I was at the Midway hockey arena last month watching the Atoms tournament. There was a pretty good crowd in the stands – including one girl who appeared to be somewhere around seven or eight years old.
She was standing at one end of the bleachers repeatedly yelling, “Mom!” back into the crowd. But she wasn’t getting any answer.
So she just kept yelling. Just the one word, “Mom!” over and over. There was the occasional break to allow her to suck in enough air to maintain life and loudness. But she didn’t seem to think she had any other way to get her mother’s attention except by standing there yelling.
Sometimes it would be a long, drawn-out whinny kind of “Mom” that came out; all too often it was an ear shattering screech that you’d think NO ONE could have missed. But her mom did!
And the wives say their husbands are the ones with selective hearing.
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Every since I was a kid watching mom make cookies I have taken great pleasure in being somewhat of a cookie dough glutton. Why wait for them to bake when you can get the immediate gratification?
So when I showed up at a recent Cooking with Local Grains workshop I was quite thrilled to have someone in the chair next to me hand me a little dollop of dough just about the size of a golf ball.
I’d come in late so I wasn’t sure what was going on exactly. I figured it would be a good idea if I did a bit of investigation to make sure I had all the facts.
So, with this lump of dough in my hand, I turned back to the person who’d handed it to me and ask, “Am I supposed to eat this?”
Turns out that I was only supposed to admire it and then pass it along. Pity, it looked so good too.
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Midwellian Tannis Killough was the subject of a nice article in the Vancouver province on Saturday, March 1. She’s hanging up her hockey skates after this week’s practice at the Midway arena. At 77 she is the oldest member of the Midway Ice Maidens but she says it’s time.
Tannis is a retired high school English teacher. Because of that, for a long time, I felt intimidated by her.
After all – I’m hired as a writer and, if the truth be known, I don’t have a clue what a participle is; and for all I know a subordinate clause is a rank in the North Pole Defense Forces.
I had this vision in my head of Tannis sitting at her desk each week reading the paper, red marking pencil in hand, going tsk-tsk-tsk and shaking her head.
My writing formula is basically to write a whole bunch of stuff down – about 20 per cent more than I need is a good start. Then I chop off the really bad bits and, finally, if I can read it back to myself without sounding too much an illiterate boob then I figure it’s good to go.
When I finally got up enough courage to face my demon (Tannis) a few years ago and told her about my fear she just laughed. She said I do okay and that I should carry on.
So here’s right back at you Tannis. You continue to be an inspiration to us all. You are doing just fine, carry on.