Pinned in The 'Peg (Part 1)

This is a true account of a time I spent in Winnipeg about 25 years ago. The Peg is a nickname for Winnipeg. I hadn't read it in years and never dared publish it until now. But it's time. All names are changed to protect the guilty but every word of it is true and I relived the horror of the whole experience as I read it a day or so ago. Alternative title at the time: The Hosts from Hell.

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Portage and Main, downtown Winnipeg (CBC photo)

It all started with Caroline, who worked for me. Her parents lived in Winnipeg. I met her mother, Eileen, over dinner with Caroline. Caroline thought we'd loads in common because we both knitted. Knitting has never been my life, I should make clear, usually indulged in during summers by the sea or in the winter over a movie.

Caroline moved to England. Next time Eileen came to Toronto she called me and I took her for lunch. Caroline had emailed me that it was also Eileen’s birthday that day, so feeling pressured and not totally out of generosity, I presented her with “A History of Canadian Knitting” a book that I'd recently bought for my own use in an obscure little shop. I took her to The Distillery, filled with artisans' studios where we could wander afterward.

Very early on I realized that I had been misguided in taking the afternoon off. I'd been with bores before but this was the auntie of them all. For a while I thought Eileen was going to burst into laughter and scream “gotcha!”

After lunch, as we toured the studios I was treated to a day by day accounting of life in England in 1965 and the details of every item of clothing she'd ever knitted for her children.

Demented, I whipped out my mobile around three o’clock and said I'd forgotten a very important appointment, could I drop her off.

Just about weeping with relief, I pulled away from her hotel. I will never, ever have to endure Eileen again.

Eileen raves to Caroline about the wonderful time we'd had and lickity-split, Caroline immediately buys an airline ticket for a full weekend in Winnipeg with Eileen and Edgar, her dad.

Horrified, but loathe to offend Caroline, I tell myself it won't be that bad. After all Edgar is a professor which required some degree of intelligence.

I arrive at Winnipeg airport on a Saturday morning. I'd been up since 6.00 a.m. and am exhausted, cranky and shy about a quart of coffee.

They're both waiting for me in arrivals, grinning, each with a coffee. As I struggle with my bag they tell me I didn't want a coffee. Really? I follow them and stop, horrified, as they open the two front doors of a two door 1991 Toyota Tercel and climb in. I am a tall, large woman and survey the back seat of the car which is piled high with jackets, tools, rags and cleaning supplies. It takes me five minutes to move all the material to the trunk and ensconce myself in the back seat accompanied by the happy sounds of slurping coffee from the front seat.

King of the Broadcasters

Sometimes it's triply hard to make a living. Make that to the power of 1,000. 99% of the time my PGs (tourists) are wonderful, kind, aware, interesting and interested.

But the odd time, the very odd time, I realize I'm making barely 50c an hour for the time they suck out of me like this guy(TG)! TG booked in for 3 days and nights.

I am captive to his enchantment with his own company and his interesting self. He's a non-stop broadcaster. A braggadocio of the first order. From his family pictures lining the walls of some distant legislature to how wonderful a husband/father/son/advocate he's been since he was born. One night I had to leave my own house and go to the graveyard to commune with dead strangers as he had finally trampled all over my last remaining nerve ending.

I had to leave him in mid-flow in my living room last night when I felt a scream rush to my throat and only by a sheer act of will could I squelch it by running upstairs.

This morning, as he entered the dining room he started up again about me being his escort to his son's wedding (kill me now!) and then launched into how the Cree Nation honours him for all his work in the Cree Tribe. His solution (which is hugely successful, he remarked in passing) to tribal alcoholism: "Give the natives proper suits and employ them all in First Nations casinos and give them credit cards and then bingo! they'll have purchasing power and a fancy car. They'll stop drinking!" Can you count all the wrongs in that statement? Boy, I'd love to find me some Cree elders and have a chat about sainted TG and his final solution.

So I stood, pushed my chair in, went to the kitchen, cleaned up, then said abruptly as the verbal diarrhea poured all around me: "Look, I've work to do, phone calls to make, I'm going to my office now and need privacy."

He says, I kid you not: "Ah, don't leave me, I love our little chats, oh come on!".

I made it and closed the door with a firm thunk and leaned against it gnawing my own fist.

He leaves tomorrow morning.

CBs Anonymous

I've had more than my fair share of these lately. CBs - my code name for Crashing Bores.

While I start out with a great deal of sympathy for them, as the time elongates and elongates my nerves start to jangle, I have to come up with more and more questions to keep the conversation flowing. And the CB answers run into a full length novel ("I opened the door of the car, but had to go back in the house for my purse and then the phone went and I was late for my doctor who took another patient which upset me as I was meeting Elsie at Tim Horton's which didn't have my morning glory muffin, good for my bowels"....you know the drill) or conversely a monosyllable. I don't know which is worse.

I've been afflicted with several in the last few weeks. I think what bothers me most is their complete and utter lack of self-awareness. Not even a smidgin. Followed quickly by their astonishing lack of curiosity as to the world around them and specifically to the people who inquire after their health or their opinions or their wellbeing.

I had an unexpected CB last night. An acquaintance from yonks ago. We didn't hang out then but she has chased me over the years on email.

I live in a small village. She remembered the name of the village and inquired in our small store and he was kind enough to lead her to my house. At 8.00pm when it was raining and getting dark.

And she stayed and stayed and regaled me of how she was in the business of helping people as she was like Mother Theresa that way, her role model, always thinking of others and how she could help them and she thought she might set up a kind of monastery in Newfoundland for all those people needing help, I would be amazed at the number of people she has helped with her wisdom, a gift from JC high above, only very few got this gift so she was thankful every day she was so gifted, she knew how rare it was and most people, probably me too, didn't understand or appreciate all she had to offer us unfortunates, she could lay on hands if I wanted her to - no? - I didn't know what I was missing as she had this gift...........

For a few hours I endured this. I had to lie to get rid of her, not a nice lie either, a sleazy kind of lie about my "friend" sleeping over, nudge-nudge, wink-wink.

And after she left, I thought: Crashing Bores Anonymous. Where CBs would work there way through a socialization structure, starting with forcing themselves to ask just one question of an acquaintance or family member a week (they could practise with each other) building up to a full conversational interaction after a year or two. Or more.

But then I thought: But these unfortunates never, ever have the self-awareness to recognize their problem. Even when their targets fall asleep in front of them.

It's all rather hopeless really isn't it?