Signal to Noise

It is a long-standing tradition at our house that we read aloud stories before bedtime. The stories we read have have grown from the early (and insipid) books that repeat words and phrases to amuse children to short anecdotes with bright pictures (often authored by some guy named Munsch) and now to stories of some length, without all the pictures, and with a plot and characters. I love these stories.

It is a shame that many of the books for young adults are missed by the not-so-young adults. I do not know how many books we have read aloud but the bookcase in the children’s room would suggest that the number is in the hundreds. We have read some of the “classics” from Roald Dahl and Judy Blume (Fudge and his brother are great). There have been some newer books by Andrew Clements, notably Frindle. And there are a host of others I have not mentioned.

I want to point out, again, that these books are enjoyable to read. I will allow that part of my joy in reading them is seeing the pleasure in the audience. Hearing the laughs and making the funny voices is always going to improve the experience. But I also found that if I missed an evening and was behind a chapter or two I would need to read the missing pages before I would allow more to be read (okay, that last bit may be an indication of my compulsive nature … but I was not going to miss out on the story). And there is nothing like having a children’s author describe and explain some of the most complex and emotional issues facing children (and everybody) to make it tough to choke out heart-wrenching dialogue out loud.

The last books we read were A Long Way from Chicago and A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck. These books are two of the most enjoyable books I have read. Each book is a series of short stories (a chapter per story) and are told from the point of view of Joey Dowdel (A Long Way from Chicago) and Mary Alice Dowdel (A Year Down Yonder) and describe visits to Grandma Dowdel in a small town in Illinois. The stories are set in the late 1920s up to the late 1930s and are told in retrospect by Joey and Mary Alice when they are in their old age. The language and attitude of Grandma Dowdel had me laughing to tears. Peck also manages to wrap the character of Grandma Dowdel in a nostalgia that is not overly sentimental (in the sense that she shot the lid of dead man’s coffin when a reporter was in the room) and still showed a deep caring for people who were having a hard time. This was the depression era–most people were not doing that well.

I cannot remember ever having such good chats with the girls as the chats we had after reading chapters from these books. It is surprisingly hard to explain why some of the things that Grandma Dowdel does (which are, let’s face it, illegal) are morally correct; certainly there was no moral confusion in Grandma Dowdel’s mind.

We just finished reading A Long Way from Chicago for the second time and it still evoked the same laughter (and occasional tear) as it did the first time we read it. I suspect the biggest reason was my greatly improved voices, but I will allow for a bit of ability on behalf of the author.

There is nothing like having similar circumstances continually reappearing to make me believe I am either a) the poster child for déjà vu, b) living a somewhat haphazardly written version of the movie Groundhog Day, or c) in a bit of a rut.

Today’s reoccurrence came through my recent Music-Coffee-and-Code-in-a-basement life. As I am beginning a new project using Windows Mobile I chose the New Project menu item and followed the appropriate step to create a new mobile project (yeah, I know, this kind of riveting storytelling keeps me alive … I will be unboxing Happy Meals soon …). The result of these straightforward and previously effective acts was a little tiny failure message and a very disconcerting beep (not your standard disconcerting beep either; this was a new and ugly beep).

The reason for said disconcerting beep and lack of new project was a problem that occurred as a result of the security in Internet Exporer 8. I found this while drinking my iced addiction and listening to the CBC Radio 3 track of the day: “The Prisoner” by D.O.A.

There is no way that I can listen to D.O.A. without a flood of memories that bring me back to struggling up some gruesome hill (I always tried to stop and look at the lake for its beauty and not because I could scarcely draw an unlaboured breath). My suffering and panting (I am gravity enhanced and prefer the ride down to the ride up any hill) would always camouflage the stealthy cranking of those riding behind until the gutteral refrain of “my old man’s a bum … uurgh” would appear in my left ear as I would be left trying in vain to dig down to find enough energy to grab the aerodynamic advantage of the rear wheel quickly spinning ever further ahead.

I never caught the wheel and I always knew I would hear the lyric. The very occasional time I managed to summit anything greater than an on-ramp without hearing the whizzing of passing tires and D.O.A. lyrics (it was sometimes worse … Tom Jones’s “it’s not unusual to be loved by anyone” can stay in a person’s head for hours) was a victory savoured at least until the next hill. Of course, the downhills were their own reward.

In celebration of finding a way around a tedious problem I am pouring myself a little more coffee (be careful filtering that stuff … it is very easy to drop the strainer into the coffee bowl and have to do it all over again and be forced to wait for a second straining) and putting D.O.A.’s Just Play It Over and Over five songs (one with Bif Naked doing some singing as well) on high rotation. The code mines were never better.