A nifty little exercise on the power of culture

There is this scenario that often happens among friends, but could also be set up as a nifty little exercise. It goes this way:

A group, say, composed of A, B, C, and so on, gather in a place where they could listen to each other’s jokes. Maybe it’s in a party, or a drinking session, or more effectively at a comedy bar. They invite Z, who doesn’t know the script; everybody or most of them do, anyway. Continue reading “A nifty little exercise on the power of culture”

The motto that didn’t make sense

it doesn't make sense

When I was a Grade 4 newbie at the Kamuning Elementary School (having transferred from the neighborhood annex near K-D or what is now Erestain St.), I was a highly focused student who observed all goings-on, obeyed all my teachers, followed all the drills and assignments, and mostly kept to myself except for a handful of co-nerds (or were we co-dorks?) like Raymond Co and Goldwyn Azul.

But as the school year wore on, I gained more confidence, indulged my curiosity, and began to show my incipient rule-breaking tendencies. One early object of this curiosity was the Chi Rho sign that some of the girls in class always wrote on top of the test papers, quizzes, and theme papers that they passed. Continue reading “The motto that didn’t make sense”

My secret vice that I’ll fight to keep

When my parents renovated the old family house in the early 1960s, they had two rows of huge storage closets painted in bright Mondrian colors, built right into an entire wall from floor to ceiling, right beside the stairs and near a backdoor leading to the garage. Both closet arrays were some 5 feet high, 7 feet wide and 3 feet deep. So you could imagine that a young boy could easily snuggle inside, keep quiet, and not be noticed for the rest of the day. Continue reading “My secret vice that I’ll fight to keep”