Vancouver 2010 Olympics, given a bronze medal by the Suzuki society for green initiatives. Just made it but still somewhat green, right? I’m in New Westminster and today the torch has gone through on Columbia Street. Here’s what it looked like.

First there were four Greyhound bus size trucks that went through. I might have missed one or two but at least three of these were Coca-Cola with people in red playing drums, waving flags, drumming, cheering. Then there was a five minute gap and a bunch of cars drove down the street, just trying to get through.

We waited (I watched from the second floor of a building) and then a large 2010 bus drove by, empty from what I can tell. Next two motorcycle cops drove by pushing people back from the road, and then and RCMP car and two more cops. Then a 2010 (what we would call Handydart) bus drove by. Next came the runner with six people jogging about him to keep the crowd back that had surged onto the street. There were about 100 people out there at most but then the torch and runner have already been through most of New Westminster by this point. Then came another four motorcycle cops. And then we saw where that billion dollar security budget came from.

At least six more RCMP unmarked trucks/SUVS brought up the rear, sitting in their sleek new vehicles, just driving along. In all, not including the motorcycles I counted 15 or 16 vehicles for one runner and a torch. They were so far back that if something happened it would only be for picking up the pieces of the runner and finding the bad guys after the fact. But you’ve got to give the guy space, right? Of course, but then why so  many vehicles for one runner so far behind. And just think, the same in every part of Canada.

Fifteen. How is this green? None of those vehicles looked like hybrid vehicles. Oh yes, there was also one Olympic guy who pedaled by on a bike. That was green as were the people on their feet. Fifteen vehicles. Okay sure, four were big branding hullabaloos and not a free Coke between them. Two were buses, empty I must say. But are we just finding jobs for the 15,000 security guys who are living on a cruise ship just waiting for bad to happen? Can we say overkill.

This, folks, are your Olympic dollars at work and the great brains of the Olympic committee doing more than taking the fun and sport out of the Olympics. This is puffed up importance and Olympic BS. Some security is needed but these guys were joyriding. Pretty sad to see and a detraction to the runner with all those vehicles. I wonder how many runners are getting sick from sucking exhaust.

I was born and raised in Alberta, where the summers are hot and dry and the winters are cold and dry. I don’t mean dry as in no precipitation but dry as in the air can make your skin flake like a 10,000 year old mummy’s. And the water is mineralized enough to leave scales on taps and pipes the envy of any dragon.

Calgary gets rain (thundershowers), hail (in buckets) and snow that lasts a winter. Or at lease these phenomena were common in my childhood. Because of this you never saw an animal with fleas unless it was in a place particularly dirty or the animal was particularly mangy. And head lice was not something we even had to worry about in school. However head lice and body lice have been around since humans started wearing clothing (if not longer).

Now I don’t know if head lice care about cold or not, or if people washed more frequently or just didn’t get near to each other but we certainly never had warnings or even one kid with them when I was in school. However, infestations have been reported in most countries and a huge increase has occurred in the last 20 years. I don’t know if this is climate change or that these little vermin are just finding humans more appetizing.

I didn’t encounter head lice when I moved to Vancouver, but I did encounter fleas because of the warmer and moister climate. Your cat or dog doesn’t have be mangy to get them. Keeping a place clean certainly helps. I did encounter lice in the US though.

I used to go down and visit friends who had two kids. I’d sleep on an air mattress on their living room floor and play with the kids as well. I never even knew about lice really at that point. But one day a few weeks later I was at my desk and reading a paper, and scratching at my neck. Now due to my sensitivity to some foods, getting a rash around my neck was not unusual. What was unusual was that as I scratched a little born ovoid bug fell onto the page. At that point I frantically rubbed my hand through my shoulder-length hair and watched in horror as more bugs fell onto the page.

My skin crawled and I panicked. I ran to the bathroom and brushed and brushed and combed my hair knocking beige vermin into the sink. I looked over my scalp but really couldn’t seem much there but I knew. I think with a bit of internet searching and calling a few friends I figured out pretty quickly what I had and went to the pharmacy for louse shampoo, which came with a lovely nit comb. Nits are the egg casings of a louse and stick to the air as little white dots. They’re small but tenacious, and so are their parents, the lice.

The full process involved shampooing my hair and, because I didn’t want to shave my head, sitting outside (thankfully it was summer) on my patio and having a friend comb every nit from my hair. Two-three hours later, I was nit free but still had to shampoo a few more times over the week and check to make sure the buggers were gone.

Besides the bodily care there was the washing of all clothes and bed clothes I may have come in contact with during that time. As well, I had to bag pillows or items that couldn’t be washed and dried under a high heat. I had to vacuum everything thoroughly and leave those bagged items for up to a month to make sure everything was dead.

The worst part was that all of this could have been prevented if the friends, who knew their children had lice, had just let me know. Instead of being head in the sand like they had been, I took the onus of contacting everyone I’d been near to tell them about the lice and what to look for. It was like contacting people to say I had an STD. I felt ashamed and mortified yet I was responsible.

I never stayed with those people ever again but had the misfortune a few months later of being at a group camping event where they were at. I went home and found a few lice but caught them right away, and again informed everyone I knew. I think part of the reason these vermin infestations have been spreading is that people don’t take responsibility. School age kids are most susceptible because of their close contact and therefore schools have a huge problem. We’ll never eradicate them as long as there are people but we could get them under control with a bit of knowledge and responsibility. And I hope I never have to deal with any parasite on my body again, besides slapping a few mosquitoes.

Now we’re truly getting down to what the Olympics are all about. The Australian athletes have hung a two-storey flag of the boxing kangaroo outside their residence in the Olympic village. The Olympic village in Vancouver is, like every other Olympic venue, cordoned off and protected by security enough to sink the Bismarck. The only people who might actually get into this “village” are the athletes, reporters, security goons and other bigwigs of Olympic importance. But it is where all the athletes, with their dreams and aspirations are housed. So it makes sense that everyone wants to show team and national spirit.

The boxing kangaroo is not the flag for Australia the country but it is the flag for their sporting attitude and has officially been that symbol since 1983 (Oh and belongs to the Australian Olympic Committee–aren’t they all part of the Olympic “family”?). On top of that the boxing kangaroo was supposedly used on fighter planes in the second world war. Just google it and you’ll see the examples. But the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has deemed it too commercial and have told the Australians to take their flag down. Too commercial. What’s wrong, IOC, are you afraid someone might buy an Australian? It’s not like it’s advertising beer or mitts; it’s advertising Australia’s competitive spirit.

But the IOC has proven that its main purpose is not to promote sports and fun and national competition. Its main purpose is to make tons and tons of money and get big advertising sponsors. It also shows there is no sense of humor whatsoever in the suits and ties gobbling up the money. Where does that money go? Good question.

They don’t pay the athletes, nor the hosting cities. Every city that bids on being an Olympic venue also pays a pretty stiff registration fee that they do not get back. But the money must go somewhere. Well, looking at the IOC’s role and mission this may give us a clue as to where the money goes.

The IOC’s role is to:

1. Encourage and support the promotion of ethics in sport as well as education of youth through sport and to dedicate its efforts to ensuring that, in sport, the spirit of fair play prevails and violence is banned;
2. Encourage and support the organization, development and coordination of sport and sports competitions;
3. Ensure the regular celebration of the Olympic Games; Make that properly branded & trademarked celebration only.
4. Cooperate with the competent public or private organizations and authorities in the endeavor to place sport at the service of humanity and thereby to promote peace; Organizations like Visa, MacDonalds, Coca-Cola. Yay peace!
5. Take action in order to strengthen the unity and to protect the independence of the Olympic Movement; The Olympic Movement: is that like a political thing or a just a bodily evacuation?
6. Act against any form of discrimination affecting the Olympic Movement; So what does that mean in regards to protestors.
7. Encourage and support the promotion of women in sport at all levels and in all structures with a view to implementing the principle of equality of men and women; Except where inconvenient like those darn female ski jumpers who don’t get to jump.
8. Lead the fight against doping in sport;
9. Encourage and support measures protecting the health of athletes;
10. Oppose any political or commercial abuse of sport and athletes; Get that kangaroo flag down, sports. Get that kangaroo flag down.
11. Encourage and support the efforts of sports organizations and public authorities to provide for the social and professional future of athletes;
12. Encourage and support the development of sport for all; But you can’t watch it unless you have a $100 or more for each ticket. So that should be for all wealthy people.
13. Encourage and support a responsible concern for environmental issues, to promote sustainable development in sport and to require that the Olympic Games are held accordingly; Do you know how many shiny white vans and trucks I’ve seen with the Olympic logo on the roads? Wouldn’t it be better to use old ones in good repair instead of adding more cars to the environment?
14. Promote a positive legacy from the Olympic Games to the host cities and host countries; But we’ll ignore the fact that only one Olympic host city has ever made money. What’s the legacy: more taxes.
15. Encourage and support initiatives blending sport with culture and education;
16. Encourage and support the activities of the International Olympic Academy (IOA) and other institutions which dedicate themselves to Olympic education.

I really hope the Australians keep the flag up the whole time and that other countries add their eagle (US), bulldog (UK), beaver (Canada), etc. to the mix. And I really hope that kangaroo has a middle finger for the IOC’s arrogance and commercial greed.

It is only be apt that when I was in India I ran into a man intent on kissing me at the Taj Mahal.  Actually, it was while I was walking there, in the city of Agra. The Taj Mahal was built by Shah Jahan in the 17th century as a memorial of love after the death of his favorite wife Mumtaz Mahal. She died in childbirth with their fourteenth child. (That would be enough to kill most people.)

The Taj Mahal houses the bodies and sarcophagi of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal and is considered one of the best examples of Mughal architecture as well as being a monument to love. Lovers and scads of tourists visit it every year. I did the same, getting up early one morning in Agra and walking to the Taj. I had dysentery at this point and while ill, this particular day left me with a little more strength and a calmer stomach than on other days.

India is so polluted that often the day begins hazy or cloudy and an orangey-gray cast fires up the sky. It turns out to look quite pretty in pictures and the day started like this. As I walked along a Sikh guy on his scooter puttered up beside me and asked the three ubiquitous questions given to every woman traveller: what’s your name, where are you from, are you married? So it went and then he asked if I’d like a ride. I said no thanks; I had got up early so that I could actually walk to the monument.

A little while later, as he kept pace with my walking, he said, “I love you.” Startled I said, “Uh, thanks.” Then he asked, “Don’t you love me?” Put on the spot, somehow not wanting to be rude, I finally came up with, “I love you like I love all my fellow human beings.” This pacified him a bit or gave him something to chew on.

The problem is in India (or was at that time) they only had American movies to go on as to what North American women were like. India is a culture (or the parts I was in anyways) where men and women do not touch in public. It’s common to see men holding hands but you’ll never see this between the genders. A titillating Indian movie often has the wet sari scene that shows off the woman’s curves while still keeping her modestly dress, and kissing just doesn’t happen in their movies. So then you see a North American movie and all women are wearing form fitting clothes, kissing and touching men and often disrobing after some James Bond caper or the moment, in the movie, when the guy says I love you.

It was a naiveté in which I never felt threatened but was kinda cute and sometimes irritating. As I continued to the Taj Mahal, the Sikh man then said, “Won’t you kiss?” I answered, “No, I will not.”

“But why? I love you.” To which I responded, “I don’t just kiss anyone who says they love me.” Eventually he puttered off and I continued to the Taj Mahal, unkissed and happy.

It was unusual to hear of many rapes in India but then I don’t know the frequency of those that were reported.  I have heard these days that there are more happening. I never felt threatened ever in India and there were a few other times that the men tried to come on to me or kiss me. But that naiveté has probably warn off and with the advent of computers in to one of the world’s most populated countries, it is definitely opening the eyes of many.

I wasn’t sure what I would write about today but then I received, with my bank statement, a little blurb about winning some Olympic art, sort of. My bank is VanCity, a local, good reputation bank. But in the statement was this double-sided pamphlet from Citizens Bank. It says, “You could win 1 of 12 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games edition Visa prepaid card collector sets.” Phew.

Okay, so first Citizens Bank in my VanCity statement? It makes me wonder what my bank is getting out of it. Then I thought, okay, so I enter to win and then get 12 Visa cards with a prepaid amount, maybe $100 on each. That would be a nice prize, $1200 maybe to spend on the Olympics.

But no, as I read, it turns out that these are prepaid Visa cards, as in you don’t have to buy them. Okay, when have I ever had to buy a Visa card except off of the shady guy on the street corner in Paraguay when I was on the run from the black ops CIA? Never. It turns out that there isn’t a prepaid amount, nor can you put funds on them, but this super duper Olympic art is prepaid, as in you don’t have to pay for it. If you go out to buy them it will cost you $25, $50 or $100. WTF? So what I’m getting is 12 little pieces of plastic that say Visa and have (for the most part) paintings of headless athletes.

These are such great pieces of art that the pamphlet doesn’t bother to mention the artist’s name. And really, if it’s not original the best it can be is a limited edition and there is no comment on how many pieces of plastic have been printed. So whoopdeedoo, if I go to citizensbank website so that they can start spamming me with Visa applications, and I enter to win this “‘prize” I get 12 Visa cards that can’t be used with pictures of headless and generic athletes on them. Wow. That’s impressive collector’s hoopla for the Olympics. Don’t forget this said it was also Paralympics. I can’t see one image that looks like it shows an athlete who would fit in the Paralympic category. No crutch, no wheelchair, no amputee. Okay, there might be one on there but it’s unclear from the pamphlet.

But yes, if I want any piece of so-called Olympic art sanctioned by the official committee then I will indeed rush out and buy these pieces of worthless plastic. I’ll mount them in a frame worth more than they are and put the “collection” next to Bubba’s beer cap collection and the plastic beads from Mardi Gras in New Orleans. People may want a souvenir or a piece to remember the Olympics by but a mass merchandised shirt or stuff mascot is probably going to be more useful than the supposed collectors edition of Visa cards that are in fact as mass produced as these other items. Why not just mass produced fake paintings? Because then Visa couldn’t plaster their branding everywhere. Personally I’d rather take pictures but these days that could you get you arrested.

I should title this “I don’t get religious head coverings” but in essence it applies to any covering. Now I imagine this post will probably get me in the bad books of a lot of religions, but let’s just say I’m not against a religious covering in one religion or necessarily all religions. I’ve actually put off writing this for a long time, not out of fear but because I thought I should educate myself more. But there are a lot of religions and no matter how much I read I’m likely to miss some crucial element somewhere. And like every layperson out there I have questions that probably only a scholar could answer.

So, let me frame my confusion with this statement: I am an egalitarian. I expect and believe that everyone should be given an equal opportunity, whether in jobs, lifestyle or religion and that one group is not made to do differently than another because of gender or race. I have a huge problem with any religion that allows priests/clerics/spiritual leaders to be of only one gender. And there are many. Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism. There are sects in these religions that often allow for female leaders but overall, the pope can only be a man, the Dalai Lama (only one sect of Buddhism) is always a man, Jewish and Muslim leaders/holy men seem to only be men. Hinduism does seem to be one religion that has no leader over others though different sects might worship a female god or a male one. Paganism likewise has both male and female priests but again there are sects that are male or female exclusive.

But when it gets down to the clothing and the headgear I ask why does one person wear it over the other and how does this treat all human beings as equal? Jewish men wear the yarmulke/kippah (as well as the pope and other ranks in Catholicism), Sikh men wear the turban, Tuareg men wear the veil/turban but the women don’t. Muslim women wear the burka or veil, but the men don’t. Catholic nuns (some of them wear the wimple) but the men don’t though they wear a mitre or kippah on their heads. Why?

At one time in all these cultures’ histories, their robes were the style of the time. Then the religion became codified and traditionalized, setting like cement in time and never more to have the clothing change. Why do Christian priests wear cassocks and the nuns wear wimples: because it was the style when the church finally gained its true strength. Clothing wasn’t part of the religion and then it was. And suddenly, what was cultural dress became symbolism for faith. I can understand a faith that says your hair or head needs to be covered under the eyes of God (or whatever) but then it shouldn’t be a veil for women or a turban for men while the other gender gets to wear nothing or little. I also wonder why, if God created us, in all these religions, why he should want us to then hide? Shouldn’t we shine with the glory of his/her creation?

I’ve attended Native/First Nation sweats where a man could go in, in shorts but a woman had to be covered from neck to ankle and to wrist. Why? Because  a woman might be enticing? So, does that mean a semi-nude man isn’t enticing and why is it the woman’s responsibility for a man’s reaction? To me that says that men are animals, wild and uncontrollable and if that’s the case, they should not be in charge of anything, should they? The sweat was pitch black and so hot you didn’t want to touch yourself let alone anyone else and the farthest thing on anyone’s mind was sex. But still the women had to carry the brunt of this bigotry.

So why is a woman made to wear a burka or cover her hair? Why doesn’t a man have to do the same? Is a woman’s hair too beautiful and God is jealous? Are men going to turn into ravening, covetous animals? Shouldn’t they be chained and hobbled then? Is a man’s hair too boring to be enticing? How is it fair in any religion where a god or gods treats one half of his/her creations better or worse over the other? That already sets up a hierarchy of favoritism just based on gender. Not very good grounds for believing if you’re the underdog in the religion.

It is not the belief or faith, or tenets of the religion itself, where the pursuit is spiritual enlightenment that bothers me. It is the strictures and restrictions on only certain groups within the religion (or those outside of it) that disturb me greatly. Albeit, in all these religions, and the ones I haven’t mentioned there are sects, and a range of tolerance from acceptability to fundamental condemnation, and I use the word fundamental with all its horrid connotations. Fundamentalism in any religion is a sign of intolerance and fear, without a willingness to believe that people are different. But people should be able to choose, not be shamed, guilt-tripped or subjugated into the role of religious unworthy in their belief system.

If a religion requires a robe or a headcovering, then make it the same for everyone, not of two different levels depending on whether you’re blessed or only slightly blessed. I would find it hard to follow/convert to any spiritual belief where my god already saw me as a lesser being than my fellow believers. I’m waiting for someone to enlighten me.

Okay, I know I just wrote about this in the last few weeks but really, it sometimes pays to hit people over the head. In fact some of these rules apply just as equally to submitting other works as fiction.

Chizine has three poetry editors. Carolyn and I assist Sandra. We also correspond regularly with each other and offer opinions on whether we think a poem is good or not. When reading many submissions, and often bad ones (the ratio of bad poems to good ones is higher than it is with fiction, from what I’ve seen), we might lose perspective. So then we ask each other, Is this good? Does this make sense? I don’t get it.

Sandra distributes the poems to us so she sees everything. Now editors make rules, not because they have nothing better to do, but to manage submissions. And magazines have rules about what they like to print. A smart writer will read these guidelines before submitting. Admittedly some magazines can be overly weird and picky in their particular submission guidelines and do things backward from everyone else. Most magazines ask for double spaced, indent, no extra space between paragraphs, a readable and regular font. Some want you to do single space, no indent, space between the paragraphs, and it seems it’s just to be contrary. Frankly I would stick with an industry standard and if I accepted a piece, then ask the author to reformat to what was needed. But mostly you need to acquiesce to the idiosyncrasies of the magazines and their editors.

We ask for poems to be embedded in the email. Sending an attachment will have your piece summarily deleted. We say no rhyming poems and we mean it. If you are Leonard Cohen, you might be able to send us a rhyming poem but otherwise, don’t bother. If you thought you had the best poem ever and it rhymed, remember that you’re already starting out with a strike against you as we tend not to accept/like them. I told one author she could try but only if she thought it was quite different and very good. I haven’t read it yet but her chances are just smaller because of that, and should I like it, I then have to convince Sandra.

So when poor Carolyn received a submission of about six poems, it broke so many rules that she bluntly told the author what he did wrong. We don’t set a limit on number of poems in one submission but a wise person will send no more than six. Three to five is a common number. First, we don’t take simultaneous submissions. Some authors do them anyways and hope not to be caught. The best way to be caught at it is to put all their email address in the “To:” line of your email. This author did this. Second, the author sent a form letter. Third, he didn’t read any of our submission guidelines. And fourth, not only did he send rhyming poems, he sent the worst ones possible. The following isn’t his poem but is of the same caliber. My advice to any writer, if you write like this, just don’t send your poems out, at all.

I went for a beer
with nothing to fear
hoping for cheer
but something quite queer
made me veer
and now I fear
I’m nowhere near

Yes, they were all this bad. And to top it off this writer (I use the term loosely) signed his name with “The poet and scholar.” If you have the audacity to call yourself “THE” poet, negating the existence of all others you better back it up with credentials including that you are your country’s poet emeritus and have won awards equivalent to the Booker and Governor General’s awards. And if you are the poet who did these things, just be happy that I haven’t put your name down.

In fact, although we haven’t started such a list yet, this guy could get himself on a blacklist. And yes, some magazines start blacklists. If you threaten the editors, send nasty letter, consistently ignore all guidelines, you will be put in the trash file. Bad writing alone won’t get you blacklisted. But idiocy will.

Most of our cities are so large these days that there arises a suspicion of anyone who seems too friendly. Don’t smile at anyone on the street. Don’t answer their queries and if, like me one day, you ask if they can change a dollar into four quarters run away as if you’re stealing their soul. We are packed in tighter, in this new ecotrend of eco-density, which if anything raises frustrations and issues of not enough breathing space, but we don’t get friendlier.

Many people live in high rises and condos, or even single dwelling homes and may never get to know their neighbors. It’s more likely, if you have children that you will get to know neighbors who also have children. We might go through life, suspicious or concealed behind our apartment doors, doing no more than giving a nod to our neighbors.

I live in an area of Vancouver that is surrounded by blue collar industry. Our block is the only street with houses on both sides. One neighboring block has business buildings (foundry, fish factory, T-shirt manufacturers, stuff like that) and the other block has houses only on one side and a housing co-op. The homeowners range from those on one side of the street going from 30 years to 7 years ownership and on the other side from 7 years to a year. The house I live in and the adjacent houses are all from circa 1910. My neighbors like to garden and work on their homes.

Like me, we shop in our neighborhood, walking up to the Drive and going to local restaurants. I once in a while go drinking elsewhere but it’s best not to drive while drinking and walking up the street is easier, and cheaper than taking a taxi. We have quite a few local restaurants, a library, a bookstore, poultry market, several fresh veggie markets and coffee shops, bakeries, stationery stores, health food stores, clothing stores, etc. There are many areas in Vancouver that do not have these amenities in walking distance and people must drive or bus to them.

But in our area, this helps create a community. You see regulars in the shops and restaurant. There is a sense of knowing the denizens if not knowing them. But on our street, I can stop and talk over the fence to any one of my neighbors. We have keys to each other’s homes, should anything happen and a rescue is needed. If I don’t make it home I can call and say, pretty please will you feed the cat? We stop by at each other’s places from time to time and have a drink or watch a movie. A friend of mine who lives in a different area says that their neighbors cook outside on the boulevard in the summer and people wander up and down the street with drinks in their hand visiting each other.

In the winter, and one like we had in 2009, we end up shoveling each other’s cars out, or shoveling a walk. We can borrow cups of sugar, taste each other’s garden produce, pet and feed each other’s cats, watch out for each other’s property and generally enjoy a community camaraderie. I’ve come to not only appreciate this sense of community but desire it. It would make moving an extremely hard thing as these are my people. We might not all be bosom buddies but we get along, enjoy each other’s company and generally look out for each other.

This is community. It was what the earliest forming of “civilization” was all about: humans living together to bring strengths to the individual and pool resources, to share when times were tough and to help each other, to form a society. It’s too bad that in general our cities have become too big and too cramped, causing more and not less crime and people becoming so suspicious because the media over reports every crime until it fills every minute of your day.

But for me this community of shops and stores, of regulars in the area and of my street and the people who live there, that’s an important aspect of interacting with life. I’m not separate from but part of a whole and it’s been part of humanity has long as we’ve been civilized.

If you never read the X-Men comics (I grew up on them), then you might at least have seen or heard of the X-Men with one of the recent movies that have come out, the last one being Wolverine (and why they had to make him choose to be Canadian, from the US, as opposed to being Canadian as in the original comics, I’ll never know). In those comics, most of the mutants’ mutations give them a power, to destroy or create, or hold forces at bay.

Sure there are a few unfortunate mutants whose power drives them mad or makes them unsightly and this was portrayed in the X-Men most commonly with the Morlocks who lived underground in the sewer systems. They weren’t pretty and their mutations weren’t always useful. And of course there were those evil mutants and the government mutant hunters, out to get both sides.

Well, it may come as a surprise to many people but there are more mutants among us than we know. A mutation is a deviation from the norm. In biology it means an organism that has characteristics resulting from chromosomal alteration. In genetics it refers to any event that changes genetic structure.

So, in essence, a genetic defect is a mutation. As I learned years ago in anthropology, it is rare for a mutation to be beneficial. Eventually, if enough of a population mutates, the change becomes part of the normal physiology. And usually it’s an adaptation that increases the chances of survival (such as camouflage coloring). That’s as far as I’m going to wander into the world of genetics.

But as for mutants, not only do I know a few but I too am a mutant. Yes, I’m waiting for my spandex outfit to come from Charles Xavier, leader of the X-Men, though I fear I might be more likely to join the ranks of the Morlocks.

I actually have several mutations. The major one, that we found out about when I was in the hospital at age 9 with a kidney infection, was that I have four normal, perfectly formed kidneys. They call it a duplex system.  The benefits: well obviously if one goes down I have others to spare, and I can filter more impurities. I think I can filter booze more but I have still managed to get drunk. And for anyone saying, why don’t you donate a kidney, I have a few reasons. I do not handle anesthetic well and every time I’ve had to go under it gets worse. As well a kidney operation is a pretty major surgery and with the rate that Canadian hospitals are infecting people with residual germs and bacteria, I am truly afraid to go into a hospital.

I also have an extra rib, which is quite useless and in fact can cause me pain. If I’m driving for three hours or more the rib will tend to push against my soft tissue and make it sore. It can even happen if I’m sitting in bed and have not positioned myself right. My last mutation is that I have an extra ankle bone in each foot. My podiatrist says that really it’s bones that didn’t fuse when I was a child. They have no benefit or detriment that I can determine.

So, those ares my mutations but I’m not the only one. My sister was thought to have three kidneys but it’s three ureters that she has. I have another friend with five kidneys and I work with someone who has an extra bone in her foot. My landlady has extra muscles in her foot and she was once a dancer. The thing is, we often don’t find out about our mutations unless we injure ourselves or are sick and tests are done. So who knows, you could be a mutant too.

Tom Cruise is a mutant. Yes, we all knew that but he has a physical deformity that in worst cases cause the brain, during development, to not separate into two lobes. Cruise’s is fairly mnor but if you look at his smile you’ll notice he has only one front tooth. It’s called holoprosencephaly if you want to look it up.

As to mutations that give us special abilities, I’d gladly trade in the rib for levitation or controlling the elements. Even if my rib was Adam’s Rib, maybe I could detect all liars and then get a job in the courts. But nah, I’m stuck with the super filtering system of the kidneys and just a pain in my rib from time to time. Maybe in the future, as we mutate to adapt to our polluted, additive laden environment, we’ll get real powers, but I’m not holding my breath.

I’m one of those gals with booty, as they like to call it. Or a bigger ass than is the norm. However, I must really wonder what the norm is. We often think we’re the only ones with an issue or a problem, but mention it and it turns out it’s common for a lot of people.

Like booty. My hips and waist have quite a difference in ratio. First I must get them over my hyper developed calves, (not the ones mooing in the fields), then over the larger than average thighs and hips to the smaller than average waist. Should I get them all the way up, I usually have enough room in the waistline to cart a baby around. Suffice to say it’s extremely hard to find any pants and I revert to skirts more often than not. Yoga pants are fine because they stretch.

You would think that pants that fit below the waistline would make it easier because there is less disparity between upper hip and lower hip. But oh no, this is not so. Often when I try those pants on they give me plumber’s crack and that ain’t attractive on anyone. Now it’s easy to think that I am some misshapen creation but when I’ve talked with other female friends who I wouldn’t consider overweight at all and some even very skinny it turns out most of them have the same problem.

They say they can’t get them over their thighs or if they get them over their hips, they gap in the back. These slim women, like me, cannot find pants to fit. Interestingly, tall women can’t ever find pants or shirts long enough. Now if you are of genetic Asian heritage your waist to hip ratio on average will be less than those of European or African heritage. You’ll have to ask an anthropologist for the difference in people’s physiologies because there are books written about the subject.

But suffice to say, for the average North American woman (that’s you and me and not all the anorexic models) we come in a variety of sizes. I remember being at a new year’s party once and we got talking about clothes and the whole booty problem. When I looked around the room, all these beautiful women had what many would call a slightly bigger than average butt. The media goes on about J-Lo’s booty and I can’t see anything wrong with it except that it looks like a nice curvy butt.

Media and fashion, the bane of every normally sized person. And just who is it that the fashion industry makes all those clothes for anyway? Sure there are “average” size people, according to those sizes but many of us are curvier. I went shopping last week for a new pair of jeans. I hate shopping for pants because it’s trying on size after size, often with no luck in getting anything even up to the hips, and by the end you feel fat. My jeans are always pretty near to skin-tight because if I go for a larger size, it’s far far too large for my waist. So I’m always wedging myself in.

Last week’s excursion saw me in about seven different stores; Sears, Bootlegger, Stitches, Le Chateau, Suzy Shier, American Eagle, Zellers even. In some there were not enough jeans to try on, as in the legs were too skinny or the sizes too small to even start the laborious process of struggling into fabric and getting overheated. Stitches seemed to have nothing but 00, 1 and 3 sizes. Zero isn’t a size and it certainly wasn’t even ten years ago, but hello, anorexia. However, this told me that Stitches was catering mostly to the tweens, the young kids before hormones wop them and give them breasts and leg hair and shape.

After negating several stores just for sheer similarity in jean sizes and one place that had $98 pairs (I won’t pay over $50 for just jeans), I tried on about 40 pairs of jeans. I developed a system for measuring the narrowest part, the knee, and if it wasn’t as wide as my hand I didn’t even take the pair in to try. Of those 40 a few only got as far as myknees. Most of the others I pulled all the way on, a few with jumping about, and did them up. But between plumber’s crack and gapitis none worked. I think there was one pair but they didn’t look good. There’’s no point buying something that fits if it doesn’t look good on you and you end up not wearing it.

Tired and hot, I gave up and headed out of the mall. But I happened to pass Mark’s Work Wearhouse. I think of them as work clothes, overalls, muckin’ huge boots, that sort of thing. But what the heck, I went in. Not only did I find pants that fit I found that they had four styles: contemporary, classic, modern and curvy. Contemporary fits slightly below the natural waistline; classic fits at the waistline, modern fits below and curvy fits below but designed not to gap.  They didn’t have a lot of the curvy style in but they fit me and they didn’t gap. I ended up finding the only one left of another style with a modern waistline, and they were on sale. Thank the gods for curvy and recognizing that there are those of us who have hips.

Many of my friends, when I posted my yippee on Facebook, wanted to know where I found them. Stores that decide to cater to more than boy-hipped girls would probably find their sales going up as many girls with booty would worship there.