Buttercup's Hangout

As many of you know, especially those of you who know me, I love July. July is the time of the best sporting event in the world – the Tour de France. Ever since I was 16, I've been following the Tour, mostly because we didn't get coverage on this side of the pond until Team 7-Eleven and Greg LeMond headed to Paris (even though Canada's Steve Bauer rode in the race before that, but I digress…)

Fans who follow cycling (like me) have been getting a lot of heat from people who watch SportsCentre or read the Sports section of the paper but don't follow the sport, mainly because of the inordinate amount of coverage devoted to the use of illegal performance enhancing methods used by some athletes in the sport. (Not like there aren't other athletes in other sports who use these same methods, but I'll get to that later…)

For the past three months, I have been doing nothing but defend the sport of professional cycling to everyone I know. There are a lot of problems in the sport, and though it might be known for an inordinate amount of "banned substance" use, that's really only because professional cyclists are tested for substances more often and frequently than any other athlete participating in any other professional sport. True, they test athletes in soccer, in MMA, in Track and Field, but you don't hear much about that since, in those sports, the athletes aren't made to hand in a diary of their daily schedules on a monthly basis so that lab technicians can show up at any time, any place, interrupting your private life to say, "We're here for some blood and pee. Sorry, no picnic for you today."

(Which is what happened to Michael Rasmussen, the current Yellow Jersey wearer – he forgot to hand in his paperwork for July, so the Danish Olympic Committee cited him for violating his agreement because they said they wouldn’t know where he would be in July. Funny enough, hundreds of Danish fans have been seen along the mountains of the Alps and the Pyrenees cheering him on, so I guess the Olympic Committee aren’t aware of sporting events not tied to the Olympics no matter the degree of fame of the event…but I digress…)

[I take that back, and I apologize. Rasmussen had us all fooled – whether or not he doped is no longer the question. The answer is, he lied to everyone, and asked his wife and child to lie for him, so that he could “train” in Italy. He fooled the Tour organizers, he fooled the media, but, and most hurtful, he fooled the fans, like me, who just needed something to believe in…]

And things were looking up, so much so that an Italian cyclist, Alessandro Petacchi, the World Cycling champion and Olympic Gold Medalist, was forced to pull out of the Tour de France, because he had taken one extra puff of his asthma medicine during one stage of the Giro d'Italia (Tour D'Italie).  That was kind of like penalizing a diabetic for taking a little too much insulin to compensate for the extra glucose he might intake during the ride…

The good news is that Petacchi was cleared of any misuse of drugs or any wrongdoing today. As he said himself, "this is the greatest victory of my life". 

But of course this news will be overshadowed by the fallout from Team Astana, or, as we had been affectionately calling them, Team Borat. We were cheering them along as they suffered crash after crash, especially the big one that nearly took out who we believed to be their Fearless Leader, Alexandre Vinokourov, the pride of Kazakhstan (the real Kazakhstan; he is not the son of Bilo the Rapist) who had no fingertips, no skin on his leg, and had to get 60 stitches in his knees. But still, he persevered…he struggled to finish each stage, and his stand-in, Andreas Kloden, was forced to remain as second banana in spite of nearly blowing the field apart in both time trials, while the team remained behind their Leader. Vino, whom we all thought could face the formidable…well it turns out he might not have been able to face his own fears of losing the Tour de France.

Now I could be very much "well we don't know the results of the second test…" but listen, as my Italian friends tend to say. This Tour de France is being scrutinized more closely than any previous Tour has ever been. Each of the riders signed an agreement with the UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale) that basically violates their basic human rights just so they could ride the race. When they affixed their signatures, it was a legally-binding agreement, meaning that if it were violated, the UCI could take away anything and everything that cycling gave to them. (OK so my cycling fanatic friends are going to say that I'm being melodramatic, but reread the agreement and you tell me…)

So who would be stupid enough to dope, do steroids, or, in this case, bloodpack? All I can say is, if Vinokourov was that desperate that he thought he wasn't going to be caught transfusing his blood, then he has more psychological problems than he does doping problems. Perhaps it was the pressure of being the Golden Boy of Cycling; perhaps it was the pressure he had put on himself before the race to make sure that everything was in order and in place for his victory ride up the Champs Elysees; perhaps it was only the fear of being the fifth most popular man in Kazakhstan after Bilo the Rapist, Borat, and his son Hooeyloois; perhaps it was seeing that dream die in a matter of seconds as he crashed on the road…

Am I saying that he had a homologous blood transfusion? I will say this… I don't think that he would have felt the need to try to enhance his performance in any manner had he not crashed in the opening days of the Tour, amplifying the pressure he placed upon himself to win, win, win…that was evident by his facial expression in Stage 15, when he nearly cried after winning the stage by more than 3 minutes over his next competitor.

The man I feel sorry for in all of this is his second banana of Team Astana - Andreas Kloden. Kloden has been forced to be a domestique (secondary rider) for any team he's been on. He was a domestique for years for Jan Ullrich, who himself has been accused of juicing and other enhancements, in a team surrounded by controversy (T Mobile) after the "investigations" into the doping scandals started 24 months ago. Kloden then went on to a team where he thought he might be able to shine, only to be made a domestique for Vinokourov, only given a chance to shine in his time trial skills. Kloden had been riding the Tour of his life, and had crashed almost as badly as Vinokourov. Twice. In Stage 14 when it was obvious that Vino could no longer make it through the Tour, Astana finally surrendered the flag to the stand-in, and Kloden, who had been forced to hold back himself, struggled to maintain his place in the Top 5. Kloden was making a comeback in Stage 15, and had become the new "leader" of Team Borat…and now his dream of being on the podium in Paris has been shattered just as badly as Vino's fragile ego. Kloden is 32 years old and his time is probably done. He's been a domestique for two people accused of using illegal methods to win Tour stages, and will probably end up mired in scandal himself, when more than likely he doesn't deserve it.

How the mighty have fallen…just as the sport is rebuilding itself, it gets another crushing blow. Whether or not Vinokourov packed his blood or not is irrelevant – just the mere hint that it was possibly done and the sight of a positive test has brought the sport crashing to its knees.

Will I stop watching the Tour? Not at all. There are a lot of clean riders who have worked really hard over the past 15 stages to establish themselves at the tops of their games, and they deserve our attention and praise. David Millar, a reformed juicer who is back in his first Tour after being banned for two years, is showing just how much gumption it takes to ride this race completely clean, even avoiding cortisones for his arms which are blistering under the hot Mediterranean sun. Alberto Contador, in second place and first in the under-25 category, has a titanium plate in his skull as a result of a horrific crash he suffered a couple of years ago, and is riding the mountain stages with ease and without fear.

Out of the remaining 150 riders, there are still 150 stories of courage to be seen

[I apologize for this as well. Apparently there are still cowards in the pack, most notably from the team who has been wrapped up in doping scandals for the past decade, Cofidis, whose star rider sitting in 54^th place, Cristian Moreni, tested positive for synthetic testosterone. Not only was he using, but he was allegedly dealing, as the French police waited for him at the end of Stage 16 and took him from the finish line to the paddy wagon. IMHO, Cofidis should have never been allowed to participate in the Tour after the doping scandals involving their team, and after they became the butt of all EPO jokes. This latest arrest and disgrace only serves to confirm that Cofidis will do anything to try to regain their former glory. Good riddance…]

– these stories should not be denied or destroyed just because of one man's selfish vision, no matter how idolized this man was by the rest of the peloton and the world.

I'm sure you've all been waiting with bated breath to find out what I think about this whole Chris Benoit thing. After all, most of you know that I've been a huge fan of wrestling, er, "sports entertainment" since I was about 14.

I have my own theory on what happened in the Benoit house, but I'm not going to beat a dead horse, pardon the pun. Benoit was a great wrestler, no doubt, and a great human being for most of his life, and so what happened in the last 72 hours of his life should not define his legacy. That's all I'm going to say about that (I'll send you a private message of my private blog if you're really curious).

So why the title of my blog? Well, I'd like to point out something that perhaps the Benoit tragedy has brought to light. The world is becoming a more violent place. (I hear the collective "duh" of all 3 of my readership) But have you ever stopped to wonder why? Is it video games? More violence on TV? Parents mollycoddling their children to the point where they can literally get away with murder? Steroid abuse?

First off, let me preface this again by saying I am not a doctor, nor a medical professional of any kind. I just observe the human condition and know my own constitution pretty damn well. I also read a lot and watch a lot of Discovery and PBS in HD now that we have an HDTV (and those nature shows look so fucking cool!!! Sorry, I digress…) But I will tell you that the more people talk about how the body reacts to steroids, the more it made me think about exactly what is happening with the world today.

Steroids can be prescribed by your physician to be used sparingly in order to treat an injury of some kind. A good physician will warn you or, even better, will limit the amount of steroids that you're allowed to take during the time of your prescription allotment. Usually, it's never more than 2 weeks at a time. That way your body doesn't become dependent on them and that way your body can use the "boost" from steroids along with its own ability to heal (yes, did you know that the human body can heal itself? We often forget about these things during this time of modern medicine. Now you can't grow another leg, but your body will knit skin and blood cells over a cut to seal your internals from the external world. It's called a scab.). If you take steroids for too long, bad things happen. You become an addict. Plain and simple. And addicts, who can't get their fixes, are just nasty people all around. Just ask anyone who's tried to quit smoking or to give up coffee.

Steroids break down the internal mechanisms of the body content and basically "weaken the fibers" – they stretch them out so that you have a more bulky body, which, in the case of bodybuilders, gives you more muscle mass to build up and strengthen, but doesn't necessarily become the cause of your greater strength.

Now, you may or may not know, but steroids are sometimes injected into farmers' crops in order to give them a boost – they will grow faster, stronger, and be more plentiful, and thus, cheaper to use since there's more produce available. A farmer will make more money by selling a greater quantity of his food versus a better quality of food. And that food goes right onto our tables, and into our mouths and our children's mouths. We're getting doses of steroids that aren't even prescribed, in our meats, in our tomatoes, in our dairy products…

And who eats the most food out of any group of human beings? Teenagers. Why? Because their bodies are developing at an exponential rate – the human body only develops faster in infancy throughout one's lifetime. They eat tons of food – tons of genetically-modified, steroid-filled food. And they're constantly hungry. That's why all of these snack manufacturers use teenagers in their ads. You're flaked out on the couch, and you're hungry – here, have a pizza pocket. Except that pizza pocket is made with pepperoni from a steroid-filled cow or pig, steroid-enhanced wheat stock ground down to make flour, tomatoes injected with fish guts to make them less susceptible to bugs, and about 100 lbs. of salt, another massively-addictive substance. As many people have said, many wars have been fought over salt, so I don't need to say any more.

So you have a continually-hungry, ever-growing group of people who just can't get enough of anything. (Remember when you were a teenager and the world was so unfair because you weren't allowed to have or do what you exactly wanted?) These people, and all of us overall (except for the organic, holier-than-thou people who don't believe that they're being exposed to any of this – well, unless they're living on another planet, they're still breathing the same air as we are, and are thus exposed to the same toxins and substances that we are. Don't kid yourselves, hippies.) are being unknowingly pumped full of steroids, and we just keep wanting more.

If one of the side effects of steroids is triggering enragement in people, then imagine how many ticking time bombs of people there are right now. Those same kids participating in drive-by shootings. The same people who get behind the wheel of a car and start ramming into the person in front of them because they didn't get into first gear within .0734 seconds of the light turning green. The young kids bullying others on school grounds. It almost makes you happy that some kids are getting their aggression out on Grand Theft Auto 10 instead of acting it out on the streets.

So what can we do? Go hippie? Partially. You can become more informed about what you put into your piehole and what your kids put into theirs. Ask questions. Read labels. If you think organic produce is too expensive to purchase, go to a farmer's market or, if you live outside of a city, go to the farm itself and ask each of the vendors what they put into their crops, how they grow things, and then, when you feel satisfied, shop there. Here's one of the tenets of capitalism – if we stop buying a product, manufacturers will stop making it. Nobody bought new Coke – they stopped selling it. (OK so 15 years later they took out the sugar and are calling it Coke Zero, but hey, they took out the sugar.) If we stop buying meats and other products full of steroids, farmers will have to stop using them. Nobody likes to lose money. And we don't need to lose any more of our generation to violence that they have no idea how to control.

In our quest to be equal, have we lost sight of what it truly means to be a woman?

This week, it was announced that a new birth control pill was approved for use in the USA that will virtually eliminate a woman's monthly period. Many women celebrated and started calling up their doctors right away, to say "help me live my life", and get put on the pill immediately.

When I heard about this, two things immediately came to mind:

1. my friend A. who has the worst periods imaginable, suffers from anemia, and was unaided by any type of previous birth control pill available, should be jumping for joy. Hopefully this Pill will eliminate her female troubles without the need for the last resort alternative – the hysterectomy.

2. All the party girls in the world, and those women who are "inconvenienced" by their periods will start taking this stuff like wildfire, many of them in their child-bearing years, thinking that it's too early for them to worry about having kids. Then one day, they'll meet someone and want to possibly bear a child, only to run into a myriad of fertility problems after years of deceiving their bodies into believing that they were pregnant for over 10 years or however long they choose to take this new "miracle pill".

I remember when I first got my period. I was 11. That was 26 years ago, for those of you who are counting, and probably longer than many of you who are reading this have been alive. Now, I was very lucky. I've been bang on regular since I started. I've never had periods so painful to the point that I needed to go on Anaprox or other muscle relaxants; I never lost so much blood that I would become anemic and had to take extra iron pills (I do have an inherited blood condition, but it was never altered too badly by my monthly visitor).

But when I went on the Pill the first time at the age of 24, it completely messed me up. I was sicker, I gained more weight, I had cramps, and I had an uncontrollable temper. Then my doctor put me on a lower dose pill, and voila – I was fine. It was back to normal. And I was certain every month that I was not pregnant, when my monthly visitor showed up. In fact, the only time that my monthly visitor has never shown up has been when I was pregnant.

My point is this – as young women, we are told that having a period is the key thing that makes us different from boys. We have the power to reproduce. Having a period gives us the right to be moody, to feel our emotions rather than bottle them up inside, to each chocolate and bitch about life and truly have one secret thing that makes men run for the hills, screaming in fear. Entire cultures have rituals dedicated to women during the time of their periods, rituals that could be seen to be misogynistic but in reality were either meant to or have evolved into bonding rituals for women coming together in a common cause. We were told to be proud of our periods – periods are the symbol of the power of womanhood.

The whole point of feminism and equality between the sexes was for men to accept us as we are – human beings who had reproductive rights on our side, and who showed that we were much stronger than they were, since we could bleed for five days and not die, and as such, women are able to do anything that men can do (and sometimes even better). Periods are empowerment, not hindrances; we told men that periods are not a barrier to keep us from being whatever we wanted to be.

But once you get rid of your period, or rather, eliminate it through these artificial means, then you have truly equalized yourself – you've become a man. You're no different than a man – you don't get your period, you don't have a monthly right to bitch, and, while you're on that pill, you don't have the ability to get pregnant and continue life. Instead of telling men to accept you as you are, blood and all, you've decided to eliminate the one "disadvantage" that you were born with in order to be equal.

Doctors are saying this thing is safe. In the short term, I'd guess that this is perfectly safe. Has anyone checked the long-term consequences of not having your period and then deciding that you want to have children? Check out most of the fertility clinics in Canada and the US if you want to see the results of long-term abuse and misuse of hormone pills.

Like anything, this pill should probably be used in moderation – maybe for a couple of years or, if you're never planning on having children at all, indefinitely. If you're not worried about screwing up your insides or if they're already so screwed up that nothing else is going to matter, then go for it. It could possibly save you risky surgery.

One other thing…does everyone remember when doctors used to smoke? In the delivery room? This is akin to a female doctor prescribing this new pill and saying, "It's safe. I take it myself." If she's been taking this pill for over 10 years and then successfully was able to have a child without the use of fertility aids, then it might be safe to trust what she's saying. But then again, if your doctor tells you to go ahead and take this Pill indefinitely as a way to make your life more "convenient", then she might as well hand you a pack of Marlboros and a lighter. Only most women I know who smoke were still able to get pregnant when they were trying to...

I will probably be accused of sabotaging the female agenda and living in the dark ages and putting women's rights back 1000 years or whatever…My whole philosophy has always been people should do what they want, provided that they know exactly what they're doing. Feel free to start on this pill if you want, but just make sure you have all the facts and have assessed the reasons why you feel the need to eliminate your period. If they're medical, like my friend A., then I really hope this works for you. If they're merely to make things more convenient and less messy for you, then you might want to think about the reasons why you feel that way about yourself rather than taking a magic pill hoping everything will all go away when you just might be making things worse for yourself.

Why are childless women so hateful of women with strollers?

When I say "childless", I don't mean young women who haven't had a chance to have kids yet (though sometimes we see you run the other way when we're coming with our buggies, making sure your headphones are securely in place inside your ears), or even women who, through no fault of their own, cannot medically have children and don't have the financial means to adopt locally, never mind go to Africa and do a Madonna or a Jolie-Pitt. I mean those women who have reached menopause or are on HRT to try to keep it at bay or who just let themselves go (or all three) who have never had a long-term fulfilling relationship, never mind a child, and give any mother with a stroller walking by herself (i.e. without an adult male companion) the evilest of evil eyes. If you're a mom who's ever walked down the street with your stroller, you know exactly what I'm talking about. That look as if your leprosy was so profound your nose is falling into your cleavage. The shaking of the head. The rude muttering (because most post-menopausal women who have never had a fulfilling relationship tend to start muttering to themselves when they walk down the street. It's an early sign of multiple cat syndrome senility). They let doors fly in your kid's face, they don't move out of the way in WalMart when you're walking down the aisle with a stroller basket full of diapers, wipes, formula and sleepers…it's the most bitter of bitternesses, more bitter than even Angostura could have ever made.

A few weeks ago, I encountered such a woman driving on my bus route while I was on my way home from shopping. I should have known she was one of those women the minute that she stopped the bus and wouldn't lower the kneeling bus so that I could easily wheel the stroller on. Most drivers, male or female, do that without hesitation. I even had one driver apologize to me because the kneeling capacity was broken. But I digress…we're not here to talk about nice bus drivers. They don't make for good stories.

So this bitter pill in her shoe polish black hair and oversized sunglasses just stares as I struggle to get the stroller on, show my pass, and then lock the stroller into place in one of the wheelchair spots. I always try to use a wheelchair spot unless of course someone with a wheelchair needs it, so that other perfectly-capable-of-walking passengers can easily walk, run, or fall down the aisle (depending of course on the driver) without the hassle of trying to maneuvre themselves around a big stroller with a little baby inside. Anyway, she goes speeding down the road, coming to rolling stops at each minor stop, barely allowing enough time for passengers to step on and off…whatever, she wants to go on her break. They all drive like that, but especially the ones who smoke, whenever it's nearing break time. Somehow my child is sleeping through all of this, but it's fine, because it's only a 20 – 30 minute bus ride to get us home from the point where I got on.

A few stops later, another woman with a stroller and an older woman with a walker get on the bus. They stand in front of me. I ask the woman with the stroller if she is getting out before my stop. She tells me yes. I say fine, because I would have volunteered to switch places with her if she wasn't, as it is impossible for two strollers to pass along the aisle of the new buses. The way we were positioned, people could walk to the seats at the back, but it was going to take some tricky driving for me to be able to get out of the bus unless she left first.

So of course you know what happened – my stop came up before hers. It turns out that she thought I meant the west end of the street, and I meant the east end. No big deal. I pull the bell, and start to manipulate my stroller down the aisle. I manage to switch places with the woman with the stroller just as the bus pulls up to my stop. However, now I have the problem of the old woman with the walker to deal with. The walker was right in front of the door (as it should be since people with walkers and canes should sit closer to the front), and my stroller could not pass around it. Some nice passengers had volunteered to help us move the walker up and out of the way, and I was just starting to move towards the door when the driver shut the front doors and drove off.

The passengers and I started to shout.

"Excuse me, I wanted to get out there."

"Hey lady, she's trying to get out."

The bus driver pulls up to the next stop. The walker is halfway in the air, and my stroller is underneath. I try to leave the bus again, and the people waiting to get on the bus outside stand aside. I am nearly at the door when she shuts the door and drives off.

Everyone in the bus is outraged. I am very glad that at that point they are doing the shouting for me because I really don't want to wake my baby.

"Why couldn't you wait?" they say.

"I was almost off the bus," I say to her.

"Look, it's not my job to sit there and wait for you people to figure out how you're going to get off the bus," she shouts back. "I don't have time to sit there. I have a schedule to keep."

The men are shouting at her the loudest. I was so outraged I don't even remember everything they said. But I remember what she said. And I'll never forget that screechy, estrogen-smoke-riddled voice.

"If the old lady would have just gotten off and made room then I wouldn't have to wait. It's not my job to help these people out. Jesus Christ!"

She stopped the bus at the next stop (so now we are 3 stops away from my original stop). At this point, I moved my stroller towards the back of the bus because the woman with the walker wanted to get out of the bus at this stop. Instead of getting out of the front, because I really did not want to deck this driver, I wheeled my stroller towards the back doors and shouted, "I am so very very sorry I inconvenienced your day today, ma'am."

A gentleman helped me take my stroller out of the back doors, but he asked me very loudly, "Why are you sorry? She is the one to be sorry, not you."

I said, "She knows what I mean, sir. Thank you very much, though, sir, for being so kind. It's good to know that there are still some decent people left in the world."

As soon as I got out of the bus, I pulled out my cell phone and noted the number on the side of the bus. I confirmed with the gentleman that we were reading the same number, and immediately dialed the customer service complaint line for the TTC.

I got a very decent and nice woman on the phone. I apologized for not getting the driver's name or number, but I did tell her what bus number and route this woman was driving on, and said verbatim what she had said to me.

"Excuse me, ma'am, she said WHAT?" the customer service rep asked.

"Look," I said, "I know everyone has a bad day now and again, but I'm a mother with a young child, and there was another mother with a young child, and we don't have cars obviously so we depend on the TTC to get around. Most drivers are pretty good to women with strollers. I have never been treated so rudely by another human being in my life, never mind a TTC driver."

She apologized, and told me something would definitely be done about that.

So fast forward now to this past week. I am going to work, so I'm without my usual companion in the stroller, on the bus that passes by my house to take me to work (I live near about six different bus routes). I get on a stop a little further away from where I live since that stop is closer to where my caregiver lives.

Who gets on the bus, in her TTC jacket, at the stop right in front of my place?

At first I wasn't sure if it was her…until I heard her cracking jokes with the bus driver and flirting in that sickening, post-menopausal classless way that those women who are so fucking desperate to hang onto their youth do.

And then I realize…I've seen her entering and exiting my building before. This woman is, in essence, my neighbour. Somehow, that makes it worse. But at least I can confirm she lives alone. And is quite bitter on a daily basis. I'd really like to raid her medicine cabinet to see if it really is full of nicoderm and estrogen.

She looks right at me without a hint of recognition. I give her the most evil of evil eyes, though I doubt if she saw it through those gawdy, oversized sunglasses she was wearing on that overcast day.

According to a friend of mine, when the TTC receives a complaint about a driver, a serious complaint, the driver's driving privileges are suspended though they are still paid. The TTC has a 3 strike rule.

I really hope that one day I run into this woman in the lobby or hallway of my apartment building while I'm wheeling my stroller. I think I'll ask her if she's sorted out exactly what it is she is supposed to do at her job. She might slam a door in my face, and if she does…I have no qualms about enacting strike number three.

Young people today should appreciate what they have. I know I sound like an old curmudgeon. But I’ve noticed in this city of the Tdot that the younger generation would rather stick close to the fast food joints near where they live, and maybe venture to a “fancy” restaurant downtown that some snooty reviewer said was “divine” just to be seen and not for the food, than explore the vast multiethnic culinary delights that we have to offer.

I shouldn’t be so general. It’s only the young people who were born and raised in the Tdot who are so fussy and selective. And it doesn’t matter what their cultural background is – they prefer the sickly sweet salty selections of the 2 minute meal instead of venturing across town and going into a place that might actually be interesting and teach them something, not only about another culture, but about themselves.

If it weren’t for the white bread kids who moved to Toronto from the vast tundra wasteland regions of the four corners of Canada, these little restaurants would barely survive. Yeah, okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, or maybe not – Toronto’s restaurant community has a faster turnover than that of New York, which is only slightly slower than the rate at which most pancakes will be turned on a griddle today.  But my point is that the kids who come to Toronto to go to school, to come to work, to live that Hollywood North dream, all explore those corners of the city that the rest of us twist our noses at and say “ewww”.

In my humble observations over the past little while, well,  okay, really, it just hit me suddenly one day as I was taking the bus from work and it was filled with all different kinds of rugrats from various backgrounds and various grades. Maybe I’m getting old, maybe it’s because my rugrat is starting to babble, but they all sounded the same, had the same vocal inflections, had the same lack of manners, and were all drinking Timmy Ho’s. I hope it was hot chocolate – caffeine does indeed stunt your growth. But that’s another story and rant for another time.

These kids take their backgrounds for granted. “Curry? That crap? My grandma makes it all the time.” (I had typed in ‘mom’ there, but knowing how many parents of second and third generation Canadians work full-time, they’re not cooking or trying out anything too new these days, either.) See, the keedz who move here from Moose Factory come looking for curry, and they find it in droves – red curry, green curry, yellow curry – a veritable traffic light of flavours. And they’re not too twisted-nose to try any of them.

For most of the keedz who come here as students, they go even one step further – they will go to the various ethnic markets and buy things to try to cook them. “You bought an octopus?” ‘Hellayeah – it was only 65 cents!’

Now I’m not saying that everyone born in Toronto lacks adventure, nor that everyone who comes here from Thunder Bay is adventurous – if they were, Timmy Ho’s would never have become the franchising monster magnate that it is today – I have just observed this in the young keedz that I see strolling through the shopping malls who think Mr. Greek is an exotic food experience.

I’m talking to you lot – food is not about a two minute experience. Food is necessary to survive, but what you choose to eat can help you make it through the best and worst times of your life. If you’re in such a hurry, go get a Vietnamese sub instead of a conglomerate one. You want a wrap? Have a roti instead – it will fill you up for the rest of the day. And yes, they will make it mild for you.  Feel like having fish? Go Portuguese – nobody does seafood like the Portuguese. Just ask Nelly Furtado.

But most of all, don’t be afraid to walk into these places and point at something on the menu and try that. Even if you don’t speak their language. You might be surprised at yourself. Who knows? You might even become a chef and try to infuse all of the new flavours you discovered into one stellar signature dish that makes you world-reknown.