well, fuck no. We are at this outlet mall, and I am buying some ugly-ass shirt from the Eddie Bauer outlet, and I must give this airhead girl at the register a Canadian nickel, so she wisely alerts me to my dirty play money, so I quickly give her a REAL nickel and say sorry, that I am from Canada and yada yada. So then she asks who is on the back of the coin and I say the queen and she says which queen and I tell her and then she says, get this: "does CAN-AYY-DEE-AHH have its own queen?" and I say no, it's the queen of England and she's all "WHY?" and of course I basically say "fuck if I know" and then this Einstein behind me is all "Canada is part of the empire and the monarchy" and rattles on, and she's snapping her gum and is looking at him like he said "my penis is made of ginger beef", with total dullness in her eyes, and I thank her for selling me the shirt I will only wear once, and am on my way.

But it's the shit like that that really bothers me. I can tell you where my parents were when the Kennedys' were shot (I heard the stories many times), but tell me something about Canada? Who the fuck cares? Hell, I remember sneaking my mother's copies of the Maggie Trudeau books, and thinking this bitch was right on - not because she was our "first lady", but because she hung out at Studio 54 and fucked one or more of the Rolling Stones and Warhol thought she was cool. Had she said "went to the Legion with Pierre Burton and fucked Bruno Gerusi and Old Relic in the janitor's closet", well, it wouldn't be as glamourous.

Anyway, this is enough backfill.

The mid-80s hit. I was terrified of Reagan, and "Reaganomics" etc. I have no idea WHEN or HOW I became terrified of the GOP. But it happened. Maybe because I had always had classmates who were from low income families, or who didn't know where their next meal would come from, or if they could afford the basic things that one needed to survive. Or maybe the thought of people having to pay for medical treatment was so foreign. Or maybe it was the thought of people NOT being on an even, clean slate. Whatever the reason, I became terrified of Reagan. When I say terrified, I mean TERRIFIED. I can't really remember the how or the why, but I KNEW that he wanted to bomb the Russians, kill the gays, keep the brothas' down, pay for no medicare, etc. And I was so absolutely scared that he would cause world war III and make the Russians nuke us. It was here that the Americans became "the other." We were too civilized in Canada. Even though our PM gave the fucking FINGER to farmers whilst on a train across the Prairies, he wouldn't take from them their right to see a doctor or threaten world peace because of his ego. So let's just say that I became suddenly disenfranchised with America. And Lord knows, it was big-time. Is that enough to leave you with? Because I will get into the nitty-gritty tomorrow - let me just day that everything involving citizenship is messy, and we got a long, bumpy ride in front of us.....