I am happy to say I have had childhood friendships that have lasted into adulthood, namely my friend Brianna whom I met in grade 3 and who became my roommate when I left Prince George; and my friend Shannon whom I met in grade 8, who came to my wedding and who still visits when I’m in PG.

However there were two other young friendships which taught me how people change and drift apart.  In both cases, I rather felt like the friend who stayed still whilst the drifting was done to me.  I was a kid who got emotionally invested in friends, and took it hard when they didn’t commit to me long-term.

Strangely my future was not to hold such trials with romantic partners: the only man I fell in love with married me.  All I can really claim for heartbreak is that L stopped playing with me when I was 12, and E stopped hanging out with me when I was 14 (not that I think either of them read my blog; but why use names when there are no more hard feelings?)

This poem portal is about L.  She started as a friend of convenience, because she lived across the street from me and had a trampoline.  Soon, one of us going to the other’s house was an almost daily occurrence.  We invited each other to weekend events, played with her younger twin brothers or my younger sisters; we put up with her older brother and her dad (who liked to tell us things like “the word ‘woman’ is just ‘man’ with a ‘womb’ in front of it”).

For a few golden Elementary years, L felt irreversibly woven into my life.  She unravelled gradually, with fewer and fewer visits; no more explanation than “I don’t really want to” when I invited her to things like swimming and board games.  I sometimes saw her while I was walking home from school; usually she was with a girl I didn’t know.  One of these times, I ran up to her and forced a Christmas present into her hands.  I got no comment from L herself, but the girl she was with called after me as I dashed off again: “I like the wrapping, kid.”  This confused me at the time, because we were all the same age.  Looking back, I think it was a heavy hint that I was no longer welcome because I wasn’t growing up fast enough.

I got a much clearer hint from my estranged friend’s big brother another time that I was walking home from school.  He stuck his head out the window as I was passing and said: “Jennifer, L doesn’t like you anymore.”

What was there for a sappy, optimistic introvert like me to do but go home and write a song about how L and I would still make things work?  I did this, along with no further attempts whatsoever to enact the sentiment:

On this bridge we’re standing on opposite ends,

If we can’t even compromise, how can we be friends?

I’m not asking you to change completely,

Let’s just talk it out and solve it concretely.

Chorus: If one goes to the other side, it really isn’t fair.

But if we stay just as we are,

We won’t get anywhere.

So come what may, I’ll go walking today,

And I’ll meet you on the bridge halfway.

If we once held any grudges, our silence is wrong,

This river of friendship can still flow strong,

Not if we leave it to foam too long,

How am I to know what is troubling you,

If you can’t clue me in on what I could do?

Chorus:  

This bridge here between us could crumble any day,

But if we stood side by side, I’m sure that bridge would stay,

Apart like this, our bridge is weakening fast,

Let’s get together, we can make that bridge last.

Chorus:   

The bridge that keeps us going, 

And the river ‘neath it flowing,  

This bridge has to be crossed someday,

Before time has all but flown away,

So come what may, I’ll go walking today…

I hope to meet you on the bridge halfway—–.

I am proud to be Canadian.  Canadians love hockey, right?  Let’s rephrase that to be accurate: many Canadians who are into sports love hockey.  Unfortunately for hockey night in Canada, I grew up a sci-fi geek with zero appreciation for any sports whatsoever.  This meant I became very unpatriotic when hockey interfered with Star Trek.  In May 2001 (when I was 13), major interference occurred.  The airing of the series finale of Voyager was delayed by a hockey game in overtime.  I knew that once the hockey game was finally over, Voyager would be the program we joined “already in progress”; I’d have to wait for a re-run to see the whole episode.

While I waited, I wrote this song (to the tune of “The Good Old Hockey Game”):

Chorus: Oh the bad old hockey game

Is the worst game you can name!

And the worst game you can name

Is the bad old hockey game!

Verse 1: The day is fair, I couldn’t care,

It’s Voyager tonight!

Tension grows, we sit in rows,

And await the treat of the night!

The adults call and the children fall,

Before the blaring screen,

Someone roars: “What a bore!”  It’s a dreadful hockey scene!

Chorus: 

Verse 2: Will Chokotay die?  Will Janeway fly

The Starship home to France?

Will the baby live?  Will Seven give

Her emotions one more chance?

Will Neelix come?  Will the doctor become a normal man on Earth?

We could’ve known, but the show’s been thrown into hateful hockey turf!

Chorus:

Verse 3: It isn’t fair, they couldn’t care,

For them it’s all okay,

But what of us?  We’ll make a fuss,

They mustn’t have their way!

We’ve waited long, so I sing this song,

In hopes of good TV,

We’re in suspense, but they’ve no sense,

It’s a hockey catastrophe!

I have been a big fan of musicals since I was a little girl.  As a singer myself, and a despiser of mundane reality, I found the idea of someone bursting into song in the middle of a street and having everyone around them start singing and dancing hugely appealing.  My favourite thing about going on trips with my choir was that life really could be like this to a degree.  We sang in restaurants and airports.  I could start singing something as we walked down the street, and hear the harmonies swell up spontaneously around me.

That being said, there were certain songs in the most classic Broadway musicals that gave me a sense of disconnect. I discovered Guys and Dolls as a teenager and, being a modern woman, couldn’t for the life of me understand why Adelaide was clinging on to an engagement that seemed to be dragging out indefinitely.  “Adelaide’s Lament” is a wonderful song for the heartsick little lady been done wrong by a gambler.  I, however, felt I had better reasons to catch an emotionally stimulated illness.  So I filked “Adelaide’s Lament” into “Author’s Lament”.  Do feel free to sing out loud if you know the tune;-)

The average unpublished author

Living to entertain

Due to that long frustration will react

With tense and psychotic symptoms

Difficult to restrain

Affecting the brain, blood and the cognitive tract

In other words, just from waiting around for one little “yes” to transmit

A person can develop a fit.

You can spray her wherever you figure the skin is sizzlin’ worst

You can give her a shot for whatever she’s got

But you’ll burn up first

If she’s tired of serving the coffee for successful gits,

A person can develop some fits.

The author remaining unread

Just in officialness

Shows a moronic tendency, see note

Chronic complaining syndrome

Hostile or mutinous

Involving the lips, the tongue, voice box and throat

In other words, just from worrying

Whether the manuscript’s miss or hit

A person can develop a fit.

You can feed her all day

With the chocolate drops, and the peppermint,

But the comfort food never gets anywhere nearer than pocket lint

If she’s getting a kind of a name for herself and it ain’t in print

A person can develop a fit.

And furthermore, just from stalling and stalling

And stalling the selling pitch,

A person can develop a twitch

A twitch, a red flaming itch,

With the rashes, and the gashes

And the urge to roll round in a ditch!

Lack of intellectual property

And the feeling she’s losing her wit

A person can develop a bad, bad…a really, really bad fit!

And now for a temporal portal into my most explosive poetry-writing phase: age 18-23.  After I dropped out of university, I took a couple of creative writing courses online — part of the ‘I will eventually add up to a degree’ show I put on for my parents.  I enjoyed the poetry writing course namely for the amount of poems I produced through it.  If I developed a profound appreciation for poetry in its many forms, this was purely accidental.  Most likely I did not.  I knew poetry wasn’t my strong suit, but there were so many contests for it!  So many submission possibilities!  My novels came first, but never back then would I shy from squeezing in potentially attention-getting projects, so long as I could wrap my head around them.

After the course, I pushed myself to write more poems in an attempt to keep the momentum going.  I looked up poetry contests just for the prompts and discovered that my favourite way to get an idea was the ‘use all these words in a poem’ prompt.  The following poem was one of these (although I couldn’t tell you now which words were the prompts):

Artists Among Us

Who to blame?  How to win?

Artists descended: mad, fearful things

Fear they won’t belong, or worse: they’ll fit in.

Sorted and labeled like one of their paints.

Horror!  To what measures will this town have to suffer

Their brain-happy pleasures?  Inspirational cravings…

What if rust and mold’s more fun to draw?

In their field they say, the work is a child—

“My baby,” they say.

With descendants as these,

We may set our minds at ease,

Surely, they’ll soon be extinct.

Happy Canada Day!

I tried blogging a while back about my dull, everyday life, but I’ve discovered the only non-fiction I’m good at is the kind that talks about fiction.  So for my author website, I am going to share the poems I’ve written.  They will range from childhood to the present day, which means you will find quality either in the poem itself or in my mockery of it (as an Early Childhood Educator, I must add it is only okay to make fun of a child’s writing when that child is your own past self).

I was too lazy to organize my collection chronologically.  Think of each post as a random portal into my lifetime.

When I was nine, I used to write never-ending songs about each of my little sisters in my school journal.  I know I was nine because my first ever scribblings for the older of the two sisters goes: “Oh, I have a little sister at the age of four, her name is Angelina and mine is Jennifer…”

Here is the only version of the Angelina song that ever made it onto my computer (circa age 14):

We sat upon a summer’s eve to watch a grand movie,

It was full of fear, dark and doubt, and daring chivalry,

There was beauty, pain, great deeds, wise words,

And courageous men who swung long swords,

Gazing raptly at the screen

Our thoughts were all profound,

All except Angelina

Whose thoughts were all aloud!

I wrote a long song about my younger little sister, too.  It was about the times she started saying her first words, and she wouldn’t say them in front of other people to prove that I’d really heard her say them.  I believe it started: “Oh Tegan, you are annoying, I just don’t understand, why must you embarrass me in front of all my friends…”

Good thing my sisters and I are mature adults now and they know I love them no matter how inspiring their childhood was for me…right?  That’s us singing in the photo, by the way, and we sound awesome.  And my sisters totally have veto power here…enjoy this post while it lasts…