The Eye Balls · Posted Apr 1, 09:01 AM by Todd Babiak
I write three columns per week for the Edmonton Journal. Sometimes, in the morning, as I prepare to go to work, I panic. Deadlines are deadlines. What if I can’t think of something to write? What if my brain malfunctions in the middle of a column? The page is already laid out, the photo has been taken, but the words aren’t there. All the people I’ll let down!
Yesterday was one of those days. In the bus, I wanted to throw up. I haven’t been sleeping well since about November, and it’s beginning to affect my cognitive powers. I’m working on a novel and a TV project in my free time, and sometimes I’ll write something that is, upon reflection, just totally insane.
My colleagues were getting sick of all the “serious columns” I’ve been writing, and wanted something “light and funny.” I haven’t been feeling all that light and funny lately, but I gave it the old college try. I wrote about Earth Hour, about surrendering myself to low technology.
When my brother and I were kids, it often horrified my grandmother that we were being raised by television, movies, and video games. On glorious summer days, we would be in the basement, playing Super Mario. Things were different, and better, when she was young. This is what I wrote in the newspaper:
“We made our own fun,” she would say, with a hint of nobility in her voice.
My brother and I pressed her on what she and her many brothers and sisters would do to make their own fun. On the farm, they would gather the eyes from dead animals and make large balls out of them. If a nearby family insulted their honour, they would gather up some farm cats, put them in a burlap bag, shake the bag vigorously, throw it into the offenders’ house and run away screaming with laughter. If they caught a mouse, they would drop it into the vertical exhaust pipe of the tractor, start the tractor, and—floop!—watch that mouse fly.
Last night was typically sleepless. I worried that I had betrayed my grandmother. She was a sweet and loving woman, however strange. In my opinion, strange is good. But others who aren’t big fans of strange could read what I had written and consider me insensitive, a bad grandson, for revealing that she and her brothers were, well, freaks. I think the world was full of freaks during the Depression. How else do you explain the rise of Hitler?
I don’t mind doing this sort of thing in fiction, but it’s different in the newspaper. For one thing: way more people read it. And they assume, rightly, that it’s true. My extended family doesn’t speak to me, so that isn’t a concern. My grandmother passed away some years ago, so that isn’t a concern either. I worry that I’m manipulating my memories cheaply, just to prevent bus nausea on otherwise uncreative Monday mornings. Memories are sacred or even pure. But once they’re all sucked out, what then?
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But you did have a disclaimer for young people who might be intrigued by your grandma’s former pastimes. That’s very responsible.
— Mari Apr 1, 01:23 PM #
I think the world is full of freaks, period. I find it comforting that your grandmother and her brothers were terrorizing small animals and neighbours. I especially liked the “hint of nobility” bit.
Memories are malleable, mutated things that can be endlessly sucked on, and out, and rearranged. Hooray for strange grandmothers and strange grandsons!
— former Edmontonian visiting her parents and former farm-terrorizing aunts for 2 weeks.... Apr 3, 02:58 PM #
Take solace in the vagaries of memory, the creatuve urge and the opportunities of fiction.
Your gramother probably embellished here story, you probably embellished your memory, and no matter what, someone, somewhere will always be offended.
— MiHotrum Apr 8, 02:04 PM #