What Do You Remember

As the generations of Canadians become further and further away from the soldiers who fought on foreign soil to protect our freedoms, what will they remember?

I ask myself, what do I remember?

My mothers father was one of those soldiers, one who lived to tell the tale, or so I hoped. I can remember spending nights at the cribbage board, moving those pegs around and pleading with questions about what it was like. He was not one to tell tall tales to his grandson of what it was like, quite the opposite he chose not to talk about it at all.

No stories to pass along to my children and they to theirs about how one of their family members put their life on the line for what they believed was right. But tomorrow, that won't stop me from remembering Parker Churchill Fillmore for the sacrifices he made as well as all the other Canadians I never met who paid the ultimate sacrifice for my family.

So on Nov 11, or on any day for that matter. When you see one of our veterans, take a moment to walk up to them and say Thank You...."thank you for what you did for me." I can't imagine a more special moment for that person.

For our king and our country and the promise of glory
We came from Kingston and Brighton to fight on the front line

Just lads from the farms and boys from the cities
Not meant to be soldiers we lay in the trenches

We'd face the fighting with a smile - or so we said
If only we had known what danger lay ahead

The sky turned to grey as we went into battle
On the fields of Europe young men were fallin'

I'll be back for you someday - it won't be long
If I can just hold on 'til this bloody war is over

The guns will be silent on Remembrance Day
There'll be no more fighting on Remembrance Day

~ Brian Adams

Passion

Earlier today I was scouring my Facebook page checking on what all my friends and foes were up to when I stumbled across a blog by Toronto band Running Red Lights It struck a chord with me as I immediately recognized the struggle. My response to Scarlett's blog was this....

Passion is everything and sometimes it comes from a very dark place, but without the past you would have no future.

It just poured out of my, simply because she had struck a chord inside of me. Took me back to that primal place I had buried and walked away from long ago. I always make jokes about the navy seamen sized bag of puffed wheat that was our breakfast everyday or the powdered milk and what a treat it was to get the real thing. I have also been overheard saying, in my family the faster you ate the more food you got. As any good comedian knows, jokes also come from a dark place. There are people in this world who had it worse than me, I know that now. It is one of the benefits of age....lets call it perspective.

Regardless of who had it worse, although I had a very loving environment to grow up in, we had very little in terms of possessions which I never noticed until High School as the outlying richer areas were mixed with our hood. As crazy as it seems to people who know me as an adult, I was shy and a little withdrawn. Like Scarlett, bullies found just the right path to my door. I had to fight with my fists from time to time just to remind them I would not be taken advantage of but mostly I learned the fine art of negotiation and persuasion.

There is no doubt I am a driven, competitive, passionate person. I was not however born with those traits, they were honed through many years of struggle, torment and suffering. It is a classic tale of nature vs. nurture. My environment made me who I am today. I am proud of the person I have become, I am compassionate because I was not shown compassion, I am driven because I want better for my children then I had. I am competitive because I got sick of losing and figured out how to win.

The road of life is not an easy one. We all have our struggles and setbacks, it is how we deal with these moments in time that ultimately define who we are as a person. I often hear people complain about their situation or whine about the past and how terrible they had it. I celebrate how I was raised and the teachable moments that were presented to me. The combined total of my life experience molded me into who I am today. People should be thankful for their past, good or bad because it is those little pieces that prepare us for what is yet to come. I don't scribe these words for you the reader to feel sorry for me but to attempt to point out that you should celebrate who you are and what made you.

There have been times of late where the load has become almost unbearable, but I have the benefit of time and experience to remind me of another one of life's cliches "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger"

Well, I didn't die and I am stronger than ever......

Thank you Scarlett for reminding me of that.

Shocking

It has been quite sometime since I have been compelled to post something. I have been struggling with the recent news story of Tyler Clementi. Maybe it is because I have children attending University away from home for the first time who could be feeling exposed and vulnerable without the safety net of their family. Perhaps it is that one of my kids was the victim of bullying early in high school and I have seen the effects it can have on someone.

This case highlights something deeper that has been on my radar for quite sometime.... reality TV. Now don't get me wrong I am not going to rail on TV programming as the reason for this tragedy but stay with me for a moment. Programming like hit show Jersey Shore are solely predicated on the humiliation of others. I am far from a prude with a high moral compass but after watching one episode I was appalled. It astounds me there are actual human beings that are willing to put up with a whole bunch of shit just so they can be famous. They have at least made that choice of their own free will but at the end of the day they present the wrong message to the public.

When The Situation brings a girl home to have sex with her and leaves her in the bedroom while he has some cereal, then does the deed and sends her home in a cab bragging about how to handle that shit....how does that message get unscrambled in the brains of our youth? Some people are intelligent enough to see through the veil of reality TV and laugh at it because they know what losers these participants truly are. There is however, a large portion of the population who are of the same mental capacity and look up to, admire and attempt to emulate their heroes. Think of all the emergency room visits caused by endless hours of watching Jackass. Reality TV is only one part of the problem but today we have the "perfect storm".

Not only can you attempt to replicate the behaviour but technolgy has provided the way to show it off in public. Video something on your iPHONE and have it up on YouTube in minutes.....snap an embarrassing pic and post on Facebook or Twitter in seconds. Think back only 5 years or so....if I want to take an embarrassing pic of my college roomate having sex, I had to drag out my massive 1 megapixel camera, snap the shot, download it, print it and post it somewhere public. A few hundered people might see it if you were lucky.

Today, the thought process is compressed by technology, you can simply act upon your urge and in an instant it is too late to reverse your decision to broadcast to the world....something you think might be funny takes only seconds to act upon...there is not time to process if this is a bad idea or not...you just act. Whip out the iPHONE, video, take a picture or broadcast it on Skype....instantly post on Youtube or Facebook and then spread it via other social network platforms. In minutes people are watching and sending it out to their network of friends. They think it is funny too and why? It goes back to desensitization....you watch enough mindless TV and this video that popped into your inbox looks the same, so you send it around the web without a thought.

Except for one detail you didn't think of....the people on TV signed up to be humilated. Tyler Clementi DID NOT!