A major mistake happened when I went to see an early matinee.
How strange to see a mother coming into the lobby carrying a toddler under each arm. But no stranger than me with a big bottle of soda under one arm and a bottle of Scots whiskey under the other. Glenlivet, if it matters. The eleven a.m. showing, as written in bold on the marquee, was BYOB or, bring your own booze—Ya-hoo!
“That’s not what the letters stand for’ said the mother cheerfully, setting her squalling brats down so she could pay for her ticket. You heard me right, she was cheerful amidst the squalling.
“It doesn’t?”
She enlightened me, “It stands for Bring Your Own Baby.”
“Oh” I said. What else could I could say? After making merely a minor mistake.
Luckily I had a season ticket—what, don’t you have one too?—so I escaped past the manager into the gloom of the theatre aisle carrying my liquid loot. I walked slowly in the dark, feeling little bites on my ankles. Of course I did: Because here in Calgary, our ankle biters are tough. They were chomping right through my worn out, down-at-the-heel cowboy boots. But I kept walking softly, for of course I wouldn’t stomp on those dear darling blessed brats: Because nothing is as tough as our red neck mothers.
Did you know that in Calgary, and Canada too, we have a far higher immigration rate per capita than the “good old U.S. of A?” Makes me proud. I was reminded of that fact when I made my way to the very front, and looked at the crawling kids, and said, “Back home in England, we tuck our kids into perambulators.”
“No we don’t,” said a young woman to my left, with an accent perfectly matching Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. “We use prams.”
“Or at my home” said a US citizen with a sexy Alabama voice to my right, “we use strollers.”
I will point out that folks across the pond might say “American,” but if you are a Yankee from Alabama, and you plan to pass over the border into Canada, then you had best call yourself “a US citizen.” Especially if you look shabby. Don’t say “American.”
Because some liberal snowflake polite border guard—that’s Canada for you, where all the guards are polite—might look down his spectacles at you and say, “Hey, it’s our continent too, eh?” and then search you for drugs. Not for looking shabby, for being rude. But not searching for marijuana.
We realize our dear cousins in Yankeeland are in a great war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, can divest itself of drugs. We know your wartime great effort requires having zero tolerance for marijuana, but we here find it altogether fitting and proper to advance to calling it cannabis and we tolerate it by the bale. Well, the liberals like it, real men prefer whiskey.
In the seat next to me a future real man was crying and wailing and howling and—you get the picture. I distracted myself by looking high up at the walls: There was a picture of Charlie Chaplin—not a real man, the wholesome clean cut F.B.I. denied him re-entry into God’s own second favourite country.
Also I spied a portrait of W.C. Fields—there’s a real man, a fellow drinker I can relate to. I looked at Fields, looked at the kid, and reflected what Fields would say: “Here you go kid, have a shot of whiskey so you can settle down.” I leaned over the kid–—but I’m no W. C. Fields, and I know it just wouldn’t be right… and I was sure his mother was too darn tough for me to dare such a thing. So what could I say but, “Hello young fellow.”
The carpenter once said, “Suffer the children to come unto me” and Jeez I was suffering, all right: My mistake, I decided, was not to bring more whiskey. But that was only a minor mistake that day.
At this point lovers of romance will be getting impatient, wondering how I knew the Alabama woman was sexy. Sure the place was very dark, and she had dark skin to boot, but I, being proudly NOT a male chauvinist, had learned a few “tricks from the chicks.” So I used my imagination.
I know that’s what the chicks do, because they have told me so. It’s why I don’t wear my 1970’s David Bowie discotheque skin tight jump suit. Not anymore. Because women told me, quite firmly, they like me to leave a little for their imagination. So I won’t wear it. Not usually. Not until a second date. And then on the third date I wear—Oh, but that would be telling.
Well, me and the two ladies got to talking and planning and they learned I had certain talents: I can juggle, throw my cowboy hat up like a frisbee-boomerang and twirl my lasso real fancy. Like in a parade. Now, if you’re thinking that we were thinking of ropes and a four post bed, then I say “Don’t insult my intelligence.”
Because my daddy always told me, “Never play cards with a man named Doc, never eat at a place called Mom’s, and never go to bed with two women at once. Not even if you hide your ropes first.”
I agreed to a date. Wearing my jump suit, with fresh painted polka dots, to a little park. Of course I wouldn’t dare drink whiskey when I was entertaining the kids along with their mothers. And agreeing to that was my major mistake. I had such a good time with all the little fellows—only a chauvinist would add, “and the fellow-ettes”—and so I kept going back. Staying sober. Now I have some perfectly good whiskey bottles I just can’t throw out. Well. Life is good for this cluttered cowboy.
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Sean Crawford
Cowtown
April
2024
