I signed up for Facebook at the suggestion of The Strategic Coach’s web programmer, who wanted me to check it out for a project we’re doing. It’s a “social networking” website — basically people chatting to groups of friends, based on a shared background. I’ve found ones for Dalhousie University’s theatre department, Charlottetown Rural High School, and even Forest Glade, my public school, which is still running and has a horrible circa-1997 website. Forest Glade, the subdivision (I really did grow up in “The Wonder Years”), also has a group of its own.
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Facebook started off as a college project, so the members tend to be young; I’ve not found anyone from Dal, the Rural, or Forest Glade of my generation yet. But in the subdivision’s group, someone posted pictures of the urban ruins of the old Easttown Plaza. This was where my family went grocery shopping at the N&D. The poster also included a picture of the abandoned Woolco.
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I remember going to that Woolco, and Mom buying me a treat one day because I’d been a good boy while we were shopping. It was a pivotal moment, actually, which several friends will recognise, because this has become a story in my life called “The Puppy Puzzle”. It goes like this:
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When I was about four, Mom (“Mommy” in those days) and I went out shopping. We were out for a long time, but I was quiet and well-behaved. So as we passed a display piled high with boxes of puzzles, Mom stopped and told me I could have any puzzle I wanted. Wow!
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I agonised over the decision — which one? I finally narrowed it down to two: One box featured a oil-painting illustration of a cartoon puppy, grey, with huge loving eyes (very Seventies, likely also the era of the “crying clown” paintings). The other box, though, had three puzzles in it. They were solid colours — red, yellow, blue — making up a sailboat, a drum, and a soldier. I decided that it made more sense to get the one with more puzzles in it.
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When we got home, I ran with my box of puzzles down to the “crawlspace” in our basement (a weird storage area that grown-ups would bump their heads in, but made for a great play-area for my brother and I, and was a frighteningly dark place for sleepovers). I sat on the old green patterned rug that was laid over the bumpy concrete, and I took out my puzzles. I opened the box, looked inside, and I cried: I wanted the puppy puzzle.
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This stuck with me, and I trust you to infer the lesson I took from it. I’m pretty convinced this experience has informed a lot of my subsequent decisions in life.
