The Man Who Took Too Much Time

            When I entered the church of St Stephen in the Fields on Tuesday night, Bänoo Zan was sitting at the reception desk with a volunteer that I didn’t recognize named Emily. Bänoo got up and gave me a hug. I asked her how Catfish Day had been. She laughed because the day before I had posted on her Facebook timeline, “Happy Catfish Day” instead of “Happy Birthday”. I told her that June 25^th was National Catfish day in the United States. Then we discussed catfish in general and I mentioned a story that I thought that might be by Mark Twain about someone that trained a catfish to live on land until one day it fell into a bucket and drowned. Bänoo said the story sounded familiar. I’ve found a version of the story online but it’s not by Mark Twain. I don’t think the one I found is the original tale but I can’t find that anywhere.

            When I went into the church to take a seat there was a guy on stage talking into the microphone. At first I thought that he was one of the features doing a sound check but after a while it seemed more likely that he was just a guy playing with the microphone. He was essentially playing “I spy” as he spoke while looking around the church and naming the things that he saw, such as the pipe organ in the balcony. Sometimes he would describe what he noticed but mostly he would just name them.

            There was scaffolding climbing almost to the ceiling along the width and height of the wall where the altar is. The church seems to be doing some renovations. When Bänoo came up to test the microphones the guy stepped back towards the altar, against which three of the church pews were lined up end to end and facing the audience. When Bänoo came to test the volume of the microphones the guy stepped back behind her and started doing martial arts moves, though not directed at anyone. After a few seconds he sat down on one of the benches. When Bänoo had assured herself the mics were working properly, she went outside, I assume for a cigarette. He got up and walked back to the microphone, removed one of them from the stand and then returned to the bench to sit again and to once more name the things that he saw, such as the carpet and the woodwork.

            After a few minutes Bänoo came and took the microphone from him and he understood that we would be starting soon. She announced that she was now taking names for the open mic and reminded people that there was a three-minute time limit. After she took my name I told her that I think that the three minutes should be on a credit system so that, for example, someone that only takes two minutes on one open stage would have four minutes credit on the next and if someone only took thirty seconds every time for five years they could accumulate enough credit to have time to read a novel. She said, “We couldn’t do that” as if she thought that I was serious. The guy that had been playing with the microphone also signed up for the open stage and I learned that his name is Daniel.

            I went to one of the washrooms, where on the wall somebody wrote, “I miss us!!!”

            I noticed that on the door of some of the washrooms there is a sign that reads, “Washrooms Are For Everyone”. Does that mean we aren’t allowed to go there alone?

Tom Smarda arrived with a friend named Violet whom he’d met on the way to Shab-e She’r and when he told her about it she decided to come along. He told her that he used to be in a band with me called “Christian and the Lions”. She asked what kind of music we’d played and he looked at me for an answer but I said I was curious how he would describe it. He told her it was “shit kickin music with a social conscience”. I said, “To be fair, Tom thinks all songs have a social conscience”. I corrected that I think the only one of my songs that might be seen as having a social conscience would be “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy”. Violet thought it was cool that I’d made the lyrics for the song out of real shock therapy instructions that I’d found in a manual at a mental hospital.

Personally I think that the strongest political statement that people can make is to be truly themselves and so in that sense one could say that Tom is right. Every song or poem, if it is a work of art, is political because it expresses something revolutionary from the self, even if all we are attempting to overthrow is the tyranny of self-repression.

I explained that the reason I’m against shock therapy is because it destroys memory and I think remembering is extremely important. That’s also why I don’t get drunk, because what’s the point of having a good time if you’re going to forget that you had a good time?

This led somehow to a discussion about history and I quoted a verse from Leonard Cohen’s Beautiful Losers that goes, “History is a scabby point / for putting cash to sleep / Shooting up the peanut shit / of all we want to keep”. To paraphrase, it means, “History is a needle for putting men to sleep. Shooting up the heroin of all we want to keep.” An example is how when we remember World War II we think of Allied soldiers as noble young men, but not about how they, including men from North America, committed thousands of rapes of German women upon occupation of Germany.

We started with Laboni doing the land acknowledgement at 19:08.

The open stage began with Rula Kahil, whom Bänoo elected to go first because she was one of the photographers this time. She explained that in Lebanon, "baba" means “father" and read – “To you Baba, on Fathers Day ... I uttered my first confession to you / A child in love for the first time / Maybe for the second time / You were the first man I loved / You continued shaving your beard / with a smile and a twinkle in your eyes / You patted my head / and told me your secret is safe with me / How much I need to ... bury the migrant pain I carry / in your arms...”

Norman Allan read two poems.

From “Lost Kin” – “I watch the trees return anew ... The Earth abides ... The horseman rides.”

From “A Street fighting Man 1968” - "I went down to the demonstration ... I was telling my ex-therapist ... The rider drifted ... He swung his horse around, moving like a lion … Two girls stood as victims … the horse upon them ... legs and hooves in motion ... That she's alive today is luck ... Imagining pain ... for no reason … as I started to run … I never caught him because he was on horseback … I said I saw a girl trampled ... My therapist thought that my radicalism was youthful posturing …Why say ‘trampled’? Why indeed … I have to confess my fake news … Why is she after my balls? I asked her why she denied the death and blood ... She said 'Why the fuss?' … Coda: After the police broke up the demonstration I saw Mick Jagger … What can a poor boy do...”

Anar Ali read an excerpt from her novel, entitled “A Night of Power” – “He sees a faint reflection of himself in the glass … His assistant greets him with a stack of messages … He sits down and rolls his high leather chair … She hands him an envelope … It’s for your mom … He’s never sure what his mother likes or what she wants … He finds himself constantly worried about her … Patty tells him she’s confirmed his reservations … His parents’ home was his home … believing anything else would be selfish … In the distance he can see an army of headlights headed down Bay Street … He taps a small white pill from the bottle … antidepressants …”

Paul Edward Costa read – “You’ll never hear sentences so elaborately constructed as the wishes made to genies … Genies can engage in malevolent manipulation … I’ve abandoned the ritual of checking closets before bed … but that doesn’t mean I’ve never seen demons … seen Dr. Jekyll transform into Mr. Hyde before my very eyes … as close as I’ve come to a final amalgamation with the dark.”

Bianca Lakoseljac read, “Life is” – “Butterflies are beautiful they say … I hear Mozart’s Requiem … all that I did or did not do … Marching to the requiem I see me … a young monarch … I long for lazy … sunny days … soaring … intoxicated on heavy scented milkweed … Heavy … amorphous … flutter my wings for eternity.”

It was time for our first feature.

Jenna Ten-Yuk’s first poem was called “Minority” – “To be or not to be a minority, that is the question … Exotic … But as I come to accept my story … to be a visible minority … token Asian … not speaking Chinese … I grew up Christian … I prayed … sometimes … I read my Bible … sometimes … an abomination … I was filled with self-hatred … a life of loneliness … and then you enter women’s studies … coming out as Christian … Sometimes you feel you don’t belong because you look different … Never being able to name … my spirituality and my sexuality … I’m not really normal … Challenging … identities … I can find peace in simply being me.”

From her second piece – “Trying to make sense of life as a queer Christian … I often sit at the back hoping no one will notice me … I used to belong until I came out as queer … Please god anything but this … How few actually take the time to hear our stories … choosing what they see … This is a daily reality for LGBTQ people … We deserve to be here … Please see our humanity … We have so much beauty, empathy and love to share.”

From a poem about Jenna’s Popo (grandmother) – “I’ve always been drawn to her hands … kneading deeper … repetitive movements ingrained in her … Popo, how much flour? Maybe two pounds … She quickly tears open two packages of yeast … Are you sure that’s how much yeast? She knows … Hands that survived the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong … She remembers … Continuing to massage the dough carefully … Popo, this is too hard! I can’t do it! She laughs. ‘Like this’ she smiles.”

Another piece- “ … The bed is covered in old documents … Popo, what are you doing? I’m looking for my gold chain … Popo, you gave it to me … Her shoulders soften … Good, I know it’s safe with you … Good night Popo … There never was a gold chain … No one believes her truth … She just needs reassuring … she has a different reality.”

Another – “You want to go home but you forget what that feels like … You know something is missing … You’ve subtracted and divided many factors … can’t seem to find the way out … Your path is more like a fresh snowfall … but still that doesn’t solve your search of finding your way back home … more like a cha-cha … on the surface … being brave … Ambiguity is just part of the journey.”

Jenna’s final piece was “Everyone Loves a Jamasian Girl”, but first she explained that Jamasian is a fusion of Jamaican and Asian and told us that it's not just about the flavour of the food.  She began by getting the audience to sing the first three lines of Bob Marley’s “One Love” twice – “One love / One heart / Let's get together and feel all right ...” She read - "I'm Chinese / I'm Jamaican / I'm Canadian? Am I a Fasian? A fake Asian? My parents had Jamaican accents ... but it's hard if you’re not sure you can identify with these roots … What is Canadian? … Everyone loves a Jamasian girl …”

 Jenna Ten-Yuk did not read any poetry for her set and the prose she presented was not particularly creative. It sounded more like a collection of testimonials on various topics relating to family and ethnicity. Certainly the subject matter is interesting and valuable but she does nothing creative with it nor does she break any ground from a literary standpoint.

We took a break.

Violet asked me what I’d been writing. I answered her I was trying take down as much as I could of what was happening on stage. She’d thought that I’d been writing my own poetry. I told her that would have been rude.

After the break the open stage warm-up performer for the feature was Yavar Khan Qadri, who read “A Walk to Remember” – “It was a breezy night, as I recall, in the cool of September … The lights of the city reflected on the lake … in a rhythmic fashion … a silhouette enhanced … had her steps not sounded … I wanted it slow … She was full of life … That was when I saw her last …”

The second feature was Rajinderpal S. Pal who chose to sit in a chair for his set.

He began with – “Oh how we want to be taken and changed … by what we enter … a pea pod between thumb and index finger … the folding of dough … a scrap of paper folded into the pocket of your petticoat … You never speak of love … the spirit in the camera … There are other silences that you keep … a list of cancers ... the Coke can under the brake pedal … The past is an enormous shadow … The devout measure their lives in denial … That other language offered the possibility of relief … Now that other place is a poem in a book … All writing is apology … the written word … dust in a shaft of light … We counted stars … said the stars  were pinholes …"

Another poem – “The silhouette of his turban had to be just so … the peeks and curves of his uniform … something he learned of what it means to stand tall as a Sikh man … I remember one summer morning … he walked out through the back door ... striped shirt, paisley tie ... On the washing line was his starched turban ... I stared in wonder … He called me over and asked me to grab one of the lower corners … The space between us grew and I never felt closer … When we were done he walked towards me … There were two chairs … A small mirror rested on the chair’s back … He held the ribbon in his teeth and began the ritual … The cloth wrapped diagonally … to complete the shape … He used the pins to pin the structure into place … I wasn’t allowed from his side until I had learned …"

Another – “Our guidebook made no mention of it … We wandered … marvelled at the clay plumbing … We imagined a symposium … We were all set for the drive back … Something trivial … as night moved in … when our driver told us of the house of Mary … You really should go … Her son’s followers were seeking a state ... In the end it comes back to the mother ... who suffers the most ... shouldn't have been so easy on the boy … had to press cold rags against his forehead … Our guide told us of past miracles ... Non-believers crossed themselves ... tawdry gift stalls ... something ornate to build a story around … Outside there were three taps of holy water … the old dried up well … All around was the birdsong of nightingales … the house ... was a short walk from the car park ... There was a sudden chill ... an advent, a presence, a calmness impossible to contain.”

Rajinderpal told us about a poetry reading he performed at that was also a cooking competition and he won the title, “The Iron Chef of Poets".

From “Inertia” – “Well, there are many ways of being held prisoner … I had carried my depression in a black notebook ... We were bound by the limitations of mouths and hands … Perhaps the quiet of the street will be disturbed ... if we rest here long enough ... a last desperate sunbeam ... The windows will become mirrors.”

From “Found Poetry” – “From the thickness of dust … the small package hidden … to allow for the curve of the metal cylinder … tied together with twine … A man, husband or lover, had moved away … Their child never named. Only referred to as ‘the boy' … A new house in a new neighbourhood … Each letter closed with wishes for reconciliation ‘if you feel the time is right' ... An old entry ticket for The Stampede … I read each letter slowly and even thought how they might be the basis for a novel … a reminder of the tedium with which we create art … The letters had probably never been sent … This corner of the basement was a place to put away pain … I went to the basement … all I touched was darkness …”

Rajinderpal explained why he was sitting while reading – “I came back to doing readings after fourteen years and my legs start to shake.”

His final poem was called “Petal Point or Why Now?” – “Because truth and reason are lost to view … Because everything extraordinary becomes ordinary … Because comedians have become the soothsayers ... Because we celebrated too soon ... Because we are all living on borrowed land ... Because everything doesn’t have a fucking reason … Because this is no time for silence.”

Rajinderpal S. Pal makes poetry from experience. He doesn’t only tell a story but attempts to find the right words, images and phrases to capture the meaning behind the moment he's describing.

Bänoo said that Rajinerpal’s last piece reminded her of a long allegorical poem by Rumi – “Listen to the reed’s narration of separations.”

We returned immediately to the open stage, beginning with a very emotional reading from Michelle Hillyard – “Dear younger self in 8^th Grade English … Although her words will leave you hollow paper bag thin … Your best friends will be the four walls of your bedroom … You will be just as bad at suicide as you are at friendship … Life will feel like a movie where the soundtrack is out of sync … When your son is three you will be given a list of reasons why he is autistic … Someone that incredible would never be seen as damaged … We fit together perfectly … No matter what … I’ll hold him … in spite of all the knots … The world needs to know ‘normal’ is not just a setting on a washing machine …”

Michelle’s was arguably the best poem of the night, including Rajinderpal’s, and a hard act to follow, but it was my turn. I read an excerpt of my translation of the story “Le loup garout” by Boris Vian. Last year at Shab-e She’r I’d read an earlier part of the story that told how Dennis, a mild mannered and solitary wolf, had been bitten by a werewolf and discovered on the first night of the full moon that he’d been transformed into a man. I gave a quick synopsis of the lead-up and began to read – “At first the thought that he would have to live in a strange world filled Dennis with great terror … Then he reflected that if the books he’d read were not lying, his transformation in all likelihood, would be short-lived. Why then not take advantage of the situation and make a incursion into a city? … He went to the mirror to look at himself more closely … Opening his mouth, he saw that his palate was still of a lovely black hue and that he had not lost the ability to control the movement of his ears, though they were perhaps too long for a human and suspiciously hairy … He thought before leaving though that it would be prudent to find from among his collected paraphenalia a pair of dark sunglasses with which he could extinguish if necessary the brilliant rubescence of his eyes … he found himself on the edge of the road and pointed his thumb with a determined air to the first vehicle he saw. He had elected to travel in the direction of Paris …”

Then Bänoo called Daniel Omiyi to the mic. Daniel walked to the stage carrying over his head the chair in which he’d been sitting in the audience. Onstage there was already an identical chair that Rajinderpal had sat in for his feature, but Daniel set his own chair down near it, then took the other chair off the stage and put it far to the left of the audience over near the church entrance. He went back to the stage and also took the lectern away, placing that to the right of the audience. He went back to the stage and began unwinding the microphone cord as one would do if one was going to remove the mic from the clip, but after unwinding the cord he sat down in his chair without removing the mic, smiled and exclaimed, “Crowd of people!” He then stood up again and carried the other microphone stand to sit down with it on one of the benches at the back of the stage and in front of the altar. He spent several seconds adjusting the boom. He said, “Hello sir!” The mic stand he’d chosen was the one with a flexible gooseneck boom, which flops over if it’s extended too far from the stand and that’s just what his did. Daniel stood up, put the mic stand aside, ran to the front and leapt from the stage. He walked over to Jovan and handed him his phone, then he went back to the stage and sat in the chair but got up again to go back to Jovan and say, “You know what sir? In favour of the performance could you use your phone through a cord?” As Daniel walked back up the stairs to the stage Bänoo reminded him that he had only one minute left. He sat on the bench and finally began to speak into the mic – “Woke up this morning … I’m impressed … moved myself out of bed, took myself to kitchen … probably at 10:00 … Ate the carbs necessary to hold me for many hours … Set and ready to move out of my space … The GO Train … I was impressed … crashed zero times … Almost crashed very many … Brought me here … Church of St Stephen in the Fields …” Bänoo told him his time was up but he kept on talking, “Piano asleep … These organs that highlight the space … Above your heads at the back of this entire space …” At this point Bänoo walked over and took the microphone away from Daniel. That’s the most aggressive I have ever seen her to be.

Sue read – “I’ve moved again, with only one cat … The long leg of time grabs at you … A silence so loud … The other side of things … Messages no longer received … Twelve years with no words from you … When grief comes knocking … my mind races to forget … this sloppy collection of metaphors … His hand upon my body … menacing my memories.”

Sydney White read “No More Nice Girl” – “Men in white lace and red slippers who divide us into whores and virgins … Men who wear Ghandi’s toga … and burn their wives … how dare you condescend to me … Men who make bombs … Fuck you shima!”

Jovan Shadd read “Violence” – “She enacts an act of neutral violence … deep into my gut … She enacts a benevolent violence … gentle chime and thunder of her sighs … the friction of entry … innocent curiosity of what does this button do …”

Wilma Guzman read “Railway Connections and Divisions” – “The sound of the train rumbling by … picking up my son and his friends in the Jane-Weston … Sir John A Macdonald got all the credit … People who lived on the other side of the tracks … railroaded ... underground ... abandoned tracks ... Railways used to connect but also divide ... a one-track mind ... stopped in my tracks … dark tunnels ... Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is just another train coming.”

Anthony came to the stage with Tom Smarda stepping up to accompany him on the harmonica. Tom Hamilton stayed in his seat in the audience but got his violin ready to play along. As usual, it took a minute or so for Anthony to tune. Tom H told Anthony that he should tune his guitar to Tom’s harmonica but that didn’t happen.

Anthony spoke a bit before singing – “Ragged, wrinkled, lost, lonely … Metaphoric and real and the colour of the day … The word wrinkles out …” Singing - "Oh yeah ... You can't break me down ... I can see through rain / I can see everyone / cause we’re all the same … Locked out of life every day … till you can sing through rain …” Anthony broke three strings throughout the song and kept pushing them out of the way to continue playing.

The next performer, Croc-e Moses said he was born in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories but was brought up in South Africa. From “Vote Poetry for President” – “Election culture has reached such tragic levels of comedy ... Vote poetry ... Cast your poem ... Incite the insight ...”

Croc-e’s second piece – “Once upon a yesterday there was an old donkey by the name of flabbergaster … Strop fog foo tickle spew bugle … A donkey think … Bottletop and cork … spangle spark bungleweed tumble gogafroth purr ..."

Avi Cheema told us that this was her first time reading her poetry in public. From her poem – “You are ... Your veins flow ... Your head is covered with soft, white hair ... Descended from warriors ... you held my small, reaching hands … You filled every ounce of me with the unbroken story of displacement ... carrying the weight of sturdy sugar canes ... Through you … a sweaty spirituality ... devastating resilience ... fleeing with soft-skinned babies in their arms ... You are the keeper of grief, sacrifice … home.”

Tom Smarda came to the stage with Tom Hamilton and told us, “Today I as in Pickering … 18,000 tons of nuclear waste at the site … The nuclear lobby is in cahoots with the media …” From “Nuclear Blues" - "They've got these big, fat uranium atoms that move almost at the speed of light ... There’s so many cheaper and faster things that we can do ... They want to keep people paying monthly electrical bills ... Once the solar panels are up, the sun is free and so are you …"

Again, Tom makes it sound a little too simple. Once the panels are up you also need a charge controller, monitors and storage batteries and maybe a generator for battery health in order to be free. For an average home that houses four people the cost for a self-sufficient off the grid system that lasts 20 to 30 years could be as much as $60,000, which would be close to what the house would pay to Ontario Hydro for that same amount of time. It might work out cheaper in the long run to go solar because all the components wouldn’t have to be replaced after that time and one assumes that the technology will get cheaper as the demand increases but it certainly wouldn’t be free for a very long time. I think that Tom lives in an apartment building, which would be impossible to take off the grid entirely with solar panels. If an apartment dweller pays hydro they could get portable solar panels and batteries tostore power and reduce their bill. The only way to make a high rise self sufficient is to build it from scratch as a solar building with panels installed not only on the roof but built into the outside walls and the surrounding grounds.

Bänoo announced that the next Shab-e She’r would be on July 31^st.

 Laura deLeon read two poems.

From “Breaking the Silence” - "A conscience call ... a plea for refuge ... A place to retreat into nothing ... purging oneself of the … soul turned black ... of reason."

From “Sweet Hypnosis” – “Go gently sweet lady of morning … of changing splenour … Drink of the choicest of wine … Free at last.”

Bahar Ebrahimi said this was her first time reading in ten years. She read her poem first in Persian and then in English – “The scarecrow who was devoted to the weed … The scarecrow still smiles …”

Shafia Al-Khair, who said he is from northern Sudan, sat and  read a poem in Arabic.

Christine told us that although she is a performing musician, this was the first time she’d read something in public. She said that her piece came from a school project in which she had to engage in the form of a psalm with a television documentary - "Where are you in this fucked up world oh lord? The heart is heavy, my brain is fried … Where are you … in the bloodthirsty media … still my heart … clean out my earwax …"

The last open stage performer was Tom Hamilton, who informed us this is First Nations Month and read from his book about his life with the Blackfoot. From “Milk River” - "Tobacco changed hands along green Missouri banks ... Three pronghorn cross Milk River in single stride … Wind sculpted visions … Burnt cedar sage ... There are no Badlands ... Nothing is godforsaken ...”

He did a Blackfoot welcome song while banging a rhythm on his book. He did it well and it sounded authentic as far as I could tell but I wonder if it was cultural appropriation.

Tom told us that Big Hill Springs, outside of Calgary is a place where people ride out to get their own water.

From “Sam Spencer" - "A million head range over these foothills ... chewed fibrous ... in the coyote's table ... no need for a tip … spring thaw will pick it up ... Into the ravine's unwritten history ... to be dispatched at gorge bottom … In his ears the crumpled herd is bellowing ... Above the frozen brook, March crocuses by the millions ... At sundown two crows ... as if something has been stolen.”

After I’d packed up my stuff I looked around to see if there was anyone to chat with before leaving but Tom had gone to the washroom and Cy was engaged and so I just left. Outside though was Wendy Smallwood, so I stopped to talk with her. I asked her why she hadn’t read a poem and she explained that she’d just finished her show and hadn’t felt like getting up on a stage again right away.

She complained that from her seat at the back she’d had a problem hearing a lot of the people that used the microphone. I was glad to have her tell me that, despite the fact that I don’t use a mic, that she heard me loud and clear.

We discussed Daniel’s performance. She'd thought it had been some kind of planned performance piece but I told her I didn't think so. I've been around a lot of mentally ill open stage performers and I’m pretty sure I know a manic episode when I see one. Whether he knows it or not yet I think that Daniel has bipolar disorder.

Cy came outside to perform his once a month post Shab-e She’r chore which he referred to ironically as keeping homeless people from going into the shelter of the church where they might sneak to someplace inside to sleep. He complimented me on my translation and said that it flowed well. He was curious about one phrase I'd used, "he was surprised to find himself licking his lips, which enabled him to observe that he was, after all, as focused as before" and wondered what the original french had been. I told him I'd have to look it up and get back to him. On going back to the original french I realized that the actual translation was “he was surprised to find himself licking his lips, which enabled him to observe that it was, after all, as pointed as before". I’m glad Cy brought it to my attention.

Standing outside the church seems to be a lot more conducive to conversation than the break between readings. I ended up chatting with a lot of people that I wouldn’t normally have spoken with. Bahar and her friend left the church and her friend told me, “You have a great face for drawing!” I thought that she’d meant that she'd drawn me somewhere but I think she'd been talking with Cy earlier and he'd shown her some of the photos of drawings that he’d done of me at Artists 25. He pulled out his phone and we looked at them again. Bahar asked me if I post any of my poetry on Facebook and I told her I sometimes do. She asked for the address but I always forget that it’s christiancchristian. I just told her to look for “christian christian".

When I went to unlock my bike, Daniel came out of the church and it turned out that his bike was on the same post-ring as mine. He pointed out another bike that was locked a short distance away that was missing the front wheel. I told him that the owner might have removed the wheel themselves so it wouldn’t get stolen. I added that I make sure my bike doesn’t get stolen by not washing it and said good night.

When I got home I heated up a piece of chicken and a potato that I’d cooked earlier and had it with some gravy while watching only one episode of Dobie Gillis. In the story Dobie and Maynard are taking a Legal Principles course at college. The professor is a former lawyer who encourages Maynard to sue Dobie’s father when he hurts his hand upon getting it caught in the gumball machine at the Gillis grocery store. When it goes to court the professor comes out of retirement to take Maynard’s case. The insurance company argues that Maynard is accident prone since he has at least one accident a day. The professor says there is no such thing as being accident prone. The insurance company’s lawyer gets his hand caught in exhibit A and the judge awards Maynard $1.65.