The first drug I remember taking (not counting the whisky slipped into my baby bottle at opportune moments, my mom encouraging me to, "Drink the fuck up," as I slowly made my way to delirium) was aspirin. The Germanest pill ever, cheap and bitter. The aspirin was crushed between two egg stained spoons. A dab of jam was used to disguise the bitter flavour of the snow white medicine. None of us Hockeys were good at swallowing pills. At least one of us was on the verge of vomiting without a moment's notice at all times. Encouraging us to choke down pills had not gone well. Probably started getting fed gravol then too. Gravol was supposed to control the vomiting. It caused us to vomit even more so we were given more gravol.
As children us Hockeys consumed a lot of pills. The sicker we got, the better the pills got. We took them all, we took the lot.
Before that there was television.
There are your gateway drugs, motherfuckers.
8 comments:
I know what you mean. I was trained young too. When I was five, I think, I climbed onto the kitchen counter then up on a stool I wrangled up there first and got the baby aspirin and ate every one of them. Then, I found out what a stomach pump was.
And that damnable Peter Puck was definitely the Pied Piper leading/luring a whole lot of us toward that gateway on all those Sudbury Saturday Nights.
And as for Tommy Hunter?
Well....
The Huntman and his Goons were like a pack of roaming Karl Maldens of the Canadian Idiot Box, acting to protect us and ours at all times from the debauchery and depravity of the two channel universe.
Because I'm telling you....In our family, when the Huntman came on, the tubes dimmed immediately and the boardgames came out.
After all, playing Risk was like Lucy In The Sky with Root Beer Floats compared to the Huntman and his Goons.
Seriously.
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Making fun of Tommy Hunter era Canadian television is comparable to pushing Rick Hansen down a flight of stairs today. You just don't do it. It's not polite.
Canada, pre-1972, was an embarrassing place to grow up in many ways. The national self-esteem must have looked gold mine attractive to the people who sold pills to be washed down with our V.O.
Only a little more embarrassing than pre-Reagan America, where producers could not keep up with the demand for baby aspirin and stomach pumps, because of the Mike Douglas effect.
Always give yourselves big credit for taking in all those smart American draft dodgers and deserters back then. Trudeau's wife was pretty cool, too. And that fucking rainbow weed, holy shit. I caroused my way back and forth from Portland to Nova Scotia on booze cruises on the Prince of Fundy. What does that mean, The Prince of Fundy? "Boat to Gamble, Screw, and Drink Like Crazed Maniacs from Boston On?"
That goldarned Mike Douglas effect, which, if I remember correctly, only took place on weekday afternoons was nothing compared to the Huntman Conundrum on Saturday nights.
All of which has me wondering if....
....our dear Anne was ever on with Huntman and his Goons?
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Like you, I have yet to find a close connection between Anne Murray and Tommy Hunter. Does not seem to be one. All that barefoot shit was probably too Anarchist for Canada's Country Gentleman.
I don't know which I liked better; the original post, or the exchange which followed.
When I was young the pills were scarce. We kids were spoonfed Extract of Malt, and those hungover adults soldiered through the morning after till the night to come with Japps Health Salts, Alka-Seltzer and more powders than you could shake a stick at. I'd wake up on Saturday mornings and scurry into the living room to siphon up those leftovers lying at the bottom of a slick of flat lemonade.
The gin was always an unpleasant surprise until I caught on to the smell of it. The quinine taint of Indian Tonic Water.
I dunno....
Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that Ms. Murray was no no talent goon.
Barefoot or otherwise.
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