Goat of Arms

Does anyone else remember when McCain's started to put frozen meals into ice-cream containers and how weird it was the first time you saw it in the grocery store. At some point we all just accepted this madness. Now when we notice it and think it's Rolo flavored goodness and then realize it's a beef stir fry we just shrug and move on. It's a sad, sad world.

When I was really little, maybe 6, I remember this kind of green taffy that I would get from a "corner store" in Cambridge Ontario. I think it had the word Jungle in the name. I can vividly remember sitting in the back seat of the K-car eating this green shit and looking through that Scholastic book flyer. Fuck did I ever want the issue of Hot Dog magazine with the picture of Garfield on the cover. I'd even settle for a copy of Dynamite with Garfield on the cover. Really any magazine with Garfield on the cover would do. Just not an actual Garfield book as those were fucking boring.

Cambridge was where I lived when my father died. My mom and him were split up and he was back in ye olde Thunder Bay when he started the family business (that's a metaphor, you figure it out). I really only have like three memories of him that all involve visits after extended periods of time without seeing him. I never made the connection that my parents were split up until I was in my early 20's and my sister told me. Here be, the memories three:

1. We're picking him up at the airport and it's rainy and foggy out.

2. I'm at my grandmas house, it's night but everything has that yellow-orange glow from the 1970's lamp shades and tinted glass. He hands me this large plastic police car with a cb-radio thing on the trunk that's some kind of microphone. It makes lights and sounds. I remember them all sitting quietly on the sofa not really saying anything and then him leaving again.

3. I remember being in a large indoor public pool with huge beach balls and plastic duck decoys everywhere. I remember feeling trapped under some kind of large plastic ball and feeling like I was going to die. I don't actually remember my dad in the memory but more as being present during that memory.

I don't know if I've ever told anyone that before, especially number 2. It sounds sad but I don't remember him as anything other than a fuzzy event. The green taffy called Jungle Rot or something like that has more meaning in my life. It wasn't Jungle Jollies I don't think. Whatever, it was sticky and it was good.

I have a bunch of Cambridge memories but I only ever went back through there once a few years ago and never got out of the car. For whatever reason when I think about my childhood, especially before moving to Stoney Creek, I always feel this insane weight of guilt pressing down on me. I was almost certainly a shitty kid even though I was very quiet and shy in public. Actually most of the memories that are family related cause this sensation of guilt. Even the memory of standing in line with my mom at the Cambridge Hi-&-Zells starring at the Critters poster with the hairy monster and wanting so very much to see it. Mom my was reluctant about those kinds of films after letting me watch Howard The Duck and seeing the duck boobs. Why would a bird have mammaries? I wonder if they felt guilt too?

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