Happy birthdays to us.

A few years ago (discerning readers who know me well will be able to figure out exactly how many years) I was working with a group of grade one students. Their assignment was to create a dragon with its unique traits, appearance, likes and dislikes and so on. I asked a boy about his dragon, and the first thing he said was that it was 49 years old. “Forty-nine,” I said. “That's exactly how old I am!” Instantly, the entire table dropped their pencils and stared up at me. “You're forty-nine?” said the boy. “I only said that because it was the biggest number I could think of!” I laughed, said, “Oh, there's lots of bigger numbers than that.”

I guess it shouldn't be a surprise how often really young children are shocked by our tremendous years. They often can only count up to twenty, and unless they have grandparents around celebrating birthdays with them don't know anyone who admits to being much over forty. Every one of their own precious years seems to have taken an eon to achieve. So forty-nine, yes, that's huge.

It's huge and it's also wonderful, and it bothers me that this idea gets so little purchase in our culture. When I told the dragon story in the staffroom later, the “biggest number I could think of “ line elicited a gigantic intake of breath, as if I was telling the story to illustrate how cruel children are or something. I think the people listening to me were imagining how they themselves would have felt if a child had said that to them. I'll be fair – for a long time I would have had that kind of reaction to the question “why are you so fat?” Innocently meant, but hard to feel neutral about if it's something that you are ashamed of. I think that a lot of people do feel ashamed of being old and assume that others feel the same way. I don't know how many times I've heard a person make an off the cuff remark to someone like, “oh, but you're older than I am,” only to apologize afterward. Yes, I am older than you. And you are younger than me. What's to apologize for? Age is a fact, not a character flaw.

What really surprises me is that the baby boomers have not embraced this idea yet. Their massive demographic presence has had so many positive effects on our culture. Think of the conversation around creating retirement and nursing homes that are humane and person (rather than institution) centred, the push for more investment in good palliative care, the ubiquity of classic rock stations.... well, maybe not so much that last one.

A quick aside: I hear some of you out there asking yourselves, “Isn't she a baby boomer too?” No, I am actually not. I am a member of Generation X . The term was coined by Douglas Coupland in his book of the same name, where he writes of the struggle that he and his friends had coming of age only to find that all the grown-up jobs were held firmly in the grasp of the baby boomers and that the best they could manage with their B.A.s was a job temping in the companies where they aspired to have real careers. Douglas Coupland is one year younger than I am. Therefore I am, like him, a member of Generation X. You slightly younger folks are free to assume the term Gen. X for yourselves. Whew, I've been wanting to get that off my chest for awhile! Back to my main point.

So the generation that precedes mine has continually set a cultural tone that serves their agenda. Yet our aging boomers are among the worst at really embracing the philosophy that age is a good thing. At best, they will say, getting older isn't the problem, it's looking older, as they sign up for another yoga class, another session with an esthetician. Apparently this is much worse in the U.S. An excellent writer and memoirist whose work I love, Catherine Gildiner tells of going back to that country for her 25^th high school reunion and having more than one tanned, tight-skinned woman pull her aside and ask whether there was such a thing as hair dye in Canada! Seems it didn't occur to them that anyone would willingly allow their gray hair to show. Oh, our American cousins...

One teacher I work with, a baby boomer, explains why she started dying her hair a few years ago. She says that if she shows her gray, her students will see only that and dismiss her as being old and unworthy of attention. Well, I think it's our job to dispel, not acquiesce to, such ideas. Why not present yourself as a wise elder, holder and dispenser of much knowledge? As I often tell my kids, right before they can verbalize their shock at my newly revealed great age (52. And a half) “Just think of how much I've learned in all these years!” Our age should be considered a badge of honour, of courage, an indication of experience lived and wisdom gained. So come on, boomers, don't be scared. It's a number. It's yours. It's okay.

The town that death (or at least dyeing) forgot

This summer I was back in my old home town staying at my brother's place and helping him spruce up the patio. I decided that the white wicker chairs would look sharper if the cushion covers were a dark shade of red instead of the dusty rose that they had always been. No problem – the covers are cotton, a simple run through the washing machine with some Tintex and we're done.

The next time we were at Jean Coutu, I looked around for that little mini-display of fabric dye which every drug store I know has hidden somewhere. It's that “somewhere” which is the biggest challenge in obtaining dye. It doesn't really fit into any standard category of product. It's like shoelaces or lint rollers. Asking for help is always my last resort, even in stores where sales assistants are in abundance. My general strategy in any large store is to look absolutely everywhere until my head is aching and my temper is frayed and then finally track down someone doing price checks and ask where the HELL do you keep the artichokes?? (My other bete noire, categorization-wise). It's implicit in my tone of voice and the fiery look in my eyes that I would like to curse the whole retail industry as I meekly follow the guy in the smock to aisle 4. So at Jean Coutu I finally did deign to ask one of the salesclerks where the fabric dye was kept, only to be told that they don't carry it. (Stay with me, this story has a big payoff at the end.)

All week, the same thing happened. Home Hardware (in my neighbourhood the ultimate source of rainbow hued fabric dye), Canadian Tire, the grocery store, Dollarama, Giant Tiger. At GT I was told that they used to carry it but don't any more. At this point I am beginning to suspect that there is a town by-law that forbids the alteration of fabric colours and speculate as to the rationale of such a law. I know when I lived there in the eighties and was attempting to create a pseudo-punk look, we used to dye things all the time. Ask my cousin about the time she cooked a goose for a big family dinner and realized that she was using the same roast pan in which she had dyed a skirt after the gravy inexplicably came out a shade of sick greasy blue. Maybe that kind of thing created a backlash against colour modification, and the town fathers decided that, damn it, if God had wanted you to wear purple long johns, he'd have made them that way.

Finally my brother and I are at Shopper's and we run into an acquaintance working there who is a virtual oral historian of the availability of fabric dye in this small town. Who used to carry it, when they stopped, and most importantly, which store is the final hold-out in this town-wide prohibition on fabric dye. It's Buckaroo's, just down the street, but unfortunately they closed at 5:00 and we'll have to wait until tomorrow to go. (Hang in, I'm almost done..)

Next afternoon, we go to Buckaroo's. I do my usual aisle-wandering, which in a dollar store is never a bad thing anyways. Finally I go up to the cash and ask the man working there where they keep their fabric dye. He gestures with his head behind where I'm standing, and sure enough, directly across from the cash is that once-familiar looking rack of Tintex fabric dye. As I pick up two boxes of crimson dye and he rings them through, I express my surprise at the odd choice of location, so close to the cashier. He laughs and tells us that they have to keep the dye where they can keep an eye on it because (punchline!) it gets shop-lifted if they don't! Shop-lifted! My mind is a-whirl with conflicting thoughts at this startling piece information. Well, of course it gets shop-lifted! The town has created a virtual black market for the stuff, like blue jeans in Soviet Russia. Then I think, maybe it's the other way around. Maybe all the other retailers were losing money and on the brink of bankruptcy by carrying this valuable commodity and having it walk out the door stuffed down the boot tops of local criminals. Which is chicken, which egg?

All I know is that for the rest of my visit, I was looking askance at anyone wearing an oddly coloured piece of clothing. And that included my bohemian nephew. So where exactly did you buy those red pants, Ryan? 

Novembrance Day

A big buzz-word (buzz-phrase?) in education these days is critical thinking.

The thought is that, with our fast changing world, we currently have no idea what people will be doing for a living 10 -15 years from now, and so it is impossible to prepare our students with the specific skill sets that will fit into an unimaginable job market. We're encouraged instead to help them develop character traits and work habits that can help them adapt to whatever they may end up doing. Collaborative work, inventive problem solving, and critical thinking.

I mention all of this because Remembrance Day is approaching, and I have a feeling that given recent events, this year we will be even more in lock-step than usual. I've already heard predictions that the ceremonies will have “special resonance.” And I am feeling a little queasy.

I work in an elementary school, and I have to say that it is no place for an iconoclast. It's not that I try to be a non-conformist. It's just who I am. Once I went to a workshop on palm-reading, and I was shown the two lines in both of my hands that indicate my innate tendency toward non-conformity. I'll explain it to you as it was said to me. Look at the palm of the hand you use to write with. Check out the edge of your hand between your thumb and index finger. That is where you head line and heart line begin. (Don't ask me which is which, it was just one workshop..) The closer together these two lines are at their beginning, the more of a conformist you are. Mine are a full centimetre apart.

After I'd taken this workshop, I was talking to a friend and we were comparing palms. His head and heart line were completely fused, and although he's an off-centre kind of guy, I have to say that he's also very concerned about what the other off-centred people are up to. He looked at my hand and said, “Maybe if you really concentrate, you can get your two lines to move closer together.” I just looked at him, thinking, why would I want to do that? See, the conformist and the non-conformist will never agree about how the other should want to be.

All this digression to say that I am and always will be a questioner and a seeker. For a time I thought that what I needed was to find a guru, or to have one find me, or at least to discover a complete system of thought that would sort everything out and make me happy, healthy and wise. But the palms don't lie. Unlike my dear friend with the fused lines, that will never be the answer for me. For me, (not to get all zen koan-ish) the answer is the question. The answer is to question. Think, wonder, change your mind, ask again and never never accept what someone else is telling you without doing all of those things. I will never wear something, say something, sing something just because it's what people “do”. If I haven't examined it thoroughly from as many angles as I can, and come up with my own good justifications for doing something, then I am not doing it.

So here we are coming up to Remembrance Day. All ceremony and symbolism. All cliche and cant. We pin those red poppies on all the children and file them into the assembly, where they hear or recite the same lines they always do. Take up our quarrel with the foe. All those who made the ultimate sacrifice to protect our freedoms. And so on.

Well, what's so bad about that? What's wrong with taking a few moments to acknowledge .... acknowledge what, exactly? That some people have a career that sometimes leads to their death and that it's too bad when that happens? Okay, I can go along with that. Here's to the coal miners and the firefighters and the nurses in emergency wards, and airline pilots and flight attendants, and the soldiers too. That's not why we're at this assembly though. We are here because we have been told that there is something intrinsically valuable and honourable about dying “for your country”. Soldiers “answered the call”, and some “paid the ultimate sacrifice” while fighting to “protect our freedoms”.

Yet how often is that actually what they were fighting for? World war one? Korea? Afghanistan? Aren't jingoism, and empire-building ambitions, and xenophobia, and paranoia (not to mention economic and diplomatic expediency) more often the driving force for sending soldiers into another country to fight? And I just don't see these ideas being presented to our young people. There is no discussion, no critical thinking. Just the same message over and over. If we aren't looking, with our students, using all our 20/20 hindsight at our past successes and failures, and teach our children to do the same, what can we expect for the future?

What happens to our society when we don't encourage our children to practice critical thinking, whatever the issue, whatever the discomfort? What kind of citizenry do we get when certain types of rhetoric shut down debate? We will never be able to take a clear-eyed view at our current world conflicts. We will not have the skills to dissect and analyze the stated aims of our national leaders. We will have a state that purportedly acts on our behalf and we will not know how to put the brakes on. We will find ourselves confronted by complex international situations, and we will not have the vocabulary required to express or even understand what we ourselves truly think and believe.

I am intensely aware of and grateful for the many freedoms that we have in our country. However, I think that gratitude is misplaced when it is given to the military. I am thankful for the trade unionists, the civil libertarians, the feminists, the artists and writers who fought for our rights and continue to keep vigilance over them. I will honour the sacrifices made by these people, not by attending public ceremonies, but by remaining committed to my individual responsibility to know what I believe in and why, and always to follow my conscience. With no poppies involved.