Prudence or Fear?

I'm a wimp. I don't make waves. On the subway recently I sat at a right angle to (and several seats away from) a large young man. He slouched over two seats, but the car was not crowded, so I didn't begrudge him that extra space. He wore a ball cap pulled over his eyes. And his face was set in a scowl.

 

I noticed him only when I realized that I was hearing really ugly rap music. Two girls and a boy were beyond him in the car, and I hoped that the music was coming from them. (They looked a bit more approachable.) But as I kept glancing up from my reading I had to admit that the music was coming not from the two girls and their friend but from the glowering young man nearer to me. The music was not only truly dreadful, but it was not bleeding from his i-Pod. He had a radio or some device (I never did see it) playing at top volume into the subway car. This was not accidental. You might even say it was provocative.

 

Here's what I wanted to do. I wanted to say to him, in a non-censorious tone, that I did him the favour of not blasting my favourite opera into the public space of a subway car, and I wished he would pay me the same courtesy.

 

Here's what I did: nothing. I was afraid.

 

 

Copyright 2011 Ann Tudor

www.anntudor.ca
http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com

How to Feed a Grandchild

The phone rang. It was my Nova Scotia daughter saying, "Do you have time to listen to Livvy play "Oh Susanna"? Well, of course I do. Burton (11) and Livvy (8) started studying piano last October and have been chewing up the scenery ever since. So Livvy played (perfectly, I must say), "Oh Susannah," and then "B-I-N-G-O" and then two other pieces. I was so proud of her. As I was finding ever more complimentary words for her playing, she interrupted me: "Nana," she said, "when we come to Toronto this summer can we go to the Mandarin again?"

 

"Of course," said the Nana.

 

"Oh good," says Livvy, and it's fairly clear that the Mandarin is at least as large a draw for the Toronto trip as are Nana and Papadino. For those who have not had the pleasure of the Mandarin experience, it is a Chinese restaurant chain in Toronto and other southern Ontario cities. It offers a huge buffet that includes, for the benefit of timid eaters, a station with roast beef, hamburgers, hot dogs, mashed potatoes, and other items not usually recognized as typical Chinese dishes.

 

One summer we took Burton and Livvy, visiting from Nova Scotia, twice to the Mandarin. Livvy is a picky eater. On our first visit she stood with me just aside from the main buffet line, gave a glance down the length of their endless steam table, and wailed, "There's nothing here that I like!"

 

I was patient (I was a good Nana that day) and said there were no rules except that she had to choose at least SOME non-sweet food before she could have dessert. And whatever she chose she had to eat (Nana and Papadino don't believe in wasting food). I left her to her own selections and she returned to our table with a plate of white rice, mashed potatoes, French fries, and a roll.

 

Then she had seconds on all those "foods." Her brother, Burton, took on the role of taster for her and came up with a couple of items he thought she might like to try, just for variety. A sprig of broccoli. One baby carrot.

 

Finally it was dessert time. The Mandarin sets out half a dozen ice cream flavours, and patrons serve themselves as much as they want. Livvy was in heaven. She ate three large bowls of ice cream, one after another. No wonder the Mandarin is her favourite Toronto hangout!

 

 

Copyright 2011 Ann Tudor

www.anntudor.ca
http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com

Oh, those fifties!

I saw a photograph of my past recently. It was a picture from the National Geographic, not a shot from my family albums. And wherever they took that picture, I'm glad I'm not there. But seeing it tumbled me back to the past: the early-50s cars, the drugstore's trumpeting sign of "Borden's Ice Cream" and a fountain with not just Coca-Cola but fountain Cokes, the ones made with Coke syrup (also good for nausea and vomiting, you remember) and seltzer that bubbles out of the faucet into the little curved glass with ice and the syrup. You can have a cherry coke or a lemon coke or a vanilla coke if you want, for no extra charge. And one scoop of Borden's vanilla to go with it, in a metal inverted-cone dish, like a wide, short-stemmed martini glass, the dish lined with a heavy white paper cone. For a dime you get the ice cream and the Coke and the opportunity to sit in the back of the drugstore where the tables are and the teenagers are and you can pretend you're part of the group because for a few minutes, for half an hour, you are.

 

You get your dime by stopping by the family business on the way to the drugstore. You open the unattended register, take out a dime, and write your name and the amount ("Ann--$0.10") on the paper roll that advances when the till is opened. Nowadays, dimes are harder to get.

 

They've remodeled the old Opera House in my home town, I'm told. It's the third floor of the row of street-front stores on the east side of the courthouse square. When I was young it was not an opera house. It was, if anything, a storage space for the street-level stores beneath it. Whose idea was it (and better yet, whose money was it?) that turned it back into an opera house? And now tell me just who will be using it? The days of divas traveling to outlying areas are long gone. Will this become a tourist go-to place? A Vacation Destination? A historical wonder not to be missed? Well, stranger things have happened.

 

Copyright 2011 Ann Tudor

www.anntudor.ca
http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com