The Moment

I keep coming back to this one.  I did go through a very bad time with my Grade 12 social class.  Outright rebellion might not be overstating the situation; all behind my back.  I felt great apprehension with the approach of that last period of the day.  Would they gang up on me?  What would be my defence?   How could I engage them and still cover the curriculum.  Three months later, I have my answer.  I can’t.  Now, I need to blast through content, which brings me back to my topic, the moment.  Last night, we were listening to "This American Life" on the drive back to Slave Lake from Edmonton.  We'd taken Elizabeth and Hart out to dinner for her birthday to a "trashy Chinese restaurant" on 97th street.  Much to our surprise, Sai Woo restaurant was packed but just as we were opening the door to leave, the waiter stopped us to say that one of the customers had just paid and if we were wiling to wait a few minutes, he could seat us.  All went well except we didn't have a birthday cake for which I feel kind of badly but that's all beside the point.  This morning, I couldn't remember what the show was about.  I remembered the beginning about a student who couldn't go to the school in the next district and a considerably higher standard of living.  This segued into a documentary on the segregated neighbourhoods in the United States and how the government actually initiated them by granting mortgages to white citizens and not black leaving blacks in the downtown cores surrounded by a series of white suburbs, like a noose, someone had said with reference to lynchings in the south.  I realized that when I worry about the uncontrollable future, I should use that time to put my past in order, still living in the moment, but a different kind of moment.  And what about a program that could tabulate my life, put it in some kind of order.  Not really possible, but maybe this blog is.