On Turning Thirty: The Heyday of the Blood

30 today! One of my favourite Preston Sturges lines is “I’ve got this terrible milestone hanging around my neck.” If you’re getting your RDA of magnesium and zinc, you can expect, six or eight times, to close out a decade. The odometer of life turns over, winks, and rolls on. At these times it’s hard not to steal a moment to check the carnage in the rear view mirror, and peer ahead to the murky horizon, before settling back to dodging all the potholes and shit and roadkill that keep popping up right in front of you. There wasn’t much continuity to my twenties. All I can say is that wherever I went, there I was. I took advantage of my opportunities to make mistakes that would be forgiven such a greenhorn. I travelled and acquainted myself with the full richness of the gong show of life. My friends know that I love to begin tall tales with “I remember one time when I was in Poland….” For those who need references, that was a period at the close of the last millennium, 1996-1999 (e-mail was just a hazy dream; we communicated by dropping messages into pneumatic tubes). It was the rest of times, it was the worst of times. It was a magical time when any young Canadian ne’er-do-well could appear to have work teaching English to Slavs. And it was a lot like work, except for the getting paid part. Highlights of what I learned: 1) Household management. During my stint, I was bunked consecutively with an Englishman, a Scotsman, an American, and a Peruvian. Domestic bliss. One week, I’d buy all the groceries and do all the cleaning, and then the next week, I’d buy all the groceries and do all the cleaning. 2) The power of shrewd negotiation. My employers told me to enter the country on a tourist visa and then they’d arrange a work visa once I arrived. When I got there I found out that they’d had their fingers crossed and I’d be held hostage as a dirty scab and persona non grata. 3) Personal hygiene. Krakow, 1997. Unemployed and slowly imprinting myself into a friend’s sofa, I had to get back my self-respect. A waiter caught me shaving in his restaurant. Only one twist made it awkward: because of my villainous Polish, I’d accidentally bought toothpaste instead of shaving cream, along with a plastic Bic single-blade razor. I’ll always remember the stunned look on the poor man’s face as I peered at him with a face of minty green lather. 4) The sanctity of love. My girlfriend of five months, Edyta, announced that she was ready to middle-aisle it, and we’d best sit down with a calendar. I hesitated, she dropped me like Kryptonite, and last I heard she was happily wed to the guy she’d dropped to go out with me. Since he was her first love, it was only right for her to step up and make an honest man of him. I spent the rest of my twenties getting edumacated at the University of Toronto and McGill. This was the compromise I worked out when I discovered that no way has yet been found to attend the University of Toronto while living in Montreal. I cherish all the clichés and quotes about edumacation, especially the inner strength you get from having a reasonable idea of how ignorant you are. Let’s not forget the Christian humility to be gained from squandering public funds to study neither science, business, medicine nor law. I look ahead to my thirties without resolutions or disillusionment. As for my menagerie of bad habits, I’m counting on my laziness to keep them in check. I don’t have much left to learn about money, having already earned my first million—Polish zloty. With my edumacation, I’ve filled my noggin to the brim, and never have to worry about digesting any new ideas. I look forward to struggling and striving and proving myself all over again. Look at this pic of me, aged 21. Whenever I feel that I may not have accomplished all I can, I remember that I used to hang around bars with a cigarette megaphone. How far I've come. I feel better already.