Trudeau, Poilievre, Blanchet, Singh, Starmer, Putin, Ford, Trump, Harris, and Reid all have something to say. Each claims to have all the answers, even though some don’t even seem to be aware of what questions are being asked.
A recent attempt to locate an urban house at night prompted me as potential candidate for mayor to have a word with city dwellers. You folks seem to be fond of displaying your tiny house number – if any – in fonts such as Blackadder ITS, Brush Script MTand Chiller, printed in beige on a beige or gray wall! Emergency services such as ambulance, police, Pizza Hut and FedEx won’t find you. Years ago, rural folks discovered the civic Number System. Mandatory placement at the end of the driveway. Uniform lettering on a highly contrasting background. Implementation would be absolutely mandatory and non-negotiable under my regime.
If the question is “What’s your platform?”, the following items would feature in my response as a candidate for election.
Shopping etiquette: don’t strip the corn cob; don’t squeeze the peaches (but squeezing the Charmin is now acceptable); have your payment at the ready before you get to the head of the line; if the sign reads “Six items or less”, accept the fact that your ten, 15or two dozen is more than six. After you deposit your shopping into the car, return the cart you used to its corral.
Cell phone etiquette: at the dinner table, unless you are a brain surgeon or a bomber interceptor pilot on call, turn it off. If you call someone, as soon as they say hello, identify yourself. Not everyone has call-display or facial recognition.
When you jump the queue at the airline terminal, don’t think you’ll get priority treatment if you shout, “Don’t you know who I am!”
Driving a car is nowhere like golfing. Parking diagonally between two sets of lines in a parking lot does not qualify as ‘a hole in one’. When on the 401 or 417, you won’t get brownie points for cruising in the passing lane at 80 kph. Conserving electrical energyby refusing to put any lights on in fog or blizzard, or at dawn or dusk, will not reduce global warning. Camouflage has no place under those conditions.
Some indigenous people use a ‘talking stick’ to govern round table time. If you’ve got the stick in your hand, talk, then pass it on. It’s not your stick. Another thing we should appropriate from them is proficiency in handling a canoe. Most people ‘fromaway’ don’t realize that the art of canoeing has to be taught. Would you expect to be airborne at the end of the runway if you were to attempt to pilot a Boeing 747 without receiving any instruction? Canoeing instruction would be mandatory under my regime.
I’d be as likely to run for office as I would become a ballerina.
