Going to Canada?

With Trump running for president, the joke is that people are moving to Canada.  Wasn’t so long ago that Hubby’s parents sought to get there to flee post war Germany.  They had Mennonite relatives in Winnipeg willing to give them sponsorship, so they crossed the Atlantic in October, amid storms and mountainous seas to get there. It was no joke.

Years ago, I myself boarded the USNS Kelley out of New York, bound for Newfoundland one early spring.  We lived in Newfoundland for two years.  

My grandmother, who lived in Pasadena (really, the little ol’ lady from Pasadena) thought “going to Canada” sounded fun.  Sorta the opposite of snowbirding.  She came to visit us one Christmas, got snowed in and she wound up staying until late February.  Can’t say she regretted giving up her sunny winter in southern California.  She and my mom drank Earl Gray tea and ate fruitcake for weeks.

A friend of our loans us a condo in Whistler occasionally, in trade for loaning him our boat for a week.  So off we go to Canada once more, like regular migrating Canada geese.  On a recent trek up there, we picked up some friends who were joining us, and prepared to enter the freeway on a cloverleaf access point.  There stood a solitary Canada goose.  Not another goose to be found, no water to swim in. 

 “That goose looks lost,” said our friend Judy.

“He must be trying to get back to Canada,” said her husband Dave.

"Even the Canada geese are going back to Canada now. Are they worried about Trump too?" I asked.

At that moment, the goose stuck out a wing.

“He’s trying to hitchhike,” Hubby said. "Why fly when you can get a ride?"

“Don’t pick him up!  He looks dangerous,” I hollered.  By this time we were all dying of laughter. 

We passed the goose by, and he glared at us, wing still outstretched.

“Look, he’s flipping us The Bird for not picking him up,” said Dave.

Sure enough, as we looked back at the goose, he was bloody annoyed.  We laughed for five miles.

If you want to move to Canada, make sure you have lots of Earl Gray tea and cakes.  Just don't ask a Canada goose how to get there.

Creative Storytelling

I think it is great when creativity enters a story.  Embellishment, I call it.  All in the spirit of getting a laugh or making a funny story.  Never hurtful.

Exaggeration can be used in good writing, especially when told in a matter of fact way.  

When we passed by some cranes in Seattle's harbor used for loading ships, they loomed up pretty high over us, and I asked the grandchildren if they thought there was an elevator in them, or if the man who works in them had to climb up a ladder.

Hubby offered his opinion.  The crane simply picks up the operator in its teeth and lifts him to his station, like a giant friendly brontosaurus.

I'm glad he put in the "friendly" part, having learned his lesson from telling the previous generation that the Goat Tree (merely a boll-ridden gnarly specimen) came to life at night and ran through the forest where we were camping.  They still bring that up.

After a moment of silence while the children contemplated this, Ellie piped up, "I used to work on a crane."

Really?

Not "I want to work on a crane someday."

Not "It would be fun to work on a crane."

But "I USED to work on a crane."

She had it all worked out what it was like, what she did, and pictured it in her mind.  A storyteller, born and bred.  True to the breed, she is.  I suspect she's not going to grow up to operate a crane. President speechwriter, maybe?