party of one

so i just got back from lawrence plaza (or is it lawrence square?) on this, the most hottest of hot days. i'm talking about that really crappy mall near lawrence and allen road, by the way. anyhow, i had to renew my vehicle license plate sticker thingy (135 bucks, kids!) using one of those service ontario kiosks. i was a bit hungry, too, so i decided to stop by the fortinos inside the mall and grab a bite to eat. i ordered the chicken fingers and fries (even though they're called chicken strips and wedges at fortinos... those snobs). then i pulled up a chair in the seating area so that i could enjoy my chow in relative peace and quiet.

as i was laying into my grub, i began to stare at all of the passers-by (or is it passer-bys?) making their way through the world's crappiest mall. as a result, i was reminded of a game my mother and i used to play at yorkdale when i was much younger, say 15 or 16 years old. what would we do? well, we would sit in the food court and count the number of attractive people who would walk by over the course of an hour. yes, i know it sounds kinda shallow and pathetic, but it was fairly cheap entertainment and it did pass the time rather efficiently.

anyway, back to lawrence plaza (square?) and lunch at fortinos. (wow, my two-year-old just asked me to play mamma mia on youtube. the kid is obsessed with abba. imagine that. my daughter knows maybe 200 words and two of them are mamma and mia.) as i watched the local gentry stroll to and fro, i began to undergo what some would describe as an out-of-body experience. suddenly and without warning, i found myself floating above the seating area at fortinos looking down on all of the patrons, including myself. and what a wonderfully surreal feeling it was. initially i spotted the lady seated next to me just as she accidentally knocked her plate of food onto the floor. at first it looked like a dish of thinly-sliced cucumbers but upon closer inspection, i was able to identify the mystery vegetable as zucchini. i also observed a trio of businesswomen sitting down for lunch. one was thumbing it on her blackberry. one was digging into a thermos filled with some sort of stew. and the third, i swear to you that the third was busy checking me out. (i guess my hair looked pretty good this morning.) i also spied an elderly couple huddled around a table for two. they were sipping on free coffee refills. they looked like they had been sitting there for quite some time, perhaps an hour or so. but they seemed content. (maybe they were keeping tabs on the number of attractive people walking by.)

just then, and still suspended in mid-air, i recognized andrea bocelli's "con te partiro" blaring over the supermarket's pa system. (maybe it had something to do with all of the italians who shop at fortinos.) and it was at that precise moment that my floating, out-of-body self began to focus on my seated, chicken-finger-and-fry-eating self way down there on the floor below. and suddenly i was a boy again, playing catch in my backyard on goldenwood road with my best friend, michael. and then i was a teenager again, riding shotgun in the soupmobile (long story) driven by the one and only, jayman. and then i was a first-year student at osgoode hall, crouching in the corner of the quad and deliberating over whether or not i had made the right decision in choosing law as a career. and then i was walking down the aisle in the somewhat-sketchy wedding chapel at north york civic centre (hey, we couldn't exactly get hitched in a church or a synagogue, now could we?), sweating like a stuffed pig. and then i was standing next to my wife in the maternity ward at women's college, right after our first child had just been delivered, sobbing from both emotion and hunger as i hadn't eaten for hours because seven had taken her damn sweet time making her grand entrance into the world.

and then, just as suddenly as my out-of-body experience had begun, it was over.

i think i know why i underwent this experience today, as opposed to yesterday or tomorrow or some time next year. i think it had something to do with a piece i read last night. in any event, i guess it was time for me to confront these feelings at last. and now i have.

so what is the point to all this silliness? because i truly believe that all good prose should come with a point - a message, a moral, a call to action, something that speaks to the reader on a personal level. on an emotional level. so what then is the point of this post?

um... i'll get back to you on that one. for now, i hope the following will suffice:

"oh, and by the way, you know when you're telling those little stories of yours? here's a good idea - have a point. it makes it so much more interesting for the listener." - planes, trains and automobiles (1987)

the song that inspired a post: