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Written in a Free Fall Friday drop-in, where there is a writing prompt, then you scribble like mad until the buzzer
prompt- Participants
I will tell you what I decided long ago. There are those who participate, and those who don’t. The don’ts, alas, will always be in the majority. Attend a school: a few of us are crew, the rest are content to be passengers. Attend a factory: who wants to join the union executive, or the entertainment committee? Attend in the rich part of Hollywood: Who wants to help in the community garden? Who wants to vote? If I live on a block with a leisure centre at one end, and a community centre at the other end, and a library on the next block, well, most of us can be found on our respective couches playing Atomic Commandoes. And for our video games, most of us will not be doing participatory ones with gamers on-line from other states.
I don’t know why. Speaking of community centers and workshops, I read once that most of the attendees will be school teachers and social workers. So I started paying attention. Ya, there’s a grain of truth to that for toastmasters and Friday Freefall. I suppose that a subcategory of those who participate in this life are those who believe in the human potential of themselves and others. Hence the human service workers. In toastmasters, for public speaking, the other big category is engineers. I don’t want to stereotype, but my fellow toastmasters joke that engineers are finally getting into some soft skills. But not too soft, not right brain. I once asked an engineer to improvise a one to two minute speech on the Mexican day of the dead parade. The guy floundered awfully, even though he lived in stampede city where a parade is a yearly citywide event. After that, we had to teach people the word segue (to switch topics).
Yes, so if a group of us are hiking I will be crew; I will look after the slower hikers rather than being in my own world.
Of course, most people prefer to be passengers. Go to the Masada Armouries. Outside are scores of indulgent skate boarders, many of them politeness-challenged. Inside are mere dozens of army cadets. Inside are future leaders, outside are future led. The games arcades would be full of people using computer graphics, scores of them. Down the street were only a few dozen learning to program computers to create such games.
The good news is that the leaders form a special class. They, but not the led, are very unlikely to be complainers and backseat drivers, not like certain folks I know on welfare. No, because folks who participate in anything know that everything worthwhile takes tremendous effort against a statistical universe where lots of things go unexpected and need constant correction.
As a junior NCO (noncommissioned officer) I felt respected by senior officers. They knew.
prompt- Poppies by a house wall
Pop, pop poppies. They pop up where they can, seeds are available for free from your local war museum. I see them next to Lee’s house, right by the wall where we can see them when we go to the backyard for a brew sky.
I remember a night of pushed together tables on a parquet floor. Glasses popped up in unison, “to the Queen!” This was long ago, before the king. The chaplain had started us with grace, later he called for a minute of silence. So we did, then back to carousing again. Because we all shared a secret: Civilians think they will live forever, or die in bed. Each one of us knew that wasn’t true. So no more than a minute, then back to the living.
I remember once standing in front of a Japanese news camera man. I didn’t give a care whether I should move a couple paces. Funny, sometimes a couple paces it all it takes to get good reception on a backpack radio, a couple paces can put you into a the lee of a steel wind. But that moment I didn’t give a care about dead eyed zombies in front of dead television screens. Because I had learned that the dead must serve the living. So I stayed where I was and if you don’t understand then good for you. I don’t think I would want you to understand, because then that would mean you had stood in some desperate places.
We were a breed of animal who walked erect until threatened. A gregarious breed who maintained a spacing of a yard apart.
I was happy for Lee that he had a nice house and a nice deepfreeze—the electricity bill was high but the peace of mind made up for it. We would sit in his yard with our heads still, our eyes still, country music drifting through the doorway, and none would make us afraid.
Even today, years after the camps, Lee is so happy to do simple things like sit in a Tim Hortons and lift a coffee. He doesn’t mind Calgary because Viet Nam was so hot. He does mind when the government tries to hand out free Vietnamese flags for a Canada Day Heritage March. Doesn’t the government realize how hateful the communists flag is? You will never, never, never see a Ho Chi Minh City restaurant, nor a Hanoi dry cleaners. When the war was supposed to be over they kept him in the camps for a long time.
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Sean Crawford
at 100 Mile House
April
amidst snow, then rain, briefly hail
2026
Hey, in Calgary, street sweepers will remove the gravel on Monday: Spring is here!
