Anchorboy (3 page)

W
HEN THE HOLIDAY SEASON ARRIVES
I make the cross-country flight to Kelowna, B.C., where my parents have lived since 1997. I like the joke that my mom made the decision to move to the sunny Okanagan approximately four seconds after my younger sister graduated from high school in northern Alberta. Unshackled from the brats, my folks were free to head straight to their favourite part of this great country, where they could spend their days drinking wine on the beach illegally in plastic cups. (They don’t really do that.)

The Okanagan is where we and countless other Albertans spent our summer holidays when we were kids. Aside from the sunny weather, beautiful beaches, and abundant locally grown fruit, we also enjoyed the fact that we could go see movies every night. I realize that in this day and age, that makes it sound as if I grew up in a Quaker town, but Athabasca was just a small town and didn’t have a movie theatre. These days we’d all just fire up movies on our iPads and ignore each other the entire vacation, but back then going to see films at the tiny, ancient four-screen cinema in downtown
Penticton, B.C., was somehow a highlight of our trip. We would show up in town and find the latest Penticton newspaper to check the movie listings over the two weeks of our vacation. Then I would carefully plan our viewing schedule.
Batman
would be first, followed by
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
, and then perhaps we would have to slum it with
Jaws: The Revenge
. It was a highly strategic planning session, and it sums up how desperate we were for entertainment at the time.

I always enjoy my time in Kelowna because I feel instantly transported to my youth, much the same way I’m sure people who grew up spending their summers in cottages and cabins and camps across the country love returning there as adults, even if it means they have to help put the dock in the lake. There’s just something very special about returning to a place with so many childhood memories, a place you so looked forward to visiting in the waning weeks of the school year. Although it is true that I was forced to attend Okanagan Hockey School for one of those two weeks.

As much as I loved playing hockey, I absolutely dreaded hockey school. Having to practise twice a day wasn’t so bad. I even got to meet Murray Bannerman! It was the dryland training that I really couldn’t stand. Doing “wall-sits” and running the track in thirty-degree heat should have probably been tagged as a mild form of child cruelty. (I can already hear my parents laughing as they read this.) As a side note, I’d like to start a movement to have wall-sits outlawed in this country, because they truly are the closest thing to torture that I have experienced. The simple method: Find a wall. Put your back directly against that wall. Now bend your knees until you are in a “sitting” position against the wall, making sure you don’t use your hands to prop yourself up in any way. “Sit” like this for as long as you possibly can without moving or falling. Personally, I’d rather be water-boarded.

If you’re the kind of parent thinking about putting your son or daughter in hockey school, first sit them down and ask them this question: Does the idea of two hockey practices without shinny, followed or preceded by two one-hour sessions of dryland training, sound like how you’d like to spend your summer vacation days in thirty-degree heat? Because I’m just not convinced that these kids have any idea what they’re getting into. Sorry, hockey schools across the country, the secret is out: You’re running prison camps for kids, and people are paying you handsomely for it. Dictators around the world should probably fly to Canada in July and take notes.

When I land at the Kelowna International Airport these days (“Who had the balls to call it
that
?” asked comedian Jeremy Hotz upon visiting the city), I am greeted warmly by my niece and nephews, and the fun begins. My sister is two years younger than me, and like many people of her generation she loves the Food Network and food shows and has taken a liking to cooking at home. My sister really takes the reins in the kitchen around the holidays now. And what a spread she had planned for us on Christmas Eve of 2010.

When we were younger, my family would make frequent trips to Edmonton for a little family getaway. We didn’t call it Edmonton, though. We called it “the City.” It was the closest big city to my small town, and calling it by its name just seemed like a waste of time for everyone. It was clear which city we were talking about. We weren’t talking about Des Moines.

The culinary highlight of the weekend in the City would be a trip to “Bourbon Street” at the West Edmonton Mall. Anchoring the Bourbon strip was a seafood restaurant called the Pacific Fish Company, where we would gorge on mountains and mountains of huge crab legs. As a thirteen-year-old I was pretty much convinced that crab legs were the most delicious things on the planet. All that sweet meat dipped in hot butter was a really special treat. As I got
older, like many seafood lovers I began to eat less crab and more lobster, but I never forgot how delightful it was to stop by Pacific Fish for those crab legs with my parents.

My sister never forgot either. “Let’s do crab legs on Christmas Eve!” she said to me with great enthusiasm over the phone weeks before I was to arrive in Kelowna.

“Sure,” I replied. Gorging on seafood the night before Christmas like good Catholics and then passing out in a peaceful slumber while waiting for Santa to arrive? What could be better than that?

On Christmas Eve my parents and I made our way over to my sister’s house. My sister and her husband now live in Kelowna, so the holidays are a breeze. My sister does all the cooking, or most of it. We help clean up and then retreat back to my parents’ house for a peaceful Scotch or three without the grandchildren distracting us from our boozing.

As we sat down for our meal I was delighted to be transported back to my childhood. Erin had taken care of everything: a delicious salad, steamed potatoes, and of course the crab legs, which had been secured from Costco that very day. Yes,
Costco
. I once shocked my best friends by revealing to them that I thought Costco’s meat department was underrated and that they should be buying steaks there. You would think I had told them to buy their steaks at a military supply store. Though I suppose at this point Costco sells military supplies as well. Those of us who love Costco are well aware that it is a great place to get steaks and seafood at great prices. That last sentence was in no way my attempt to appeal to the good people at Costco to stock this book in their stores. (At a reasonable discount, of course.)

I began cracking open those delicious crab “gams” and digging out all that tender meat inside while my dad opened the wine and my mom drank it. I am a real “dipper,” so I was drowning every piece in butter. The whole experience was an absolute delight, and
I congratulated my sister on a job well done. After dessert and a bit of port as a digestif, Mom and Dad and I went home for our Scotch. We promised to return bright and early the next day to watch the kids open their presents, and my sister was already planning a massive breakfast of eggs Benedict. My sister is like Giada DeLaurentiis without the boobs!

Back at Mom and Dad’s, Food Network Canada was running a marathon of one of my favourite shows:
The Best Thing I Ever Ate
. What a great show! Food Network stars describing their favourite dishes in their favourite restaurants—it’s the very definition of food porn. It’s also the perfect thing to watch with your parents over the holidays if the World Juniors haven’t started. But around episode three, I started to realize something inside me wasn’t quite right. I don’t know if I had eaten too many crab legs or just caught a bug on the way to Kelowna. Whatever it was inside me that was turning my insides out, I was about to pay the price for it.

The next twenty-four hours of my life would largely consist of me expunging fluid from my anus with the consistency and liquidity of chocolate milk. First it was a violent bout of diarrhea, followed by a furious bout of vomiting, and reverse and repeat, over and over. It was completely and totally unbearable. That feeling you get when you simply can’t wipe your ass anymore because it’s so violently charred that it looks like charcoal in your barbeque at the end of the summer. You feel like you’ve been repeatedly punched in the chest because you’ve been heaving into the toilet for hours. As my parents quietly continued to watch
Best Thing
, I made return trip after return trip to the bathroom to relieve myself of whatever bug I had contracted that evening. Pooping and puking. Pooping and puking. Over and over and over until I was convinced I had no fluids left whatsoever and my insides must look like fruit leather.

Obviously, my parents became increasingly concerned about my condition each time I returned to join them for a brief respite
in the living room. I wouldn’t be back there to visit for long, just enough time to recap what was going on: “My stomach is in really, really bad shape,” I said, stating the obvious, “and seeing Guy Fieri eat rib tips on TV right now is
not
helping the cause.”

Right around my twentieth trip to the loo, my parents, and specifically my mom, started to become really concerned. They actually followed me to the bathroom. I had shut the door, and they could clearly hear me vomiting on the other side. “Are you okayyyyy?” asked my mom. Yeah, I’m great, Mom, I’m great. “Open the door,” she said.
Why?
I wondered. “Just open it.” She was not afraid of what she was about to see, but she should have been.

I opened the door.

There I was in all my thirty-six-year-old glory on the floor of the bathroom in front of the toilet. At that point I was wearing nothing but my underwear: white Calvin Klein boxer briefs (I had stripped down to almost nothing because I was sweating so badly). If that pair of underwear could talk they would have said, “Kill … me.”

For a brief moment I thought back to what it must have been like when I was born.

It was the early ’70s. My parents were baby boomers from Saskatchewan with very little money and big dreams. They were just trying to carve out a life for themselves. My dad wanted a baby boy he could send to hockey school to do wall-sits; my mom wanted a child she could nurture and raise and be proud of. It was the greatest moment of their lives! The possibilities and opportunities for their newborn son were endless.

Fast-forward thirty-six years.

There, before them on the bathroom floor, was their son sitting cross-legged in front of perhaps the most well-used toilet in North America that evening. They must have wondered, for a brief moment, if this was what it was like to have a crackhead for a son.

I stared up at my parents, who were looking down at me with faces of concern.

And I promptly shit my pants right in front of them.

Loudly.

Just imagine hearing the sound that an eight-year-old boy makes when he’s
imitating
someone with uncontrollable diarrhea: using his lips and two hands to imitate a loud, flapping, wet fart noise.

Now imagine that noise, for real. I filled those Calvin Klein briefs for a good five seconds until they looked like a sausage casing trying to contain its contents. I filled my already soiled drawers in front of the two people who had brought me into this world. All the while, as this was happening, I continued to stare right into their horrified eyes like a poker player waiting for the guy across the table to make a move. The entire thing happened out of the blue and it was uncontrollable. I completely lost control of my bowels. Perhaps I was simply exhausted and could no longer control the movement of my rectum. All I know is, I was sitting on the floor in front of the toilet, with my parents looking down on me, and the next thing I knew I was crapping my pants. Loudly.

I looked up at my mom.

And I said … “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she replied.

Have you ever taken a moment to think of all the people you could shit your pants in front of and have them simply say, “It’s okay”? For most people the list is pretty short. For others the list does not exist at all. Maybe your husband or wife, but certainly not right after you’ve been married. Shitting your pants in front of your new spouse is pretty much grounds for divorce—they might even be able to get an annulment.

It was as if, for a moment, I had forgotten that my parents and I were human beings, and instead I was so sick that I thought we were horses.

You’ve seen horses take a shit while they’re walking and not even break stride, right? You’re walking down the street when two cops and their magnificent horses clop, clop, clop right beside you. How fun! Then one of them drops a basketball-sized turd on the road beside you. Not so fun anymore. Horses shit in front of each other
as they’re eating
. I’ve never lived in a barn, but I imagined that shitting in front of my parents was like getting a glimpse of life as a horse in a barn. Shitting in front of the rest of the horses in my family, and then continuing on with my day.

Mom and Dad, sufficiently aware that there was nothing more they could do but pretend this entire incident had never happened, returned to watch a show about food that must have been really awful after what they had just witnessed. I continued my cycle of physical hell through most of the night, so thirsty from dehydration I would have killed someone for a carbonated beverage.

The next day Mom told me I should probably throw out the bath mat I had been sitting on that night. And the underwear. She even thought the shower curtain should be replaced. I’m pretty sure she got an entire cleaning crew in after I left to fumigate and disinfect her guest bathroom. It was likely months before she even ventured in there.

The next year we played it safe and went with turkey.

I remember when I left high school for university. Like many teenagers who grew up before the days of the Internet, I kept an entire stack of pornographic magazines hidden under my bed. When I returned home one weekend to visit, I was horrified to find out that my old bed had been replaced by a new one. “We found a deal!” said my parents. There was never any mention of the sticky, disgusting pornographic magazines that they clearly had to have disposed of. They never mentioned it once, and I was very grateful for that.