small world

The drive to Toronto is get­ting eas­ier. It’s my only chance to really lis­ten to albums nowa­days¹, not to men­tion the com­fort of see­ing famil­iar towns on the way, like the names of sub­way stops you can’t help but mem­o­rize as a child on the way home from school. And in a way, so many years later, Toronto still feels like home. Getting there is a jour­ney, but the peo­ple always make it worth it.

My patience tends to wear out about a quar­ter way in, when it becomes hard to main­tain a rea­son­able speed. It’s a test of whether I can drive safely to see how far I’ve grown as a person.

I fail every time.

The view from Alex’s down­town apart­ment. You can eas­ily tell Yonge Street apart from how brightly it’s lit.

I decided to crash at Alex’s place, cause Darren hadn’t moved to his new apart­ment yet, John was at his cot­tage, and my dad is still unpack­ing from his recent move. Luckily, Andrew flew in from Texas to stay with Alex for the week­end too, so I got to see them both. The fact that I met them in grade 3 makes them my old­est friends, and they’re the only ones with whom I can always pick up where we left off, even if we’ve been out of touch for years.

 

The main rea­son for this trip was to catch up with Dave, an old friend from high-school. I trans­ferred out of UCC to a Catholic school² in my last year, and he was the only friend of mine to slip through the cracks, until he looked me up and con­tacted me a few weeks ago. Before that, it was 12 years since we last spoke.

We were mis­cre­ants back then, sneak­ing off cam­pus by sub­way and rollerblade to grab McDonalds and steal pewter Warhammer 40K fig­ures from Silver Snail (I was the one who dis­tracted the clerk with ques­tions). It was the only bit of unscrupu­lous­ness in my oth­er­wise squeaky clean life. I’d prob­a­bly regret it if we ever got caught on any of the stu­pid shit we got into, but we never did.

At Brownstone Bistro. Also my first time hav­ing san­gria. Yummy, yummy sangria.

It sur­prised me to learn that Dave didn’t stay in touch with a sin­gle per­son from UCC, as he was one of the suc­cess­ful and pop­u­lar kids who got along with every­one. But he found the men­tal­ity there to be too super­fi­cial and mate­r­ial, which mir­rored my own thoughts on the insti­tu­tion, prob­a­bly the rea­son nei­ther of us go to the reunions. As he explained to his fiancée Jenny, that meant I was his old­est friend.

She asked if he looked dif­fer­ent, and all I could come up with was that he was more aero­dy­namic, thanks to the hair­cut (I cer­tainly must have much more grey hair). Apparently my laugh hasn’t changed at all, and his laugh is the same too, as well as his slightly raspy voice and the inflec­tions in the way he talks.

Dave even brought up my best friend ditch­ing me for the rugby jocks in grade 10, which made me feel worth­less cause it was a time when I felt like I was defined by the friends I had. I didn’t think any­one else knew³, and the fact that he remem­bers this jus­ti­fies that entire period of my life, one of the dark­est I’ve ever been through. It was nice to get a bit of acknowl­edge­ment of the sit­u­a­tion so many years later.

A chicken bro­chette and a skewer of tiger shrimp in house demi-glaze, on a bed of roasted pota­toes and sea­sonal veg­eta­bles. The first time I’d ever had chicken instead of steak for surf and turf.

A few things came up over din­ner that made me think I had some kind of indi­rect con­nec­tion with Jenn, one of which was her men­tion­ing of a friend named Ziny. It’s far from a com­mon name, and I thought to myself, “I remem­ber pho­tograph­ing a Ziny once”, but didn’t bring it up cause I didn’t know her last name to confirm.

Then when I gave them a pack­age of white choco­late mousse tea from the Tea Store in Ottawa, Jenny said there was one in Kingston and she’d always wanted to try tea from there — exactly the same thing Alex said to me when I gave him a bun­dle gin­ger green tea ear­lier that day. That’s when I made the con­nec­tion, and lo and behold, it turns out Jenn went to med­ical school with Alex⁴ at Queens. Two groups of friends I met at com­pletely dif­fer­ent points in my life don’t just know each other, they hap­pen to be good friends too.

The twins are look­ing less and less like each other as the years go on.

The next morn­ing, Andrew, Alex and I went for brunch at a restau­rant called Aunties and Uncles. The fact that it has great reviews was prob­a­bly the rea­son we waited an hour in line, but that meant we had more time to catch up on love and life and every­thing between. They refused to let me pay, as I’d used the same excuse when they were in Ottawa a few years back.

The break­fast pocket: scram­bled eggs, peameal bacon, ched­dar cheese, tomato, and caramelized onions with dijon and aioli on focac­cia. Pretty damn good. I’m def­i­nitely try­ing caramelized onions in my future omelets.

I always believe Toronto will treat me well, and for the most part it does, even though the mess of traf­fic and con­struc­tion tend to pre­vent me from spend­ing any extended amount of time in the city. This time I was there for only 24 hours, my short­est trip yet, but it’s a small world, and Toronto never feels far away.

1. Editors in both direc­tions this time, cause any­thing I lis­ten to nowa­days is Antje rec­om­mended. [↑]
2. Where Andrew and Alex were also going, which means we were class­mates in grade 3, 4, and 13. [↑]
3. Aside from John, although John was inex­tri­ca­bly linked to this sit­u­a­tion in a com­pletely dif­fer­ent man­ner. [↑]
4. Who brought Ellen and Ziny to my place, which was also the only time I’d met them. [↑]