Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

MOM AND THE CRUISE SHIP Part One

That smell…!

The doors to Miami International Airport shushed open and the smell
washed over the loud shirted snowbirds that’d just landed, including my Mom and
me. That smell! I came to a quick halt, dropped my bags, bent at the waist and
began a roaring sniff that rose me up and bent me over backwards – almost like a
reverse sneeze. Mom, no doubt thinking this another quirk of puberty, rolled her
eyes and stepped to the side in an effort to distance herself from the spectacle.

If you’ve never had the pleasure of a snootful of Miami air circa 1980, it
was a heady broth of salt, humidity, sunshine, car exhaust, tourists, suntan lotion,
chintz, glitz, pomade and senior citizens. But what really got my attention was
how oddly familiar it was; a sort of olfactory déjà vu. Mom attributed it to my trip
to California with Grandma, but no, California has its own smell going on.
Northern seas don’t smell like that either. The Caribbean is unique, and Miami
puts its own spin on it.

As the porter was smashing our luggage into the shuttle van and I was
grinning about wearing shorts in December, it became apparent that the locals
were looking at us with that dismissive pinched look that you sometimes get when
you’re making a social blunder. All around us, people were bundled up against the
foul weather; coats; jackets with the collars turned up; people breathing into their
gloves. Personally, I cut a dashing figure in a t-shirt with my swim team’s logo, a
pair of swim trunks and sandals, and was quite comfortable in the 12 degree C/53
degree F sunshine. True, it was a bit rotten driving to the airport back home in -27
C/-16F with no coat or pants, and Mom had some crisp thoughts concerning my
sanity, but now I considered myself perfectly attired.

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 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

Everyone, from the porter to the shuttle driver to the security and even
some of the more elderly passengers were looking at me as if I were some sort of
dangerously unbalanced anarchist that was about to start some kind of trouble.

“WHERE’S YER PURSE?” an old fella has leaning into his wife’s face
and hollering at her.

“IT’S RIGHT HERE ON MY ARM WHERE DO THINK IT WAS?” she

yelled.

“EH?” he yelled back.

She scowled and held it up for him to see. He slapped at it as if to hide it.

“PUT IT AWAY, THAT KID LOOKS LIKE TROUBLE!”

He pointed a knobby finger at me and they both looked like they had a bad
smell nearby.

She began to shush him in that tight way that Grandma’s do when they’re
trying to retain decorum.

“EH?” he yelled. “SOMETHIN’S WRONG WITH THAT KID! HE’S

CRAZY! LOOKIT IM’…IT’S THE MIDDLE OF WINTER AND HE’S IN
SHORT PANTS!!! CALL THE POLICE!”

“WE CAN’T CALL THE POLICE JUST BECAUSE HE’S TOO DIM
TO DRESS PROPERLY…GET IN THE VAN!” she yelled.

“EH?”

“GET IN!!!”

© Owen Garratt 2009 www.pencilneck.com All Rights Res erv ed.

 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

“GIT THE MP’S! IF SARGE SEES HIM OUT OF UNIFORM HE’LL

GIT THE STOCKADE!!!” he yelled, a bit cryptically.

“I KEEP TELLING YOU YOU’RE NOT IN OKINAWA, WE’RE JUST

VISITING KAREN AND THE GIRLS, YOU OLD FOOL!”

“EH?”

She turned to us and explained that every time they come to visit their
daughter and grandchildren, the palm trees confuse him and he spends the first few
days thinking he’s back fighting in the Pacific. Have you noticed how Grandmas
talk about Grandpas as if they’re not there?

Mom muttered at me in a sideways undertone to get in the front passenger

seat.

“They should send this old dude off to one of those islands where there’s
Japanese who don’t know the war’s over…it’d be a great punch-up!” I whispered
as Mom slid into the far back. I hopped in and started to rummage around for the
seat belt.

The drivers name was Thomas Delgado. I know it was Thomas Delgado
because his cab driver ID was prominently displayed on the glove box. I have
absolutely no idea how come I can remember Thomas Delgado’s name some 28
years after the fact. My memory is pretty…er…’porous’…and few details stick.
More often than not, I have to count on my fingers to pin down one of my Son’s
birthdays, but for some inexplicable reason, I can remember Thomas Delgado, and
what he was doing the morning of December 19th, 1980.

He was yelling at me.

© Owen Garratt 2009 www.pencilneck.com All Rights Res erv ed.

 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

Not knowing much about local customs in Miami, I appeared to have

insulted the poor chap. Some time earlier, Saskatchewan had passed a law
requiring mandatory seat belt use, and I had become accustomed to being strapped
in. But in 1980, Florida hadn’t gotten hep to trends, and thus it wasn’t mandatory.
Apparently, seat belt use was another symptom of the troublemaker, and terribly
insulting to the driver.

Thomas Delgado didn’t like the insinuation that his driving was unsafe, he
didn’t like lunatics without the common sense to dress properly, and he definitely
didn’t like 12 year olds pulling apart his upholstery. I was able to smooth things
over somewhat while Mom shot her dagger looks at me from the back, and we
began our drive to The Coconut Grove Hotel.

We passed palm trees and green growing things and birds and sunshiny
sky. Bugs were taking their cue from Grandpa Flashback and were happily
kamikazeing on the windshield and I couldn’t understand how these people could
consider it to be cold. It was perfect weather out, and I refused to believe that I
was the only person who visited Miami and wore shorts. As a matter of fact, I was
beginning to sweat, so I rolled down the window.

And Thomas Delgato went completely bananas.

He did a quick cut across three lanes of traffic as he dove for the window
crank on my door. I – reacting as any self-respecting Man of Action would do
when some fiend was pouncing at his crotch- blocked his advance with a crushing
knuckle rap on the back of his hand with my right and karate-chopped a perfect
one on his ear with my left.

He, and the whole van, leapt about 3 feet and careened back across the
three lanes as he tried to clutch at his ear, his forearm and the steering wheel while
bellowing something pretty peppery in his native tongue.

© Owen Garratt 2009 www.pencilneck.com All Rights Res erv ed.

 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

“MALLOY!!! JAP ZERO AT 3 O’CLOCK!!! A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A”

yelled The Flashback, making machine gun sounds.

“SIT DOWN AND BE QUIET!” Mrs. Flashback pulled him into his seat.

“I KNEW THAT LITTLE BASTARD WAS TROUBLE A-A-A-A-A-A-

A-A-A- HE’S A DAMN JAP KAMIKAZE SPY!!!! I’LL STOP IM’! A-A-A-A-
A-A-A-A-A!!!”

Little Bastard? I was a full head taller than he was…

His meltdown wasn’t the loudest thing going on in the van. For some
reason, these rubes held ME responsible for the near pile-up on the freeway!
There’s no percentage in yelling at a cab driver with an apparent death wish…it’s
obviously, somehow, the fault of the underage trouble maker intent on giving a
van load of geriatric snowbirds pneumonia.

As luck would have it, our journey was a short one, as Thomas Delgado
skipped the van off of the freeway, into a hotel parking lot and under the awning
in the loading zone that looked like the set of one of those disaster movies that
were so popular at the time. It was a dump – and not one of those ordinary dumps
either…this was a big fat dump.

The place needed to make up its mind and either keep the paint or shed it
entirely and start over. There were lights missing, some windows were boarded
up, other windows were tin-foiled, and vagrants seemed to have claimed the
perimeter. The foliage was wilted – in fact the whole building looked wilted, and
there was trash everywhere. The faded awning said a brand name you’d recognize,
but it would say ‘The Reprobate Inn’ if I had anything to say about it.

“This is The Coconut Grove Hotel?!?!” I blurted, incredulously.

© Owen Garratt 2009 www.pencilneck.com All Rights Res erv ed.

 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

“No!” Thomas Delgado slammed the van into park and got out. I looked at
Mom.

“Is he kicking us out or something?” I asked, turning to Mom in the back.

“Nope. This is it.” She said, excusing herself past rows of complaining
and inconvenienced seniors.

“What?!?!” I looked aghast.

The rest of the passengers in the van looked aghast too, but then settled on
the thought that this was just the kind of place that a wayward troublemaker and
his Mom would stay.

“THROW IM’ OVERBOARD! PUT IM’ IN IRONS!!!” yelled The

Flashback as he banged on the window.

We got our luggage out of the van and paid Thomas Delgado. Not too
surprisingly, he stuck out his chin at me and got back into the van with his new
cauliflower ear and peeled off, leaving Mom and me standing next to a jumble of
luggage.

“SAYONARA, TOJO!” yelled The Flashback.

Mom steeled her gaze and set her jaw and said “Let’s do this”

We stepped from blinding Miami sunshine into a sort of pit. The walls had
even less paint – but more cracks than the exterior walls. There was a moldy
cement chill in the air, and I could hear water running through something that had
prostatitis, but there was no fountain to be seen anywhere. A couple of old gents
were dozing in chairs and opened rheumy eyes as we approached the desk. Mom
hit that bell thingy, and it went ‘clank’.

© Owen Garratt 2009 www.pencilneck.com All Rights Res erv ed.

 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

“What in the world are we staying here for?” I asked, trying not to touch
anything.

“We had to take an earlier flight, but we can’t get into our hotel until
tomorrow.” She said, giving the bell another thunk.

Our trip was actually a very close thing. Air Canada went on strike the
same week that we were to depart, and Mom had to call in a favor from Auntie
Lorna, who worked for the airline. Lorna wasn’t family; she and Mom were
school friends, but had had a falling out. Mom’s ex-fiancé, Ken, had some Spartan
ideas concerning discipline and a distaste for independent thought, and Lorna
launched on him one night because of something he said to me, and unfortunately,
as always seems the case, it was the relationship between Mom and Lorna that
suffered, even after Ken had been given the boot. They were still civil to each
other but the damage was done.

After a few more bangs on the bell, a warty Ogre in hair curlers stepped
out from a back room and glared down at us in distaste. She looked as if she had
no tolerance for the kind of people who would stay in a shit hole like this.

After we finally got The Ogre to understand that we actually wanted to

stay the whole night and not just for an hour, she snorted at us, shook her head,
dropped a key on the desk and shuffled back to her lair.

Our room was brown, and not the kind of brown that you buy in stores -
this was more…organic. There were scuffs of flooring under the matted shag, and
the door jam had been repaired so many times that the locks were about as much
of a deterrent as The Surgeon General’s warning. The Miami smell had devolved
into the scents of ammonia, loud perfume, stale tobacco, spilt booze, chalk
outlines, clothes accidentally left in the washing machine for too long, and
although I couldn’t put a name to it at the time, old sex.

© Owen Garratt 2009 www.pencilneck.com All Rights Res erv ed.

 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

“Mom? Do you think you could get one of your cigarettes going?” I
asked, my eyes watering.

“Way ahead of you, but why?” she said, one dangling and bouncing in her
mouth as she rummaged for a light.

“I was thinking that the smell of your smokes would somehow improve
the air in here…”

I made the mistake of poking my head in the bathroom and pressing on the
light. The bathtub seemed to have the beginnings of an ossified coral reef growing
on it, and there were several long black hairs that had apparently been sanitized for
our protection right along with the drinking glasses

I went to fetch some pop from the machine, and saw a dude sitting on a
chair right beside our door. He looked at me like we’d caused him no end of
trouble by showing up, and he snorted in a scoffing manner (it seemed a big place for

snorts) and went back to studying a stain or something on the knee of his pants.

“Um…what’s up?” I asked, trying for a friendly note.

He turned to look at me. “I’m the security guard, and now that we’ve got
some ‘real’ guests, I have to sit down here all night instead of in my office
watching TV.”

“Why do we need a security guard?” I asked.

He chuckled, “Well kid, let’s just say that you’d better hurry up and order
a pizza before dark, because nobody will deliver here after about 7:30, and you
should’ve stalked up on soda before you came, because we don’t have any pop
machines. Do everyone a favor and stay in your room.”

© Owen Garratt 2009 www.pencilneck.com All Rights Res erv ed.

 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

I did. “Mom? Explain to me why of all the hotels in the greater Miami
area, you picked this one” I said, trying to get the door to click shut.

“Believe it or not, it’s a national chain hotel; it’s near the airport, and the
first four hotels I tried were full. It’s not easy booking a hotel room with 12 hours
notice.” She said, defensively.

How the hell did we end up here?

Well, like all misfortunes, it started pretty mildly. The previous summer,
Dad and his best friend Sigh took me on their driving tour of the American West.
We took in Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, and North and
South Dakota, and while there’s lots of story material there, including a similar
hotel room in Salt Lake City, the pivotal thing about the trip was that it put ideas
in Mom’s head.

She wanted to go on a cruise.

Mom was a secretary who’d just landed a position with the provincial
government, and although she certainly wasn’t earning very much yet, she knew
how to squeeze a dollar, and more importantly, she knew how to squeeze a dollar
out of Dad. Not for herself mind you, but she was pitiless in her views that Dad
should help subsidize my costs, and she used the summer trip against him. She
was good like that. So by penny pinching, guilt trips on Dad, and I’m pretty sure a
little help from Grandma and Grandpa, Mom and I went on our very first trip.

Well, there was also that weekend when we drove to Calgary and got the
car smashed up and had to fly home, but that’s not quite the same.

We spent a fitful night listening to Latin music, moans, coughs, little

scurrying feet, and what we hoped was TV violence filtering through the walls in

© Owen Garratt 2009 www.pencilneck.com All Rights Res erv ed.

 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

our hotel room at The Reprobate Inn. It was like trying to sleep in a prison filled
with Alzheimer’s patients.

Our security guard was no longer there when we left our room in the
morning.

“Maybe The Ogre ate him.” I ventured.

Eventually, thankfully, we ended up at The Coconut Grove Hotel and if

you’ve never been, I can tell you three things about it:

1) there’s lots of greenery

2) there’s lots of brass

3) there’s no way you’d confuse it with The Reprobate Inn

After unpacking and showering and enjoying lunch with Mom in a

brasserie, we wandered around some shops. Upon returning to the hotel Mom
went up to our room so I pottered around making chit chat with various staff
members and guests for awhile, and when I returned to the room I stopped cold.

“Uh, are you going out?” I asked. Mom had started The Ritual. She was
putting on make-up, the curling iron was plugged in, and she had smokes going in
ashtrays in the bathroom, in front of the main mirror, and on the night stand. Mom
liked a change in scenery as she got ready. She’d curl her hair in one place, put her
make-up on in another, get dressed in a third, and make periodic appearances in
front of the TV or radio, and she’d have a smoke working away in an ashtray at
every station. It amazed me how women of her generation never incinerated
themselves when they’d begin the fog of hairspray.

“We’re both going out; for dinner, and dancing. Get dressed.”

© Owen Garratt 2009 www.pencilneck.com All Rights Res erv ed.

 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

Aw crap...

Months earlier, Mom had decreed dancing lessons for this trip…all the
ballroom stuff; foxtrot, waltz, bossa nova, samba, and, God help us, the jive.
Actually, and I may not have let on until now, I kind of enjoyed it and am quite
good at it, but that doesn’t mean one wants to go dancing with one’s Mom!

I tried a few withered protests but it was mostly symbolic: we were going
dancing.

I’m not sure where we went for our dine and dance, but I seem to think
that it was on the top floor of the hotel. I do remember the room; it was the kind
of thing that sticks with you. It was dimly swank with a sort of church-hush to it,
and we pretty much had the whole restaurant to ourselves.

It was also very red. The carpet was red. The velvet curtains were red. The
menus were red. The table cloths were red. The napkins were red. The waiter’s tie
and cummerbunds were red. The eyes of the musicians in the band were red.

We were shown to a red table, we ordered red drinks and as soon as the
waiter split Mom hoiked me up to dance. There was a low, wide, red carpeted
stage facing a conspicuously empty parquet dance floor. My face tried to
camouflage itself by turning red, but as there was no choice, I set my jaw and
charged into it.

The band was a mummified trio of piano, upright bass and drums. They
had the general aspect of a tuxedoed chain gang. They didn’t bother with any of
that pesky nonsense of trying to work a crowd – which was very shrewd, as there
wasn’t any. They just avoided eye contact, lowered their heads and put in their
time.

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 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

After a few bars, I concluded that it wasn’t as putrid as I’d feared. Since
the place was nearly empty and there was no press of eyeballs on us, we loosened
up and began to try some of the more intricate moves. Mom and I made good
dance companions - she was only 4’ 11”, and I was already approaching six feet,
and other than her tendency to try and lead now and then, we moved very
naturally. Soon the bass player was waking up the other two and calling their
attention to us.

After a few tunes, Mom asked me in her best gangster undertones if I had
any cash.

“About five bucks, so if you’ve lost your money, I guess we’ll be washing
dishes. On the plus side, it looks like we’ll only have ours to do.”

Mom must’ve been in a good mood because she actually smiled at my

joke, “No, but you should go over to the band when we’re done, and slide it into
their tip jar and say thanks, and that we’re having a nice evening.”

“Why me?” I asked.

“Because you’re the Man, and that’s what’s done” she said.

“I get that, but why does it have to be my $5?”

“Because it would ruin the effect if I was seen giving it to you, dummy.”

The song wheezed to a finish and the bass player asked if we had any
requests. Mom shot me a ‘If you say ‘Funkytown’ I’ll kill you’ look, and muttered
“Bossa” to me.

“Could you do us a bossa?” I asked, ingratiatingly.

© Owen Garratt 2009 www.pencilneck.com All Rights Res erv ed.

 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

The drummer’s eyebrows shot up into his hairdo and the piano player
launched into a coughing fit, but they shoved into it, and so did we.

As the song collapsed at the finish line, a signal passed between the wait
staff and the band, who announced ‘a quick break’ at the same time our appetizers
were served. I stepped towards the stage, shot my cuffs and as I slipped the fin into
the tip jar, the piano player called me over.

“Hey kid, I wanna tell ya that you’ve got some real good moves. Nice,
not too flashy, y’know, smooth. Nice to see. Good for you. And a tip! Very
classy. Thank you, enjoy your evening, Sir.” he said, bowing.

I said my own thank-you’s to the band and turned to see Mom beaming at
me; she’d heard what the piano player had said. I could tell that she was proud,
was happy for my company, and happy that I went along with her in this.

Is there anything better than a beaming Mom?

As we sat down, the waiter presented our appetizers. “Frog legs for the
lady and escargot for the gentleman.”

We stared blankly at our plates. Mom promoted the family value of

adventurous eating, but we had entered new territory. I’d had escargots numerous
times, but always in the steakhouse fashion of broiled in mushroom caps with way
too much garlic. I was looking at a white puff pastry thing, and against the red of
the tablecloth, it was rather blinding.

Mom prodded her frog’s legs, which seemed to have been prepared the
way I like my snails, and gave me an apprehensive smile.

“You try yours first” she said.

© Owen Garratt 2009 www.pencilneck.com All Rights Res erv ed.

 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

“Coward” I said, and whacked into the crust. The snails were suspended in
an even whiter sauce. It looked like pieces of chewed licorice gum were stirred
into vanilla pudding and baked into a small pie.

“What the hell is this?” I asked.

“It’s $11, so you’re eating it.” Mom said evenly.

I levered out a spoonful and gave it a go. Mom began her quiet chuckles
as I wrestled the mouthful down and grabbed for my red whatever-it-was drink.

“So?” she asked.

“Well, now I know why The Keg drowns them in garlic butter – it hides
the taste of the snails. This looks like dessert, but it tastes like a mud puddle.” I
said. “How’s the toenails?”

“Not too bad, actually.” She’d spoken too soon however, because her very
next forkful brought her face to face with the flippers. She blanched like a puff
pastry.

“As a point of order” I said, “if you don’t finish those, there’s no way I’m
finishing this muck.”

“Deal” she said.

I tried the frog’s legs, and they were good. Flippers don’t bother me but
you should eat them fast as they get rubbery as they cool.

The band tottered back towards the stage, started a tired version of ‘My
Funny Valentine’, and Mom hauled me back up to the dance floor.

“I’m glad this isn’t too weird for you”, Mom said.

© Owen Garratt 2009 www.pencilneck.com All Rights Res erv ed.

 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

“Says who? I’m barely keeping it together here, but I know it’s important
to you, and I’m hoping to save up points against future misdemeanors.” I said,
executing a flawless turn.

After a pause I said, “Still, I’m sure this is the kind of evening you’d
rather be spending with Jack.”

Mom smiled wistfully and said, “That would be nice, but there are times
when I enjoy your company too.”

I grinned and said, “You only enjoy my company because I let you lead
more than Jack does.”

As we sat down again, I looked around and said “This kind of seems like a
‘Jack Place’.”

Mom nodded, “We go to places like this a fair bit, but it’s not too often
we’re alone, there’s usually several of his friends with us.”

I grinned “Did Ken ever take you to places like this?”

Mom rolled her eyes, “Oh please…his speed is a little more like last
night.”

“You’re kidding!” I said, horrified.

As you’ll recall, Ken and Mom were engaged (until Mom pulled the pin), and
now Mom and Jack had been dating for almost a year, and things were going well,
but were complicated, what with him being married and all.

End of Part One…

© Owen Garratt 2009 www.pencilneck.com All Rights Res erv ed.