How I Lost My Cool

How I Lost My Cool

I lived in Toronto for years, working for a television station called Citytv and never going beyond the borders of St.Clair to King and Beaches to Bathurst. Mine was the world of restaurants, taxicabs, fancy coffee and lots of after work cocktails.

I never saved a cent and didn’t care, had my own one bedroom apartment and spent 98 percent of my time analyzing me, me and more me. I had previously spent years as an independent modern dancer, a license to print money if I ever saw one and after deciding it was time to put my twenty seven year old bones out to pasture I took a job at the uber cool Citytv in the heart of Queen St. West. The fact I had no experience didn’t concern them a bit. My interview for the position of film editor went something like this,

Man- Do you have any experience in editing or television?

Me- Well, …no.

Man- what have you been working at?

Me- Modern dancing and bartending.

Man- where did you go to school?

Me- National Ballet School.

Man- what degree does that give you?

Me- A PHD in mind-fuck.

Man- can you start training on Monday?

Me- Yes

So began my illustrious career. I learned my craft quickly and started to set little challenges for myself like seeing how much Alan Alda I could cut out of Mash and still have some semblance of storyline intact.

You try it, not as easy as it sounds. Drinking at lunch was not only accepted but expected and dating anyone outside of work was unthinkable. Fishing from the company dock? No problemo. Work was a playground filled with fun cool people, not so fun cool people, not so cool fun people and tumultuous on air personalities. It was the era of big hair and screwing the pooch. I was in heaven. I was making up for lost time after years of psycho discipline and self-denial; I was there for the taking. I made good friends and instant co-conspirators. I found my posse of like- minded girlfriends and there was no stopping us.

We cemented our kinship by developing a series of games to get us through the work week like taking current affair stories and casting them as a “Movie of the Week” with our co- workers in lead roles. Or reversely taking B-list celebrities and casting them as co-workers. Try it, it’s amazing how much time it shaves off a work day.

Friday nights might find us drinking wine, watching the real estate channel while playing drinking and dialing. This of course could only be played before the days of call display. We commiserated over the series of lousy bastards we dated, smoked, quipped and mused. Option 2 , hours in the local pub directly across from work where co-workers converged to drink, beef, smoke, seduce, regret, speculate and talk a truck load of trash.

Years passed in this maze of gluttony until I approached the age where you either settle down, have a child or you don’t. There comes a time when you have to either leave Citytv or become a fifty-year old wandering the halls of Much Music looking like the parent of new employees or in some cases actually being the parent of a new employee. I decided to settle and made the appropriate changes to do so though now in retrospect, wandering the halls of MM doesn’t look so bad.

This involved finding a steady relationship, buying a house, getting a dog (a valuable precursor to parenthood) having a baby and a year later getting married. Some people choose a different order but I found this worked best for me. As I was strolling through my neighborhood on Queen St. East with my newborn, a life-changing event occurred. It was a typical day, dodging the neighborhood mascots, Pit Bulls and Rottweiler’s. As I strolled along, minding my own business, a man swerved past me and said “Hey baby, hey baby, hey baby” Normally I would welcome this sort of attention especially after being housebound with a baby locked to my breast for the past eight weeks. But this particular day, I wasn’t in the mood for a drooling drunk come on and told him politely to piss off.

He then followed me for three blocks calling me a bitch and asking me who I thought I was. How quickly the tables turn. It was then I realized enough was enough and went home to call my future husband and announce we were moving out of town as soon as possible. I shared my decision with my family who chuckled knowingly in a “yeah right” kind of way. My friends assumed it was some kind of attention getting ploy or new mother hormonal thing that would pass as soon as I could fit into my jeans again. I was dead serious. No more line-ups, mean dogs, packed streetcars, minimalist restaurants, eight-dollar sandwiches for me. We moved an hour north of Toronto to a little known mecca called Barrie. Surrounded by Lake Simcoe it had a quaint downtown, picturesque waterfront and cheapo real estate. We now had a huge backyard, detached 3-bedroom Century home and a driveway all for way less than we paid for a hovel in the city. It also had Costco, Home Depot, and every other franchise that has become the death of small town Ontario. To make matters worse, five minutes after we arrived, Barrie was coined the “fastest growing city in Canada.” It took me years to make the leap to small town living that I’d always craved and I land in the fastest growing city in Canada. I justified this move by the fact that Chum had another station in Barrie so it would be a breeze to transfer to a smaller version of Citytv. Not so. I did cover a six month maternity position at the local station and to my surprise discovered an eighties time warp where not only the staff hadn’t changed in twenty years, but ideas hadn’t changed in twenty years and they were suspicious to say the least of anyone coming in from the city.

People that actually spoke to me seemed to have a look in their eye that said ,“We’re on to you” Or perhaps they were just on to me. I may as well have been working at the Bank of Montreal for the creative energy that flowed through the building. Not that I blame them, forced to work in a bunker shaped building on top of a hill surrounded by new subdivisions. Besides, people hung on to their jobs like dogs to bones and there was virtually no turn over so the chance of employment there was non-existent. Note to self… a little research into the new city you plan to move to never hurts.

Still my friends in the city were only an hour away and it was a novelty for them to come up on weekends, sit in my huge backyard and drink in a different location. This wore off fairly soon and I started to resort to threats and bribery to entice weekend visitors.

Four years later, I made a couple friends… lost a couple friends. I started lining up at Tim Horton’s drive thru like the rest of the residents, bought a Costco membership and didn’t even blink when a second Walmart opened in the fastest growing city in Canada. Sweatpants became acceptable shopping wear and I no longer wore make-up unless I was going to work or a social event. In other words, rarely. Occasional outings to a Keg or Jack Astors started feeling like special occasions; I no longer occurred to me to make smarty-pants comments when the waiter wrote his name in crayon on the tablecloth. I started taking yoga classes at the community center taught by a local musical theater actress. She not only taught using a head microphone but talked incessantly, announcing her upcoming appearances in Jesus Christ Superstar while the class tried to find their inner being. The old me would have had a festival with that one but the new me mentally took note of the ticket prices.

On my rare trips to the city I’d marvel at how dressed up people were and how late they ate dinner. Barrie restaurants are packed at 5:30 pm, I no longer could hold out for the trendy 8:30 sitting. Without even realizing it, I was losing my cool. It all hit full force while visiting a friend in the Bloor West Village. She had a few friends and neighbors over and we drank wine as they talked of Revue cinemas and subtly name dropped while referencing the fascinating career tracks they had taken. We spoke of the decline of civilization largely due to the influx of reality television. I nodded in agreement, not daring to confess that I’ve watched every incarnation of Big Brother and the incomparable Temptation Island. I slowly started to pick up on the fact that no one had the slightest interest in what I did. It was that obvious.

A guest began talking about how useful a coffee holder made specifically for bike handles would be and how he should approach Tim Horton’s about this idea. Another guest immediately piped in with “ I hardly think Tim Horton’s is the crowd you’d see riding bicycles through the city, you’d have to talk to Starbucks for that idea”. We all laughed and she looked me straight in the eye and said,“Sorry if I stepped on any toes” Just like that. Sorry if I stepped on any toes. There was no one sitting even remotely close to me so the implication was unmistakable. Even though I had carefully chosen my outfit to appear careless yet put together, I had Tim Horton’s written all over me.

The rest of the afternoon passed in a fog as I couldn’t recover from that simple sentence “ Sorry if I stepped on any toes” I got into my car to head back to the fastest growing city in Canada, the floor of my car littered with Timmy Ho empties and took a good hard look at what I had become. I had lost my cool in a big way and once it’s gone you can’t just summon it back. And how long can you really remain cool unless your name is Leonard Cohen? I’m not sure I could turn back if I wanted to. A whole new world had opened up involving newspaper inserts, parkas, large unattractive footwear that cuts through mountains of snow and an HBC card. I have bought furniture at a grocery store and my toilet paper comes in Club Packs of twenty-four. I drove everywhere, including my son’s school, which is one block away.

I developed a rarely discussed condition called Denialarexia. This is when you are actually fat but look in the mirror and see a thin person. Symptoms include confusion when sales clerks lead you to the plus sizes, waistbands on all pants and a delusion that after four glasses of wine, nothing has calories. I had a ten-minute conversation the other day comparing outlet malls in different cities. Yes, I’m afraid I’m a goner.

Some years have passed since my sojourn in Barrie and I have upgraded to the Niagara Region. Outwardly, cooler for sure. The Region, a tourist mecca with world class theatre, casinos, spectacular landscape and the “you can’t walk fifty paces without kicking a wine bottle” bonus. Cross border shopping, tender fruits, bike paths and golf courses a plenty. I haven’t even mentioned the “Falls” don’t even have to because I am filling the list with so many other sophistications that it seems redundant. I can barely stand my good fortune and friends now drip with envy when I reveal my new locale.

But, it’s a bit like Dorothy when she discovers the wizard behind the curtain. Sure it looks good from the outside but wander a bit infield and things begin to blur. My kid is considered odd because he hates sports; I’m apparently the only single woman of my age in the entire Region. I attended a modern dance show last weekend (by myself of course) and I and the other 8 people in attendance enjoyed it immensely. I took myself out for a glass of wine afterwards to discuss the performance in more detail. When you sit in a bar/restaurant by yourself in a city, you are suave, when you sit in a bar/restaurant in a small town you are a cougar. My doctor thinks I’m insane and kids call each other faggots. You see, I love small towns they just don’t love me back. So I’m thinking it may be time to return to the dirty, stinkin, “Queen St. thinks it’s tough” city. At least when you’re being an asshole in Toronto, chances are pretty good there is an even bigger asshole standing 3 ft. away from you so it is deflected.

I’ve started sneaking back in once a week or so to test the waters. Don’t stay too long, just take a few meetings, wander the streets until I start feeling obvious and then get the hell out. My old Citytv cohorts and I have reconnected on facebook and are now quipping online like the good old days. We met for a reunion recently and the good news is I’m not the only one who has aged and there are actually single people of my era out there in the world. I took myself out to dinner and it didn’t raise an eyebrow, in fact there were 4 or 5 other like- minded diners. We could have all joined tables and had a dinner party but the point is we didn’t have to. I have recently made it until 10pm before someone gave me a questioning glance but the fact that I didn’t give a shit makes me think I’m almost ready. But make no mistake, when I return it will be with my old friends Tim Horton and the Real Housewives of NY, NJ, Atlanta and Orange County.