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It was while working at a Nuclear Generating Station in Ontario, Canada that the author met many American contractors who specialized in nuclear contract work within North America.

These men and women jokingly called themselves Nuclear Whores and the website in which they found work was called http://www.roadwhore.com/.

According to the online ‘Urban Dictionary’, a Road Whore is defined as: “A temporary worker from out of town. In engineering and construction, road whores seek out and find massive bonuses, high pay rates, hazardous duty pay, per diem, housing allowances and any form of premium remuneration”.

These new friends taught him the ways of the contractor and he soon began a life as a nuclear contract engineer, moving from project to project around Ontario.

Soon after beginning his life as a nuclear contract worker, the author met and fell in love with a news journalist while doing improvisation at Second City in Toronto.

Three years later they got married. A year after that they gave birth to a son.

Unfortunately their love was short-lived. It ended two years into their marriage while living in Kincardine, Ontario while working under contract at the Bruce Nuclear Facility and she was home with their son.

One day, she packed everything including their son and moved to Oakville leaving the author in Kincardine, all alone.

Like many parents who suddenly find themselves inthis position, the author was surprised when told he was not an equal parent of his 1 year old son, but was what his divorce lawyer referred to as a “Secondary Parent”.

As such, he was not allowed to talk to his son whenever he wanted or to see him whenever he wanted. He had to fight to see his own son, and this took time.Without his boy in his daily life, he couldn’t eat, sleep or work. He was absolutely devastated.

After a few days, he went to his family physician who was immediately concerned for the author’s well‑being. This country doctor suggested a personal remedy of his for overcoming difficult times; he told him to concentrate all his thoughts away from the negativity of the present to the funny, happy stories of his past. He suggested trying to relive these memories, by recollecting them through painting, writing, songs, etc...

So, he wrote.

Each day, he concentrated on one funny, true story from his past. He would think about it for hours at a time, sometimes all day, and then would write it down. It took 42 days for the author’s lawyer to get visitation permission to visit his son in Oakville and in that time he wrote the stories that compile this blog.



Great Ball of Fire



It was my 31st birthday and I was visiting my parent's house in Port Perry for a celebration dinner. I had invited my younger cousin Jack over to join us as he lived just down the street. My parents, Jack and I sat down to a nice roast beef dinner.

Everyone had finished dinner and as usual I was still eating. What can I say? I’m a very slow eater…I always have been (it comes with being a slow thinker).

My father, wanting to get started on dessert decided to leave the dining room, go into the kitchen, get the birthday cake out of the box and put it on the cake plate. He waited for a few minutes and saw I still wasn't done eating. So he decided to start putting the candles in the cake. After a few minutes more, he began lighting the candles.

I'm not exactly sure what he was thinking; perhaps he thought the candles would burn for quite a while.

Every few minutes he would yell into the dining room, "Want me to bring in the cake now?" and my mom would tell him not to. She and I had no idea that the candles were already lit.

Well, it didn't take long for the candles to burn right down to the icing and I don't know if it is common knowledge but sugar does indeed burn.

Yes indeed. The whole cake suddenly caught on fire.

My father, seeing the fireball in front of him made a split decision; instead of throwing it into the sink and running water over it he thought he'd still be able to save the cake. So, he ran with it into the dining room yelling, "Blow it out! MAKE A WISH!! MAKE! A! WISH!" while reaching out towards me with this large burning ball of fire.

My mom, obviously shocked at what was happening was still determined to continue with the birthday celebration and started to sing "Happy Birthday". She sang the lyrics as quickly as she possibly could in an effort to complete the song in under a few seconds. This made her sound like she was starting to hyperventilate.

I grabbed Jack's glass of water and threw it on the cake dousing it. The fire went out.

My father looked at me with pure disappointment in his eyes, "Why did you go and do that for? Now the cake’s all wet!"

We all just sat quietly for the next few minutes eating burnt, wet cake.

The funny part was when I started opening up my gifts. You want to know what my cousin Jack had coincidentally bought me for my birthday?

A fire extinguisher for my apartment.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

God.. there are so many 'old' and 'slow' jokes I could make right now, I don't even know where to begin...

July 3, 2007 at 9:39 p.m.

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