Discovering Scuba

On Sunday, my son participated in a Discover SCUBA session at the local swimming pool. The session was held by Kanata Diving Supply and we learned about it through a contact at Scouts. Turns out one of the Scouters is a SCUBA diver and lifetime client of Kanata Diving Supply.

The idea behind the Discover SCUBA session is to introduce individuals to the sport, explain the certification process and allow participants to use the equipment in the safety of a pool -- to test the waters, so to speak.

My son has expressed an interest in SCUBA diving for quite some time. In fact, his goal is to become a marine biologist and, as I found out on Sunday, he needs to be a certified diver to meet the program's entrance requirements. One of the owners of Kanata Diving Supply explained that if the kids got interested early on, they could continue training and become certified dive instructors -- this, she suggested, would be a great way to earn money for college or university. Kanata Diving Supply helps their students find jobs locally or at tropical resorts if that happens to be of interest. Apparently, female dive instructors are in short supply and in high demand - particularly in the Caribbean. Female divers take note.


The session began with an orientation to the equipment -- tank, regulator, buoyancy compensator, pressure gauge, depth indicator, weight belt, fins and mask. The instructor explained the purpose of each piece of equipment and how it works. He explained some of the math and science behind SCUBA diving including dive tables, Archimedes' Principle and Boyle's Law. The most important rule of SCUBA diving? NEVER hold your breath! It's no surprise that children can't participate in the program until they are at least 12 years old. Can you imagine teaching a 10-year old the chemistry and physics associated with diving? Me neither.

After some poolside instruction, the kids put on their fins, masks and weight belts and shuffled over to the shallow end. Once in the pool, they put on the equipment and the instructor came around to review the use of the regulator, buoyancy compensator and pressure gauge. Before putting on their masks, they learned about nature's defogger (saliva) and how to break the seal on their mask without filling it with water. Before submerging, the kids knelt in the water and breathed through their regulator to become familiar with the sound. Once they got comfortable, each child was instructed to lie on his belly on the bottom of the pool. The instructors helped the children adjust their buoyancy compensator until they reached neutral buoyancy which the instructor claimed was the "coolest" part of SCUBA diving.

Once they were comfortable (if they reached that point), the kids paired up with one of the instructors and swam to the deep end of the pool. They stayed submerged there for about 3 minutes swimming the width of the pool before returning to the shallow end.

What an incredible opportunity! We weren't even in the car before he started asking to enroll in the Open Water Diver program. Thing is he's too young to be a buddy, so ideally he should register with two adults. Not that dive buddies are hard to find (Kanata Diving Supply will hook you up with another diver in your area) it's just more convenient to take the course with someone who shares your same level of commitment and interest. Once he turns 15, he's allowed to accompany another diver as a buddy.

We'll have to see. Since it's an entrance requirement for the program he is interested in, it provides a compelling reason for us to comply with his request. Even if he gets his certification and then changes his career path, I can't help but think that it would be a great opportunity to build confidence and acquire new skills and knowledge.

Get a Job!

Well I did it!

I bowed to the pressure of security and economics and got myself a job. The company is called Equator Coffee and I picked up an office position working there from 9-1 each day. OK, OK, it's part time, but it still counts as employment. My creditors will be pleased, as will Revenue Canada. Self-employment I've learned, is not unlike unemployment to banks (at least initially); it makes them skittish and they express that through ludicrous lending rates.

My sister-in-law was trying to help facilitate my return to the workforce (she works with a placement agency). I think I drove her away with my unreasonable demands. Thing is, I have other goals I want to accomplish in my life and right now, a job is a necessary means to a critical end. This realization has come at the end of much reflection, introspection and many visits to the library. I finally get it though and I'm not going to forget it.

This opportunity, I hope, will provide me with a chance to learn the coffee business. I always envisioned myself owning/operating a coffee shop in my golden years. I love coffee and the atmosphere of coffee shops. Not the big chains, but quiet coffee shops where good music is playing in the background and where people are tapping away at the keys of their portable computers. The air is thick with the smell of roasting coffee. Today's newspaper is disassembled; its sections are littered across a half-dozen small bistro tables. The barista is carefully stacking biscotti and croissants in the glass display case. That's my vision.

Equator Coffee purchases its product from fair trade certified coffee cooperatives. Why is this important? Well, first of all it's socially responsible and secondly, it's important to me to work for a company that has goals other than the accumulation of wealth. I figure that I have been blessed with skills and I choose not to waste them by helping the greedy line their own pockets. The first real position I held was working for a very wealthy, very mean man who owned a franchise of food stores. In short, he was an ass, but he did help me arrive at my decision to establish criteria for prospective employers. It's one of the few good things that ever came of that job. Since then, I have been more discriminating in choosing my employment. So far, so good.

If you're not familiar with fair trade coffee, here's the link to Equator Coffee's web site:

http://www.equator.ca/aboutus/fairtrade.asp

I'll keep you updated on my progress. Learning a new job is always fun and exciting and stressful so I'm sure I'll have lots to write about. Wish me luck!

What's Your Sign

Another Blogger, The Patient Flosser, wrote that she had thought (among other things) about putting a nasty poster on her neighbour's door that reads, I AM AN INCONSIDERATE F***. She calls him Stompy and you'll have to read the entire post to decide whether he is deserving of the label or not. Here's the link (it's a quick read):

http://patientflosser.blogspot.com/2007/01/stompy.html

She described this act as "stooping" to his level and dismissed it outright. I, on the other hand, found it to be a very compelling idea. Now, I don't want to get into a discussion about Stompy, because it's easy to rationalize behaviour when we have the luxury of guessing about people's motives, but I am interested in the premise. What if this was one of our social norms? What if we were permitted or encouraged to place posters on the doors of our neighbours? What would the poster on your door say? What sign would you leave for your neighbours?

If you've been reading my entries you would probably guess, as I would, that my signs would say "dirty bathrooms," or "sharp tongue" or "flabby abs" or even "quiet, blogger blogging." The neighbour across the street might leave a poster on my door that says "yummy brownies," or "needs bedroom curtains."

I'd be all over this idea. I'm sure I would mostly use it as an opportunity to reinforce good behaviour through positive reinforcement - that, of course, would be the right thing to do. You know, "nice lawn," "world's best neighbours," "great kids live here," things that convey sweet, warm sentiments. That said, I have been known to have some pretty bad days during which I must harness all my will just to hold my tongue. I'm not sure I'd be as successful at self-restraint if I knew that I had this option available to me. An almost anonymous offensive directed at unsuspecting, but deserving people who push my buttons might be far too convenient an opportunity to pass up. On such a day, I could be lured to the dark side with as little as a sideways glance. Most often I just entertain thoughts of retaliation and am rarely compelled to act, but there have been a few regrettable incidents.

Consider this though; how would we behave if we knew that we were going to wake up the next day to a door full of posters? Would we try to be "cute & cuddly" or "strong but silent" or would we just wake up, pull the signs off the door and shout out defenses to our neighbours? Would we be more kind or more irritable? Would we be more tolerant or less judgmental? Would we concern ourselves more with the actions of others (the posters we're going to make), or pay closer attention to our own behaviours (the posters we find on our own doors)?
Let's ask Stompy.

Stompy, if you knew that your insensitive behaviour was going to result in a socially-acceptable method of public and personal defamation, would you be a little quieter? What's that? Go to hell, you say?

Well, there you have it. It's going to take much more than a sign on the door to curb the enthusiastic shenanigans of Stompy. Maybe a poster fastened to a brick with an elastic....

So tell me, what's your sign?

Thanks, Patient Flosser, for opening up this idea for me. It was a fun one to explore.

Tick, Tick, Ticking of the Doomsday Clock

As I was enjoying my morning coffee yesterday, Canada AM host Seamus O'Reagan told me that the Doomsday Clock has been set two minutes closer to midnight. As of January 17, 2007, the big hand is on the 11 and the small hand is on the 12. Do you know what that means kids? It means that there are only five more minutes until midnight. That's right, five minutes 'til doomsday. Grab your hats and coats and head to the nearest exit. No pushing and shoving please, and don't forget to tip the hat check girl on your way out the door.

"What is the Doomsday Clock?" you ask. Good question. I asked the same one myself.

Seems that back in the late 1940's some pessimistic atomic scientists got together to commiserate about how the whole world was going to hell and I'm guessing that Jack Daniels facilitated the meeting. Somewhere around midnight, I'm betting, one gloomy fellow pitched the idea of a doomsday clock to count down to the end of the world. Of course, back in the 40's they all thought the world would end in a puffy mushroom cloud compliments of the Soviet Union. Lately though, weather anomalies and natural catastrophes have this same group of scientists thinking that mother nature may get us before the nukes do. They are so convinced of this, in fact, that they decided to go ahead and advance the clock a couple of minutes. How bad is it?

Well, since the clock was arbitrarily set at 7 minutes to midnight in 1947, the minute hand has been as far away as 19 minutes to midnight and as close as two minutes to midnight. The chart here illustrates the roller coaster ride of the Doomsday Clock's second hand since 1947 (from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists compliments of Wikimedia Commons).

As you can see, we came awfully close in 1953 when the US and Soviet Union were actively engaged in nuclear testing with only two minutes left before the end of the world. We managed to beat a hasty retreat, turning back the clock over a ten year period until 1968 when France and China pinned on their pennants and joined the nuclear arms race. Since 1968 we've been up and then down, down, down, nearly hitting bottom in 1984 with President Reagan. The furthest we have ever been from total destruction appears to have been in 1991 when the US and Soviet Union signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

Tick, tick, tick and here we are in 2007. Iran is interested in nuclear weapons and North Korea continues testing their weapons in spite of admonishments from their neighbours in the global community. While weapons-grade plutonium cannot yet be purchased with the flash of an age of majority card at your local corner store, it seems to be much more available than it was in the past. As if worrying about Iran and North Korea isn't enough, we now have to be concerned about terrorist groups acquiring and deploying nuclear weapons. In the meantime, environmental stewards of planet earth are trying to control their fossil fuel consumption to avoid punching holes in the ozone layer as glaciers disappear from our northern landscapes. Even as I push my thermostat down to 62 degrees, I am wondering how this one small act can possibly compensate for years of nuclear testing. Surely nuclear tests are more destructive to the environment than a 13-year old, inefficient oil furnace.

Remember when man's biggest enemy was the bubonic plague. Kind of makes you long for simpler days huh?

Here's where I wonder if the clock isn't wrong. Isn't it more like 2 minutes past midnight? Haven't we already demonstrated, through years and years of reckless misuse of power and planet, that we are treating Earth in much the way an irresponsible teenager treats a house when his or her parents are away for the weekend?

Iran and North Korea are like the high school stoners gathered around a bong in the corner of the kitchen smoking up the place; it's unnerving, but it could get worse if they decide to pick a fight with the other kids so everybody leaves the room to talk about them behind their back. Like the high school football team, the United Nations is dancing with all the pretty girls in the living room but some of the players have had too much to drink; they start popping holes in the drywall and the quarterback initiates a game of keep away in the dining room running too fast for such close quarters, stepping on feet and jumping on the furniture. The terrorists are the unexpected party crashers from the rival high school who spray paint graffiti on the white aluminum siding, toilet paper the trees in the front yard and set the doghouse on fire. These unwelcome guests unwittingly unite the kids who agree that its time to call the cops and break up the party...until next time. The kids apologize, pull the Charmin out of the apple trees, and cross their fingers as they swear never to do it again. What happens? They re-offend. Why? Because they have not learned. They have not lost. Not enough. Not yet.

Is the clock wrong? I suppose not. In fact, as long as the minute hand is on this side of midnight, it suggests that we still have time to act. Like a final exam, as the minute hand approaches the appointed hour, both our pulse and our pace quickens. We gather up our things and head to the exam centre because for the next little while, nothing matters except passing that exam. In most cases, the rest of the world all but disappears as the door to the exam room closes. So no, I guess the clock isn't wrong.

My Two New Friends

Let me introduce my two new friends. Cute couple don't you think? I met them in a body sculpting class. I really enjoyed their company so I asked them to move in with me. Here they are getting acquainted with my sneakers.

I have decided to work on strengthening my core and toning my muscles over the next few months. I'm on a budget that doesn't include gym fees, so I'm on my own. I am, as of today, my own personal trainer. I'm already annoying me so I think it's going to be a success.

The exercise ball looks fun sitting there all shiny and purple but it's really quite dangerous to people like me; that is to say, the masses of uncoordinated, balance-free klutzes. The first time I used an exercise ball, I nearly split my head open. I remember observing the posture of the instructor and my body sculpting classmates, placing my ball firmly on the floor and then easing myself onto it's rubbery, rounded top. As I began to fall into the group's synchronized leg-extensions, I promptly lost control of my position and tumbled off the ball onto my mat, inches from my dumbbell. If the instructor knew how close I came to hitting my head on my weight, I think she might not have laughed. I did better with the wall squats and, after a few classes, eventually got the hang of it though she would not allow me to try the walkout so I had to stay on my mat and do push-ups. I consistently held the class trophy for "most wobbly" participant.

The instructor actually squatted on her exercise ball; both feet, knees bent, squatted on her ball. I was mesmerized. It was like watching Cirque de Soleil. OK, so maybe not exactly like that, but I was totally impressed. People stand on these things, I know, but until you try it, you just have no idea how difficult this is. It was the first time I remember wanting to have balance and recognizing what I would need to do to achieve that goal. I need to strengthen my core.

I took to the resistance tubing with much less embarrassment and much more confidence -- lateral raises, tricep extensions, hip extensions and inner thigh stretches. All you have to do is maintain a straight spine and tight tummy while slowly resisting the tubes. Toning is a good goal, I think. I don't want to bend bars of steel but I'd be happy to open a new jar of pickles by myself.

My biggest obstacle, I think, is that I can find just about anything to do besides exercise. I can vacuum, do laundry, read, organize or even blog and lately, I've spent loads of time looking for ways to earn money. What I need, I think, is my old routine which began by waking up at 5:00 (I've been sleeping past 6 since Christmas). Truth be told, I've been procrastinating living lately, and I need to stop which is why I added this entry to my blog.

I attended a workshop a couple of years ago with Robin Sharma (check him out at robinsharma.com) and one of the many valuable things he suggested, was to make our goals public. By announcing our intent to the world (whether that's the whole world, or just our world) it raises our level of commitment. It forces us to action. So here it is friends - my commitment.

No going back now. No sir. I'm just going to finish this blog, vacuum the living room, throw on a load of laundry, finish my book and do up a cover letter for that job over in Almonte. I'll start just as soon I'm done.

Mary Shelley's Ghost Sleeps Here

Not unlike the Bermuda Triangle, there is some mysterious energy force at work in the southwestern corner of my bedroom. Coincidentally, this is the exact location of my nightstand. I anticipate that this claim will be met with some measure of skepticism so I submit this photo as evidence.


Looking at this picture, the room almost appears to tilt into the deep recess of a corner that seems much more expansive than its actual 90-degrees. I assure you, this is not the case. This is simply a physics-defying situation where matter inexplicably gathers in this particular corner of my home. A corner that is neither the lowest point, nor in the general direction of the magnetic north. What's more puzzling still is that the majority of this matter is literary -- novels, magazines, journals, leaflets, references, anthologies.


I disassemble these piles about once a month but find they quickly reappear without explanation. I decided a few days ago that I would once again deconstruct this jenga-like collection of literature to see if I could unravel its mysteries. During this decidedly unscientific investigation, I arbitrarily determined the cause to be this:

My bedside table is haunted by the ghost of Mary Shelley.

"Sure, sure," you say as you roll you eyes. You ask yourself, "Why would Mary Shelley hang out in Ottawa with the Wordpecker?" That's simple. It's because I'm totally cool with it. Besides, what are her alternatives really -- banging around some old castle in England ?


Let's examine the evidence:

• Novel - Dean Koontz - Forever Odd. A book about Odd Thomas, a young man who can see ghosts and, in a limited capacity, communicate with them (though they can't talk back). How can you overlook the implication of this find? Not just any book, but a book about the living communing with the dead. Coincidence? I think not!


• Novel - Stephen King - Cell. A book about the end of the world as we know it, brought about by a pulse communicated through cell phones. Mary Shelley was a famous anarchist philosopher and journalist. I believe that if she were still around, this book would make her top 10 list of good reads.


• InStyle Magazine -- Small Spaces edition. A resource helping you make the very best of your small space would come in mighty handily if you lived in a nightstand. 'Nuff said.


• A leaflet "What You Should Know About the Pandemic." Self-explanatory, but how does it link to Mary Shelley? In 1826, she wrote a novel called The Last Man, about a pandemic that sweeps the globe and results in the end of the world...wait for it...during this century. Clearly she's interested in seeing if her novel was a work of fiction or a chilling prophesy.
  
• An anthology of verse from Athabasca University. Mary Shelley used to chum with the Byrons -- Lord Byron, of course, was a poet. I bet she's taunting him with excerpts from this anthology, communicating with him about how poetry has gone to "hell in a handbasket" since he passed. And trust me, if she's reading from this book, he's spinning in his grave. Some would say it's avant-garde, I think it's a travesty.


• An empty journal covered in caricatures of literary artists from long ago -- Woolf, Bronte, Austen, Platt, etc, etc. Oh, and did I mention Shelley? Uh huh. She's there too. I picture them all gathered for tea on my nightstand while I'm at work.


• Book of Crossword Puzzles. We all need a break from reading now and then and what better way to exercise our minds than to do crosswords? I can tell you that she's a fine speller but she needs to brush up on her geography.


• Current issue of Reader's Digest. This is probably as close as you're going to get to light reading in my home. I don't read The Inquirer or Soap Opera Digest and I don't buy Cosmo or Vanity Fair. Before I subscribed to Reader's Digest, light reading was really just nutrition labels and ingredients lists. I think Mary reads all the jokes first and then goes back and reads the articles.

The remote control, alarm clock, Blistex, reading light, back massager, mask, Tic Tacs and journals are all mine. Mary seems to respect my things which I find very helpful as I play host to her ghost but I'm convinced that she keeps changing the radio station on my clock radio.

So here is the photo that proves that my bedside table can be tidy. Really, I'm not a slob. That's not the problem. Once again, I'm back to the bedside basics but, as always, this phenomenon will reoccur and matter will inexplicably gravitate to this corner over the coming days and weeks. If you are still in doubt, I would be happy to take a picture in three weeks' time to further convince you. In the meantime, I have asked Mary to pay closer attention to her habits reminding her gently that "everything has its place." For now, I'll have to wait and see if she complies.

“My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed - my dearest pleasure when free.” - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Country Music - I'm Trying

Lately, the radio station at work has been tuned to a local country station. On occasion I have found myself absently tapping my feet to an upbeat country song. You have no idea how much it pains me to confess to this. Truly.

I am a huge music lover. If you were to conduct a personality test using my CD collection I'm sure you would leave my living room shaking your head in complete bewilderment. You would find Louie Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Cole Porter, Great Big Sea, Aerosmith, Little Feat, Pink Floyd, DMX and the Black Eyed Peas. If you looked at my computer library, you would find Anthrax, Barry White, Eminem, Frank Sinatra, Jay Chou, Massari, Mythos, Shine Down, Van Morrison and ZZ Top. Music aside, you'll also find Tibetan Monks chanting and soothing sounds of nature including thunderstorms and calling loons. There's a cornucopia of songs and instrumentals available to me at the push of a button. But country?

If I'm being totally honest, I'll admit that I'd be lying if I said I didn't like country music at all. Fact is, I played a song from Wynona at my wedding and remember buying a cassette when I was a teenager from that guy who sings, "I'm Gonna Love You Forever." I can't remember his name, but I remember that he was a drunk and he got in trouble with the law...but then, that could be any country artist right??? Kidding...kinda. I was also big into Vince Gill when he first hit the music scene and think, even today, that he's a pretty stand-up guy. There's another guy, what's his name...ah gee...he wears a big, black cowboy hat...you know...he dresses mostly in black and white. "We Shall Be Free." That guy. I have one of his CDs too.

Last year, around this time, we went with friends to a concert called the Songwriter's Tour featuring Lyle Lovett, John Hiatt, Joe Ely and Guy Clark. I absolutely loved it. I enjoy folk music because it is often rich with characters and stories and I love a good story. This concert was a lot like that. I was particularly impressed by Lyle Lovett who is a soft-spoken, articulate and intelligent performer who quickly established an easy rapport with the audience. While I came expecting to enjoy John Hiatt, I was surprised by my unexpected interest in Lyle Lovett. John Hiatt was good but he forgot the words to some of his songs. The audience helped him along but it impeded the flow of things. Guy Clark had the most marvelous gravelly voice I have ever heard. After each song, he leaned back in his seat, tipped his cowboy hat down over his eyes and appeared to nap until he was called upon to play again. His song The Cape, struck a chord (pardon the pun) with me. It was so hopeful and playful, I fell in love with it. Joe Ely was my least favourite -- sorry Joe, but someone had to come last. I can't argue his talent as a guitar player but, I wasn't fussy on his songs. His stuff reminded me of old country music played at the local fair where drunks danced with their tolerant wives on floors littered with broken beer bottles and trampled cigarette butts.

I swear though, as I sit here, I just cannot understand my dislike for country music. Perhaps I need to better understand my relationship with music in general before I can truly determine the source of my aversion to this genre. Maybe it stirs memories of growing up in a narrow-minded farming community that escaped into its melody at the end of a week toiling under the hot sun. Maybe it's because there is so much "sameness" in country music when what I value, more than anything, is variety. And perhaps, after now having spent 20 minutes on this topic, it's not even worth my time scrutinizing.

I'm trying. Even if it's mostly because the radio is tuned to a country music station and the antenna is broken so the choice is limited.

AHA - Garth Brooks...

...the guy who dressed mostly in black and white.

It was Garth Brooks.

New Year's Resolutions

I know that I should probably give serious thought to committing to a new year's resolution. There are thousands from which to choose:

• lose weight again (did you see that? it says a-gain! :O I feel as though I've already failed)
• get a job (a real one, you know, with bi-weekly paycheques, benefits and tax deductions)
• write a book (I say that every month, never mind every year)
• read more wisdom literature (not just that fiction rubbish from Koontz and King)
• get more interested/involved in my own community (like meeting my neighbours of 10 yrs)
• get more interested in politics (I used to be a young liberal, now just an old cynic)
• save more money (so that I can lose it in the market instead of on stupid things like groceries and insurance and gas)
• get my hair cut every 4-6 weeks regularly (instead of suffering through crazy hair days)
• pay more attention to me (manicures, pedicures, monthly massages, maybe hang a mirror somewhere)
• take singing lessons (I'm not even a little bit serious about that one)
• hug my therapist after every session (kidding...he he he...boo!)

I made a resolution once. I gave up soda for a year. Absolutely NO carbonated beverages for an entire year. No Pepsi, Coke, Ginger Ale, Sprite, 7-Up, Root Beer, Cream Soda, or any other variation or emulation. I did it, and then failed to regain my taste for pop. It's been bottled water and iced tea since then. Thank Heavens for Snapple!

Here's the thing -- if I make a resolution, that's it! I'm committed! Failure is not an option so the only natural thing to do is, well, not make a resolution. It's the only safe answer for this perfectionist, otherwise, I would need to select the best resolution from this list, establish a budget, define my goals, develop a list of expected outcomes, define the metrics to measure my success and, well, you get the idea. It's a big deal.

Check Out These Other Bloggers

I finally spent time at my dashboard and added links to some of my favourite blog sites. You can now find the links in the pane to the right for Outside the Bubble, Grew Up Rural and Thought Spot.

Outside the Bubble is one of the first sites I visited at Blogger.com. Don lives in Montana and often provides some really great pics of the landscape (I have dubbed him Treebowitz...visit his site, you'll figure it out). We have agreed to disagree about the merit of country music.

Through Don, I found Diane's Thought Spot and Grew Up Rural's blog. I provided a link to Diane's site in an earlier post; she provides movie reviews on her blog so check it out. Grew Up Rural is a blog brought to you from New England. We'll commiserate about winter just as soon as the cold weather gets here.

More will be added in the next few days but at this very moment, I am connected at a staggering 28.8 Kbps and, well, it makes the Internet more frustrating than fun.

Thanks again for visiting!

Book Report As Promised

I finished Lynne Truss's book, Talk to the Hand (The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door). She is such an entertaining writer. In the introduction, Truss warns the reader that the book is not a handbook to good manners. In fact, the bibliography boasts a generous list of more than 20 references on manners, etiquette, civility, class and social order which suggests that the book has been written -- many in fact.

Since Truss is a British columnist, I was prepared to tolerate countless references to barbaric North Americans when comparing right & wrong ways to behave in public. I was sure I would endure many stereotypical references to fine English manners throughout the 200-page novel. You can guess that I was pleasantly surprised then, when Truss all but blamed Britain's stiff upper lip for tolerating, if not condoning, the continued social misconduct of its citizens. In fact, she offers a sample of dialogue overhead in a French shop as an example of the ideal formal exchange between customer and customer service. Imagine, the French teaching the rest of us how to be polite!

The ongoing argument seems to be that manners, when used as an indicator of class will, in turn, promote snobbery and condescension. Some suggest that this breeds contempt and perpetuates discrimination and class struggle. Following this thinking, I can only assume that some genius decided it would be easier to dumb-down manners than to break down barriers. I wish that person had consulted my grandmother first. She would have told them to include etiquette in public school curriculum to collectively raise our expectations rather than lower them.

Truss, noted as being the "queen of zero tolerance," helps us understand why such an approach would not be successful in its observance to manners. Philosopher Julian Baggini states that we have "failed to distinguish between pure etiquette, which is simply a matter of arbitrary social rules designed mainly to distinguish between insiders and outsiders; and what might grandly be called quotidian ethics: the morality of our small, everyday interactions with other people." Arbitrary social rules, it has been argued, reasons that "good manners" means "our manners" and therein lies the rub. Let me illustrate using two real-life examples:

1. If you join my family for dinner, the expectation is that you chew with your mouth closed -- whether you do or not, the expectation exists and is enforced by nagging and cool stares. Serving dishes and tools will be provided to help guests dress their plates without risk of cross-contamination OR plates will be dressed in the kitchen and presented to guests at the table. Double-dipping is strictly forbidden and punished by an immediate ejection from the table -- this may sound harsh but we only get the flu once every 10 years or so and I can't help but think it's due, in no small part, to this rule. Each individual will return his/her dinnerware to the kitchen to assist cleanup -- a member of the family will extend his/her guest this courtesy as appropriate.
2. If you join another unnamed family (as I have), you may find yourself eating a meal as people sing, leave the table to dance or watch TV, and even to hoist half of him/herself onto the table for no apparent reason. In this particular household, sitting is considered optional with standing, leaning or any combination thereof, equally acceptable. Condiments are served largely in squeeze bottles encrusted with the dry remains of what appears to be yesterday's offerings. The meal is mercilessly, though unfortunately, concluded with haste by the sounding of a monstrous belch fueled by gulps of air ingested during noisy, open-mouthed voraciousness. The race is to the sofa rather than to the kitchen. The last man sitting is responsible for cleaning the table in a perverse, and reverse, variation of musical chairs.

Two very different meals, both acceptable in their own environment. While you cannot sing at my dinner table, it is a welcome addition to the meals of others. Belching is largely frowned upon at my dinner table, though I have friends who consider this to be one of the highest compliments a guest can offer at the conclusion of a meal. Blowing your nose with one of my linen napkins may get you kicked off my guest list, while another hostess may offer her napkin to a needy guest at the conclusion of his/her sneeze. It's arbitrary. Do you see what I mean?

Rather than serving as a guide to manners, Truss focuses on the "six areas in which our dealings with strangers seem to be getting more unpleasant an inhuman, day by day."

In Chapter One, Truss expresses her longing for social exchanges that involve the words "please," "thank you," "excuse me," and "sorry." On page 61, she says, "Politeness is a signal of readiness to meet someone half-way...and that is why it's so frightening to contemplate losing it. Suddenly, the world seems both alien and threatening -- and all because someone's mother never taught him to say, "Excuse Me" or "Please." Elsewhere in the chapter she describes, in laugh-out-loud fashion, how we feel when we extend a courtesy that is not rewarded with a reciprocal action and/or word of "thanks." Hilarious.

Chapter Two provides a humorous analysis of the newly reconstructed (or is that deconstructed?) customer service industry. In fact, last night I received a call on the telephone. When I picked it up, a recorded voice said to me, "Please hold for an important message, a customer service representative will be with you in a moment." And then it repeated continuously as my potatoes boiled over and my roast dried out in the oven. I hung up after a minute or two because, contrary to the opinion of my caller, I have other things to do besides hold for a caller who is too busy to talk to me. Truss talks about how consumers have become responsible for navigating their way through menus by phone and computer that are less-than effective and which, often, misdirect us in the end to less-helpful consumer representatives. "Can you transfer me to that department?" you ask. "No," comes the dreaded reply, "you'll have to hang up and call this number." I secretly envision the call coming in to the gent in the next cubicle. It makes me nuts!

In Chapter Three, Truss speculates that we were "better off before the term 'personal space' escaped from sociology and got mixed up with popular ideas of entitlement." She uses the examples of private phone calls in public, iPods, and lovers rolling around in a passionate embrace in the long, green grasses of the local park. A friend of mine once confessed that some Saturdays she doesn't even change out of her pyjamas. She dashes to the car in her slippers and pyjamas and visits the local drive-through for breakfast or lunch. Her car is her bubble. I'd personally be too afraid that my bubble would malfunction or run out of gas and force me to duck-walk in ditches back home because of my poor choice of wardrobe. The problem we face in Chapter Three is the old adage of being between the Rock (the offending behaviour) and the Hard Place (offending behaviour required to address the offending behaviour). Is it rude to correct rude behaviour? These days it's not just rude, it's dangerous.

The Universal Eff-Off Reflex is addressed in Chapter Four of the book. This is where Truss describes the "British-US divide" in a conversation she had with a New Yorker on the offensive behaviour of an acquaintance. Using the traditional English reserve, Truss tolerated numerous insulting remarks from a tiresome acquaintance. The New Yorker directed her to take the offender aside and say, "...cut it out, you're being an Effing jerk, and it's not funny." The "Eff-Off reflex" Truss suggests, is relatively new to manners and largely results from us being driven to directness. Its overuse has caused it to become less-offensive than it once was, though I'm not certain that's a matter to celebrate.

In Chapter Five, Truss talks about Booing the Judges and gives the example of a recent heavyweight fight in London. As the announcer pointed out celebrities Paul Simon and Michael Douglas in attendance, the fans booed. They booed! Only Jack Nicholson and Keith Richards received warm applause. What yardstick were they using to measure worth? Why would they measure worth to begin with at a blood-sport? Booing the Judges makes me think first and foremost of bad-boy John McEnroe whose antics served as entertainment for global sports enthusiasts. His apparent disregard for rules and authority helped boost the popularity of what was long considered to be a stuffy old tennis match. After all, everybody watches if they think a fight will break out!

Finally, Truss wraps her book up in Chapter Six -- Someone Else Will Clean it Up. Here she talks about our complete lack of accountability. Truss quotes doctor-writer Theodore Dalrymple who wrote, "When a man tells me, in explanation of his anti-social behaviour, that he is easily led, I ask him whether he was ever easily led to study mathematics or the subjunctives of French verbs." Self-deception is a dangerous liberator of accountability. I recall reading references for parents that cautioned me against confusing "bad behaviour" with "bad children." As argued in chapter six, I think that if a kid keeps making "bad choices" doesn't the risk increase for him to become a rotten apple in the barrel of society? How many bad things does a kid have to do before his parents hand him over to a therapist? And what if, for Pete's sake, it's all due to bad-parenting? Wouldn't that be like an admission of guilt?

All in all, the book is both entertaining and thought provoking. I laughed out loud on more than one occasion and breezed through its 200-pages within a couple of days. It made me consider all of the models of behaviour that my children are exposed to through the course of a day -- teachers, TV shows, literature, Internet, video games, family and friends.

When I went to school, I didn't know any of my teachers' first names and I most certainly never addressed them in that way. (My kids call their gym teacher Mr. T and, no, that's not his name. It's Thomson. It's not even difficult to pronounce. Why Mr. T?) The Internet was a distant dream to a scant few and TV didn't show kissing or profanity. PG meant parental guidance which didn't also mean an uncomfortable explanation to a vague (but not vague enough) reference to a sex act. If you wanted to play a video game you had to choose between PONG and PacMan and my friends' parents were all addressed as Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So.

Today I compete with role models like Bart Simpson, Stewie Griffin and Harry Potter (who, incidentally, doesn't know his own limitations or respect the boundaries established by his professors at Hogwarts) though admittedly, the last example is the least threatening. I know that for every 30-minutes they spend with a smart-alec, they need 30-minutes of re-training or de-programming (depending on the way you look at it).

At this moment, I am in the fortunate position of being able to supervise my children's after-school activities and re-direct as necessary. I am, right now, also in the fortunate position of being able to spend the time I need with them to manage the re-training/de-programming of which I speak. This is a powerful and priveleged position because, I believe now more than ever, that the diminishing role of the family is a chief cause of many of these effects. We rely on our teachers and TVs to raise our children and instill our values without any real investment of our time. With both parents working, single parents stretched twice as thin, and children self-studying social skills, is it any surprise that our outcomes are flawed? No, it certainly is not.

I urge you, buy the book. If for no other reason, you can hand it to your kid and ask them to read it when they get home from school...right after the Simpsons.