You're a Neanderthal!

           

            When I arrived in the lecture hall on Thursday, there was a soft, blue, zippered lunchbox under the seat behind me. I picked it up and gave it to the professor of the student who must have forgotten it. A few minutes later the owner of the case came looking for it. When I told her what I’d done, she put her hand on her chest and said, “Thank you so much!”

            In her lecture, Professor Baker continued to talk about Arthur Ransome’s “Swallows and Amazons”.

            The narrator in the book, unlike in Peter Pan, is an ally of the children.

            The series, featuring the same main characters, has several stories over each a different summer, but the children are always the same age every year. There is never much time related anxiety within the stories. They know at the end that summer’s over but they are already looking forward to the next holiday.

            All of the stories are drawn from Ransome’s own reminiscences of the favourite part of his childhood, the summer vacation.

            Every adventure that the Walker children have is always within the bounds of parental permission, but they are given total freedom within those bounds. Danger only comes when they venture to the edge of that permission, like when they sail their boat at night. They remain safe because they have internalized that which their parents have taught them and because they maintain a hierarchy similar to that of the British navy, with the ranks applied according to age. John is the captain, Susan is the first mate, Titty is the able seaman and Roger is the ship’s boy. The Blackett sisters however, do disobey their mother, with no ill consequences.

            The children are inspired by British traditions of colonization. They think of the island they camp on as theirs because it was uninhabited when they made camp. The Blackett children use the argument that it is there’s because they have been camping there all their lives and also they claim it because they named it. At the height of the empire, Britain laid claim to one-seventh of the planet. Those who went to live in the colonies could no longer feel that Britain was their home, and there is a hint of this with the children, when they visit their mother across the lake, on the mainland.

After class on Thursday I went to Robarts Library to look for Elizabeth Wein’s “Code Name Verity”. I saw it listed in the catalogue with code “F-WEI”, so I went to the tenth floor, where the “F” coded books are. I looked all around, but couldn’t find and “W”s after “F”. Nothing went past “D”. Finally I asked someone and was told that the whole floor consisted of law books. I went back downstairs to the computer and realized that I hadn’t checked which library had the book. It was the University of Toronto Schools library. I went to the address and found that it’s a high school. At the office they said, their librarian would sometimes let a U of T student take a book if it’s not available in any other U of T library, but if it’s merely “out” elsewhere, they want only their high school students to have access to the books.

            Since I was in the neighbourhood, I went to the Admissions office to find out if I need another fee deferral letter for January since I only received half my grant. I was told that I could just ignore the emails reminding me that I have a balance in my student account. That was a relief.

            I went to the bank to take out my rent money, my phone plan money and some extra to buy Code Name Verity”, then I went to the Willow bookstore on Bloor, but they didn’t have it. I went to BMV and they didn’t have it either.

            I was mostly hanging around the area because I had a doctor’s appointment for 13:45 because I wanted to see him about getting a skin tag that’s gotten painful removed from my butt. I’ve had it for a few years but haven’t tried to get it removed, as I knew that would cost money because it’s considered to be cosmetic surgery. I was thinking that now that it hurts, the removal might not be cosmetic. Dr. Shechtman said that there was a skin tag that was near the other one and it broke off and that’s what’s been causing my irritation. He said the skin tag I’ve had for years couldn’t be causing me pain but he’d remove it for twenty-five dollars. He said though that it’s not that hard to remove oneself. I could just tie a thread very tightly around its base and keep it there until the skin tag finally falls off. Maybe I’ll try that if I can see to tie it.

            When I left Bloor Medical I headed east along Bloor to look for the Bob Miller Book Room. The guy in the Willow told me indifferently that it was before Avenue Road. I rode to Bay but didn’t see it on the south side, so I got off my bike to cross over and head west again. In front of me there was a man in perhaps his late sixties in a bright green shirt and holding a takeout cup of coffee. He turned to the young woman on my left and asked her if she was cold. She told him that she was, a little bit. Then he turned and asked me, “How about you? Are you cold?” I said I was okay. He responded, “Well, of course you are! Look at you! You’re a Neanderthal! You’re all set!” Just before the light changed he commented, “At least I’ve go my coffee!”

            I rode west and finally saw the tiny sign for the Bob Miller Book Room. I went inside the office building that had the sign, and the security guard directed me to the basement. I walked around the store, but couldn’t find Code Name Verity until someone asked if she could help me. She showed me the book, and I told her that I’d had a hell of a time finding their store. She admitted they were well hidden. I looked at the book, but I was just checking the price before going to young street and seeing if it was in the adult fiction sections of ABC or Eliot’s. I went there and it wasn’t so I just went back to Bob Miller to pay the $12.95.

            After all that riding, I decided not to take a long bike ride up to Yonge and Baliol, so I just went home.

            Later on I went to look at my lecture notes from class but couldn’t find them. I realized at that point that I’d forgotten them and a pen in my doctor’s office. It was too late to get them that evening, so I just hoped they’d be there when I called the next day.

            I watched the Roscoe Arbuckle silent film, “Goodnight Nurse”. It opens with Arbuckle drunk on a city street in a rainstorm. He keeps trying to light a cigarette but of course the rain keeps putting the fire out. There’s a cop and another drunk nearby and then a couple of street musicians, a guy with a trombone and a woman with a tambourine, come along. Roscoe puts some change in the woman’s tambourine and tells them to play the national anthem. Both the other drunk and the cop stand up and take their hats off and so Roscoe goes over to the cop and lights his cigarette under his hat.

            The main story is that Roscoe enters a sanitarium that claims it can cure alcoholism through surgery. Most of Arbuckle’s time is spent trying to escape. He steals the uniform of a very large nurse but while he’s walking down the hall, one of the doctors, played by Buster Keaton begins to flirt with him. Flirtation scenes are hilarious in silent films because they are so drawn out and involve a lot of gesturing, eye contact, sudden looking away, running ones and over objects and sticking one’s finger in one’s mouth, smiling and waving the other person away, etcetera.