42 YEARS AGO A CANADIAN WILDMAN MEETS AN INCA PRINCESS – an opinion piece

As I write the title for this blog, I am amazed at the number of years ol Bubbaloo and I have been together. It seems surreal and a bit unreal that this much time has passed like a finger snap. The fact that she had chosen me and stuck by me, also amazes me. 15,000 days or 367000 hours (give or take) have passed with very few days apart. It is incredible to me that anyone could put up with my crap for that long. Geezus I even tire myself out! How she managed it is a source of wonder to me. But stick to me she did, thru thick and thin and better and worse, she never (yet) gave up.

It all started long, long ago when this young, uncultured, wild, hillbilly of a Canadian landed in the Peruvian Andes and encountered a rare Peruvian princess. My heart was lost, my will, my soul, all were laid at the feet of this Inca beauty. The only thing I retained was my innate ability to get myself in shit. I became like clay in her hands and she moulded me into what I am today, an elderly, uncultured, wild, hillbilly of a Canadian. Together we travelled the world, and soaked up as many sights, sounds, tastes and smells as possible.

Along the way we produced two beautiful and independent daughters (now women) who joined us on our travels. Today it all seems as a dream and often when I reflect, I still wonder at the fleeting time that contains all of my memories. As I wind down this life, I only hope ol’ Bubbaloo stays with me for the rest of the journey. As she has often told me “Jimbo you are a piece of work”, and I, in turn, have often proved her right. I am going to leave you with a few words of wisdom from our early days of learning about each other;

At the time of dating when she was walking home and my boss passed her in the street, in his truck. She says to me “I saw Mr. McK……. today and he POPPED HIS CORN AT ME” to which I reply “wait til I catch that old pervert he won’t be popping his corn at anyone else!”

When going to the ocean for a picnic, we keep driving past all of the popular beaches to a place where there is no one in sight. She then says “yes this is the perfect place” later in our relationship she confessed that my body was so white she didn’t want people to see her with me. She put it like this “you looked like a cachalote (sperm whale) your body was so white.

Or the time when presented with Brussel sprouts at my mom’s place, her reaction was “eeeeewwwww, we don’t eat these we feed them to the pigs” and then politely ate a few, complimenting mom on the delicious “little cabbages”.

Or, on encountering her first taste of winter, in Toronto January 1979 she exclaimed “ are you crazy, how can you live in this? What do you do all winter?” I just allowed my eyes too slowly travel up and down her body. All the while leering at her. She thought we lived inside like eskimos until summer came.

Or, again in winter, dressed like the Goodyear blimp, with so many layers, covered in snow from head to toe, her arms sticking straight out to the sides, having just fallen off her first toboggan ride she says to me “are you crazy? You could have killed me!”

Or when my mom told her not to let “that fool (meaning me) take you camping in the mountains” and I asked her why, she said “well she told me there’s bars out there, bars”! She then asked me “what’s bars”? I explained it was oso in Spanish and bears in English. Once realization set in she looks at me very seriously and says “are you crazy”.

And hundreds and hundreds of observations, and verbalizations that have kept me laughing for all these years. Most of them ending with “are you crazy”? (Maybe a little, methinks). Thank you for the ride, I promise to be just as random as I always was and still am, and keep myself in trouble every once in a while. Love Jimbo