Make My Day. No, Really.

I've now established a reliable route from home here that usually takes less than 40 relaxing minutes on the streetcar.

Today, I caught all my transfers. When I transferred onto the King car, the streetcar was pretty full at the front, of couse, with empty seats at the back. I 'scused my way to the back of the streetcar and sat down. I got to enjoy the empty seat beside me for five or six stops and then, in front of Roy Thomson Hall, the streetcar stopped and commotion erupted. A transit guy stood at the stop, surrounded by a teeming mass of eight year olds.

He looked like a purple mountain rising out of a roiling sea of children. His face looked like it was buried in a cloud The kids started to get on the streetcar. Everyone
who had planned to get off at the next stop to board the subway quickly made the decision to flee before the children got on. The car emptied. I would have done the same but the walk was too far. All I thought of was the smell, filth and noise that come with hordes of kids. And me with an empty seat next to me.

The car filled up with miniature people, their heads bobbing as they spilled down the aisle, the familiar noxzema-like smell of elementary schools everywhere wafting onto the streetcar.

I dutifully put my laptop in my lap and gazed forlornly out the window. It would only be 5 stops or so to my destination, so I steeled myself to ignore the inevitable rush of noise and set my attention to the outside world.

But a little girl, thankfully clean, sat down next to me.

"What's your name?" she said.

"Jared," I said.

A small hockey brat sat in front of me. He was the kind of kid who probably beat up other kids and he reminded me of the kids who picked on me in grade two. When the kids sat down he wouldn't let another girl sit down next to him so the teacher sat with him. He was scowling.

But it didn't matter. The little girl who said hello had somewhat charmed me out of my crusty shell. "Are you on a field trip?" I asked.

"Yeah. We went in there and saw LOTS of MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS."

"What grade are you in?" I asked.

"Two."

"So how old are you?"

The brat in front turned around. "I'm EIGHT!"

The girl said "I'm seven, turning eight this year."

Another little girl from behind us stuck her head between me and my seatmate. "I'm seven but I turn eight this year too."

"Where are you going?" the little girl asked me. I gave up. I laughed. I just couldn't fight it any more.

"To my office," I said.

"You have an OFFICE?" she asked. She leaned forward to look me in the eye and see if I was lieing.

"Yes!" I responded, which is not entirely true. It's Shelley's condo.

One of the teachers interjected, speaking to the kids. "The office! That's not as much fun as a field trip, is it!"

They all ignored the teacher and continued to stare at me. "Do you have kids of your own?" my seatmate asked.

"No," I said.

"Why NOT?"

"I'm not old enough!"

"How old ARE you?"

"I'm twenty-nine."

"That's old enough to have kids."

"Well I guess I'm not ready."

She nodded sagely then stared into space. The hockey brat, who had behaved very well since the teacher sat down, called the girl's name. He made a series of gestures with his arms, ending with that face where you put your thumbs and forefingers in a ring around your eyes.

"Huh?" she said, looking at him.

He did it again. He knew what he was up to. He was doing it because she didn't know what it meant. Neither did I. But he knew. It was obviously something that would get him in trouble, because he was keeping a close eye on the teacher, who had since fixed her attention elsewhere.

"I don't get it," said the girl next to me, looking resigned and vaguely annoyed with his tactic.

"Me either," I said, commiserating. "This is my stop!"

Those kids made my day.

Teal Capris

One day, shortly after moving to Toronto, I was riding the streetcar from furniture window shopping at Queen and Roncesvalles to my house. It was a beautiful late summer day, not crazy hot as Toronto had been just days before. I had just walked through Parkdale and hopped on the Queen car near Ossington. When I got on, I pushed past the clusters of people at the front of the car and moved toward the back. I sat in the living-room like area at the back of the car.

The entire rear section of the car was empty, and it was one of the rare cars with a single row of seats on the drivers side, and a double row on the passenger side. Just at the front of that single row, next to the doors, sat one other lone passenger, who had a shopping cart and was gazing out the window. I was still soaking in the Toronto experience and felt, for some reason, that this man was worth observing.

He seemed very fit, with a lean face and a long pointy nose, quite alert, and although initially I thought he was reasonably dressed, I realized after a few moments that the teal capri pants he was wearing looked an awful lot like my grandmothers teal capris: polyester, finely tapered at the bottom, pleated at the top. Likewise, that loudly printed shirt of his seemed, in fact, to be a lady's blouse. He had long, stringy but groomed grey hair that began at the rear of a fully bald crown. The straw hat, which he held in his hand, and his flat-footed canvas shoes, could have been mens or womens clothes. Other than some unusual fashion choices, he seemed quite well composed. I watched for any sign that he might be somehow unwell, or perhaps simply aware that he was dressed in culturally inappropriate clothing and might attract attention as a result. He gave no signs.

Gradually I lost interest in him. Something was not quite right with him, but that was all. He sat, looking out the window and back into the car, a little bit impatient at the speed of the streetcar - but who isn't? His angular face betrayed a vague, simmering anger, some frustration. His eyes darted back and forth like a bird's eyes searching for breadcrumbs in the grass.

We stopped at Bathurst and a string of people got off the car. The driver inched forward. The light went red again and we screeched over the iron rails to stop at the light.

Before the car came to a halt, the man leapt out of his seat, jumped into the air and grabbed the safety railing by the door. He perched on the banister leading down to the door, and with his hands, gripped the vertical rail. Then he cawed like a tropical bird, CAW, CAW, and pivotted on his feet. He swivelled and hit the door with his shoulder, triggering the safety alarm on the streetcar. Ring! CAW! Ring! CAW! Ring!

"Sir," said the streetcar driver, giving the man a look of authority in the mirror. The light turned green. "SIR!" The streetcar advanced through the light. As we began to roll, the bird-man jumped back off the railing and sat down, resumed looking out the window.
I got off at the next stop and never saw the man again.

Ignatius J. Reilly

One cool morning in mid October, I stood, waiting for my streetcar to arrive at the disreputable Toronto corner of Jameson and King.

It was early morning, often the time when the most seemingly respectable characters in the neighbourhood are out doing their thing, generally on their way to or from somewhere. On this morning a large crowd had gathered in wait for the always infrequent King streetcar, and when it pulled up to Jameson and stopped with a clang, the crowd, chilly on a cool winter morning, melded itself into a bunch around the door and slowly squeezed in. As I stood in the middle of that bunch, waiting for my turn, I heard him.

"Parkdale used to be the Rooosedale of Toronto, you know. Then the rich people took it all away. They put up the highway and the rich people went away, you know."

This was a bit of Toronto lore I had just been reading about, having recently moved from picturesque Cowan Avenue to the lively, but disreputable Jameson. I was interested to hear what this orator had to say, so I turned as I got on the streetcar and saw a very large man, yes, in a hunting cap, a billowing cream-coloured down coat, with a perfectly trimmed beard, recently scrubbed rosy cheeks, and a pair of resin-rimmed far-sighted glasses. His little lips pinched together as he related the sad story of the downfall of one of Toronto's most liveable neighbourhoods, lost when the Gardiner turned Parkdale from a picturesque lakeside community to a place sandwiched between the freeway and the northbound train tracks. He said all this as he was getting on the streetcar.

Annoyance was clear on the face of many who received this man's message, so I was naturally interested to hear what else he might say. I settled into a seat just far enough back from him to hear what he was saying without putting myself at risk of being talked to directly.

However, rather than explain anything new, my new friend simply reiterated, in a less and less sensible fashion, the story of Parkdale's downfall.

Finally, after twenty minutes of his nonsensical diatribe (which I was nevertheless enjoying), one of the young women standing closeby told him what she thought of his opinions.

"Shut up. Shut UP! You don't know what you're talking about!" She railed on at him for a good minute, and while she spoke, his cheeks got redder, his lips pressed ever tighter together. A storm was brewing within. Then she finished. Her friend looked on.

"Noooo, YOU shut up," he said, firmly but calmly. "You don't know what YOU'RE talking about." Then he shut up.

The girl who had given him a piece of her mind stood on the steps of the streetcar, about to get off. Her friend, the witness, was standing with her back to the man, who was seated in the frontmost seats of the rear section. The friend's backpack dangled, swinging dangerously close to the man's face. I could see his cheeks reddening again, and he pursed his lips. Just as the girl was about to get off the streetcar, he spoke, again with perfect enunciation, just loud enough for her to hear.

"Yooooour backpack." He paused, then spat every word with the venom of true "Look at it. It's filthy. I hate it."

Then, not a word until I reached the bank.

Something about this strange, bloated man appealed to me. Perhaps it was his love of cleanliness, long words and perfect enunciation. Whatever it was, I relayed the story to friends and family over and over and it almost always ended in laughter. "Your backpack" became a popular refrain in conversation. As with all such stories, after a while I began to feel guilty about using his misfortune for humour. All the same, I desperately wanted to see him again, but hadn't. Usually you see eccentric characters in the same place, at the same time, but on no other morning on my way to work did I see this man again.

Three months later, I was shopping with my business partner in the natty No-Frills at the end of Jameson. I was rolling my two-wheeled cart along the produce as we discussed the disappearance this mystery man. She, along with several others, had the idea that this man was Ignatius J. Reilly from Confederacy of Dunces. I was almost ready to accept that he had been a morning hallucination caused by lack of sleep, when I turned the corner from avocados to the pickle shelves and lo, I wheeled my cart in front of a bilious, ambling man. I looked up from the heavy boots to the down coat and hunting cap, and there he was. I had nearly run over his feet and had stopped him mid-stride, and worse, I had done so while we were laughing about him. I was sorely concerned that the lips would purse, and the cheeks would redden, and I would be the victim of a sour diatribe.

Instead, he cocked his head to the side and said, "Hulloo," in a singsong voice, with that perfect enunciation, then pranced lightly around my cart.

I never saw him again.