Piri Piri

Have you ever found yourself wondering just how you managed to get yourself into the current pickle you are in? Unsurprisingly I have had a few occasions myself...didn't see it coming or couldn't believe it was happening. Here is one of my favourites...

In the summer of grade eight we moved, again, to a nice tree lined subdivision in mid Etobicoke, and now you're thinking it all comes together...Etobicoke, of course. You'd be right of course, most of my formative years were spent growing up in the wasteland of industrial parks, town house developments, high rises and nondescript subdivisions. A swath cut through it by the Humber Valley River and directly under the runway approach to the airport...nice eh? It was pure vanilla despite the plethora of cultures that occupied it. I think like most people, my parents kept moving around in the area to make a better life for us and keep us away from the downtown core in the belief we would have more opportunities. The debate is there for another day I suppose.

So, anyway, here I am the new kid on the block surrounded by Italians, Portuguese and the whitest Canadian family in the world. My Italian friends would have labelled them as "Mangia Cakes" a not so nice slur for a people famous for eating mayonnaise sandwiches on white bread. Just saying. I hated moving around so much when we were younger, the whole making new friends dance and trying to figure out how things worked in the neighbourhood. Important stuff like, who not to piss off lest ye get beaten with a two by four and which dad was actually crazy. Him I figured out pretty quickly, he lived next door. An angry little Portuguese man with two daughters and a fool for a son, as you can imagine the daughters were where the trouble would lay with...but I had my eye on another Portuguese girl....Paula. She was a little shorter than average, cute and somewhat mysterious to me...almost exotic. Which reminds me of another story....I'll need another post I see. I think the exotic came from the fact that she spoke with an accent and was 3 or 4 years older than me. As in I'm thirteen and she was seventeen, what was I thinking? Her brother was older still and he became my friend on the street. All kinds of good stuff going on here.

Well, in the awe shucks slap you in the back kind of way of showing affection, she liked me I liked her. So we were "going out", sort of maybe. I don't know if at the age of thirteen you could expect anything different but going out meant stolen kisses behind the shed, secret hand holding when angry fathers weren't around and a general understanding that you better not look at another girl...ever. Looking back, we had the same maturity level or worse, meaning I was more mature than she was....think about that for a minute.....right? I remember things like, I'll kiss you for twenty seconds than I have to go...and then giggle all the way through it. Smooth she was. This arrangement would last a few weeks, we would "break up", get back together a month or two later and so on. The stuff dreams are made of I tell ya. At one point, we had broken up for what seemed like a permanent and final time. She was older and went to a different school and she was still counting our kisses, WTF. A few months passed and Valentines Day approached, I must have been feeling sentimental or something at the time but I foolishly sent her a Valentines Day card. She broke up with the boy she was with instantaneously and we were back together...wow! And this is where I caught myself wondering how I ended up here. We were in her basement doing what all teenagers on hormones do, sitting on her couch watching TV and keeping our hands to ourselves as best we could, when she looks over to me and asks me when I'm going to talk to her father. What? "When are you going to talk to my father?" Paula, your dad doesn't speak English and we haven't said a word to each other since I moved in two years ago. "Well, you know, I think you should talk to him still" came her reply. In the far off reaches of my mind a siren starting going off. I'm not sure I know what you mean by talk to your dad. "Tell him you want to see me more, you know" That siren got incredibly loud and flashing lights were everywhere..."you mean sort of like talking about a sort of engagement kind of thing?" Yes, you know what I mean. DANGER!!!! "Sorry, you want me to ask your dad for his permission to marry you at some point in the not to distant future...I'm fifteen, have you lost your mind?" Never saw her again. And her oldest brother Eddie threatened to beat the crap out of me if I ever talked to her again. Yep...no problem. I could just imagine the look on my parents face if I came back engaged while I was supposed to be eating Paula's moms cooking...yummy. Thankfully we moved again a year or so later.

I heard she got married after dropping out of high school, her brother that I hung around with did the same. He had met a girl on a trip back home...when he got back he quit the band we had, and started planning to bring this girl to Canada. To each his own but I sometimes wonder what happened to them. What their lives became and how they were doing in this world of ours....despite the too close for comfort marriage thing I remember some great times with them both. Some funny stories which are coming back to me as I write.....hmmmmmmm

Tchau
D