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The Funky Monkey
In which our heroine muses about golf, booze and buffalo
I’m still on my hometown visit. I’ll be back late Wednesday, at which time I will attempt to get caught up my friends list. I’m looking forward to it. Be warned: the following story is even more long-winded and nonsensical than usual.
Rarely does a week go by in my hometown without a golf tournament of some sort during the summer. They are usually fundraisers, and often held in the memory of an avid golfer (we have one for the Dipper, my stepfather’s ex-stepfather (long story) that raises money for the Cancer Society).
The Funky Monkey is a tournament with no such lofty goals. It is, to be frank, one big piss up. It is held every Thanksgiving (Canadian) weekend and was started by an old friend of mine. You are permitted an iron and a putter only, and you have to draw for the iron. The foursomes are also selected at random. The tourney attracts a fascinating mix of people. This year the participants ranged in age from 20ish to 70ish.
Damn it’s fun.
Golf is by no means a snobby sport in my area. On the course you will encounter doctors, lawyers, retirees, farmers, factory workers, labourers and various forms of trailer trash. Golf is the sport that bridges the great divide - between the skiers and the hockey players. In my area, people can be roughly classified by the winter sports they pursue. It’s gonna be hockey, downhill skiing or snowmobiling. Now, a snowmobiler can play hockey or ski, but there is rarely any crossover between the skiers and the hockey players. It’s always been like this. My dad was just reminiscing tonight about how he was the only skier on his street when he was growing up. That’s not really the point of my story, but I’m rarely concerned about keeping on topic, in case you haven’t noticed.
Anyhoo, the Funky Monkey is not about golf, it’s about drinking. The festivities began at 11 am. I think the first tee-off time was at 11:30am. For those who noticed. My foursome consisted of Gerry, a gorgeous 6’5” 50ish hockey dude who is also the head of the Parks and Rec department, George, the sardonic and sweet father of Mitzi, the friend of a friend, and Barb, a persnickety and crotchety senior citizen. Gerry was quite drunk before we even began, but that was okay because he still could drive the ball for miles. Barb complained about everything all day but submitted to our teasing with surprising good grace (this was the sixth year she has played in the Monkey, so she knows what she’s in for). And George and I just sat back and made snarky comments about everything and everyone.
He now wants to adopt me.
Booze
All of this has a point, I swear. I quit drinking completely 4 years ago when I met my boyfriend. I had dabbled with quitting on and off over the years, but was never successful. Why? Because drinking is so accepted within my family and society at large that non-drinkers are viewed as misfits. Or at least this is true in my hometown.
I had a lot of reasons for quitting drinking, not least of which is the fact I was clinically depressed for about a zillion years, and alcohol really didn’t help. And it wasn’t easy. I basically talked myself out of it, convincing myself that I got a headache every time I had a drink and that it caused insomnia. Homemade aversion therapy, dude.
But it turns out that physical symptoms are not a good enough reason for most people. I can’t tell you how many times that people have questioned my theories. Was I sure? Wasn’t there anything else I could drink? Was it really that bad? Of course it wasn’t, you dickheads! I wanted to stop drinking, and my reasons shouldn’t matter.
Peer pressure from friends and acquaintances I can handle with no problem. Family is another issue entirely. Everyone in my family drinks, every day. I believe that they are all dependent upon it in some way, but the only person who I would have classified as an alcoholic was my father, and he’s cut back radically since his stroke several years ago, so it is no longer an issue.
They all are constantly checking to make sure that I really don’t want a beer or something. I’m okay with most of them, but I am powerless in front of my sister (waaaay too many years of following her lead in all thing, I guess). Every time I came to visit, she would have some new wine that she thought “wouldn’t give me a headache”. Then she found the “magic beer”, that is hangover and insomnia-free. And she was right, dammit.
The end result is that I drank at least one beer every day of my visit. I could have prevented this, but the fact is that I didn’t want to. The deciding factor in my quitting drinking was that my boyfriend doesn’t drink at all (now there’s a good influence, finally). Well, he wasn’t here, and I have been craving a beer for a long time. Slippery slope, baby. I didn’t actually get drunk (which is an important distinction to me. I will die a happy woman if I live my life without ever getting drunk again), but it still went against my mindset of the past few years. I don’t feel all guilty or hate myself or anything, but it has made me revisit some issues that I haven’t thought about in a while.
Why the hell can’t people accept my decision to stop drinking? If I came out and told them that I was an alcoholic or had a problem with it they would back off, but why should it have to come to that point? I don’t sit around and sneer at people who are drinking or play the wet blanket role at gatherings, plus I am an extremely valuable commodity in this day and age: a designated driver. What’s the problem?
I also feel like my parents haven’t fully warmed up to my boyfriend, partially because he doesn’t drink or do drugs. My stepfather loves my sister’s boyfriend and I know that a lot of that bonding has occurred over a doobie or four. That ain’t gonna happen with my Pookie. Does this mean that this good man will never be as accepted as my sister’s string of losers has been (disclaimer: her present boyfriend is a wonderful man and not a loser in any way)?
This also leads me to the thought that I have never seen my boyfriend drunk. I think this is an important aspect of his personality. A drunk person has all of their foibles and vulnerabilities right out there for all to see. I don’t think that you can measure a man by how he holds his drink, but it certainly provides insight into his character. There are a lot of people who have been very, very drunk in my presence and I still respect them. I wonder if I’ll ever feel that I truly know Sean without this insight. And what does it say about me that I think like that?
I could go on and on and on about this subject, but I won’t. I’ll just end with a little story. It doesn’t really have a point, but it came to my mind.
Buffalo
It was February. In Winnipeg. I was participating in a historical reenactment of the fur trade period with some fellow students. We had set up camp at the Festival du Voyager for five days. There were about 14 of us living in a teepee and a lean-to in -25C weather wearing historic clothing , etc. Hey, seems like fun when you’re 20! Anyways, we had spent the last few days basically living in a zoo. We’d go about our business while people would watch (and learn, of course).
It was the final night. Everyone had packed up and we were spending one last night on site. There had been a huge party for all of the volunteers and most people were quite drunk. I was sober because I had decided not to drink after the first night since it was really not a lot of fun getting out of the lean-to in the middle of the night in freezing temperatures to go pee in the snow. It sucks being a girl sometimes.
The lean-to consisted of a canvas tarp wrapped around a wooden frame. We had straw bales covered with buffalo robes and wool blankets. It was actually the warmest I had ever been while winter camping, although I don’t know how we would have managed to cart all of that stuff around if we had been on the move. There were five of us sleeping in the lean-to. We had kept a fire burning outside of our shelter for the entire time. Starting a fire in the winter without matches isn’t fun at the best of times, so you didn’t want it to go out. We all piled in for one last time and the last thing I remember as I nodded off was a guy named Shawn piling more wood on the fire and deciding to leave the shelter door open to allow the heat to warm us.
A gigantic “Whooooooosh” sound woke me up. I turned my head to the left and saw a wall of flame on the canvas-covered side of the lean-to. No one else stirred. I yelled “get up, get up, get up” and shook the people on either side of me awake (I was in the middle in a line of five people). The guy next to me didn’t appear to realize what was going on, so I grabbed him by the front of his shirt and somehow hurled him out of the tent. By this time, the teepee people had realized what was going on and came charging to the rescue. They got us all out and put out the fire with a fire extinguisher (just because we were reinactors didn’t mean we were completely insane).
When the smoke cleared (literally), we saw that ¾ of the canvas covering the shelter had burned. The fire had moved closer to the shelter over the course of our stay as the snow base had melted. It is unlikely that anyone would have been killed, but we definitely could have suffered severe burns, especially if the lean-to door had been kept closed that night. There is no way that the people in the teepee would have known what was going on without someone raising the alarm.
We all crowded into the teepee and I spent the rest of the night breathing in the smell of burnt wool and fire extinguisher stuff and generally freaking out. Ho-leeee fuuuuuuck.
The teepee and lean-to were located inside an old fort. There were modern bathrooms outside of the fort’s wooden walls, which we used regularly (again, not all reinactors are insane). When we got up in the morning and opened the gate we were greeted by a couple of cop cars and a crowd of people. Since the ruins of our camp were still smoldering, we were a little concerned that we were in big shit.
Or not.
We were greeted by a wild-eyed cop who said, “Where did you guys come from?”
When we told him, he said, “Well, get back in the fort, the buffalo are loose!!”
What the hell?
Two buffalo lived in splendor in a pen next to the fort. It seems that some other drunken revelers (not us, I swear) had set them free to roam in downtown Winnipeg. Mass hysteria seemed to be the most popular response to the situation. We had already done hysteria the night before, so I was all out. I just wanted to see if my boots had survived and get the hell out of there.
The buffalo were recaptured by 10 am that morning and the streets of Winnipeg were safe once more.
Sorry, that story didn’t really have a point either. So sue me.
And fire was apparently a common cause of death for voyageurs who wintered in the northwest.
I’m still on my hometown visit. I’ll be back late Wednesday, at which time I will attempt to get caught up my friends list. I’m looking forward to it. Be warned: the following story is even more long-winded and nonsensical than usual.
Rarely does a week go by in my hometown without a golf tournament of some sort during the summer. They are usually fundraisers, and often held in the memory of an avid golfer (we have one for the Dipper, my stepfather’s ex-stepfather (long story) that raises money for the Cancer Society).
The Funky Monkey is a tournament with no such lofty goals. It is, to be frank, one big piss up. It is held every Thanksgiving (Canadian) weekend and was started by an old friend of mine. You are permitted an iron and a putter only, and you have to draw for the iron. The foursomes are also selected at random. The tourney attracts a fascinating mix of people. This year the participants ranged in age from 20ish to 70ish.
Damn it’s fun.
Golf is by no means a snobby sport in my area. On the course you will encounter doctors, lawyers, retirees, farmers, factory workers, labourers and various forms of trailer trash. Golf is the sport that bridges the great divide - between the skiers and the hockey players. In my area, people can be roughly classified by the winter sports they pursue. It’s gonna be hockey, downhill skiing or snowmobiling. Now, a snowmobiler can play hockey or ski, but there is rarely any crossover between the skiers and the hockey players. It’s always been like this. My dad was just reminiscing tonight about how he was the only skier on his street when he was growing up. That’s not really the point of my story, but I’m rarely concerned about keeping on topic, in case you haven’t noticed.
Anyhoo, the Funky Monkey is not about golf, it’s about drinking. The festivities began at 11 am. I think the first tee-off time was at 11:30am. For those who noticed. My foursome consisted of Gerry, a gorgeous 6’5” 50ish hockey dude who is also the head of the Parks and Rec department, George, the sardonic and sweet father of Mitzi, the friend of a friend, and Barb, a persnickety and crotchety senior citizen. Gerry was quite drunk before we even began, but that was okay because he still could drive the ball for miles. Barb complained about everything all day but submitted to our teasing with surprising good grace (this was the sixth year she has played in the Monkey, so she knows what she’s in for). And George and I just sat back and made snarky comments about everything and everyone.
He now wants to adopt me.
Booze
All of this has a point, I swear. I quit drinking completely 4 years ago when I met my boyfriend. I had dabbled with quitting on and off over the years, but was never successful. Why? Because drinking is so accepted within my family and society at large that non-drinkers are viewed as misfits. Or at least this is true in my hometown.
I had a lot of reasons for quitting drinking, not least of which is the fact I was clinically depressed for about a zillion years, and alcohol really didn’t help. And it wasn’t easy. I basically talked myself out of it, convincing myself that I got a headache every time I had a drink and that it caused insomnia. Homemade aversion therapy, dude.
But it turns out that physical symptoms are not a good enough reason for most people. I can’t tell you how many times that people have questioned my theories. Was I sure? Wasn’t there anything else I could drink? Was it really that bad? Of course it wasn’t, you dickheads! I wanted to stop drinking, and my reasons shouldn’t matter.
Peer pressure from friends and acquaintances I can handle with no problem. Family is another issue entirely. Everyone in my family drinks, every day. I believe that they are all dependent upon it in some way, but the only person who I would have classified as an alcoholic was my father, and he’s cut back radically since his stroke several years ago, so it is no longer an issue.
They all are constantly checking to make sure that I really don’t want a beer or something. I’m okay with most of them, but I am powerless in front of my sister (waaaay too many years of following her lead in all thing, I guess). Every time I came to visit, she would have some new wine that she thought “wouldn’t give me a headache”. Then she found the “magic beer”, that is hangover and insomnia-free. And she was right, dammit.
The end result is that I drank at least one beer every day of my visit. I could have prevented this, but the fact is that I didn’t want to. The deciding factor in my quitting drinking was that my boyfriend doesn’t drink at all (now there’s a good influence, finally). Well, he wasn’t here, and I have been craving a beer for a long time. Slippery slope, baby. I didn’t actually get drunk (which is an important distinction to me. I will die a happy woman if I live my life without ever getting drunk again), but it still went against my mindset of the past few years. I don’t feel all guilty or hate myself or anything, but it has made me revisit some issues that I haven’t thought about in a while.
Why the hell can’t people accept my decision to stop drinking? If I came out and told them that I was an alcoholic or had a problem with it they would back off, but why should it have to come to that point? I don’t sit around and sneer at people who are drinking or play the wet blanket role at gatherings, plus I am an extremely valuable commodity in this day and age: a designated driver. What’s the problem?
I also feel like my parents haven’t fully warmed up to my boyfriend, partially because he doesn’t drink or do drugs. My stepfather loves my sister’s boyfriend and I know that a lot of that bonding has occurred over a doobie or four. That ain’t gonna happen with my Pookie. Does this mean that this good man will never be as accepted as my sister’s string of losers has been (disclaimer: her present boyfriend is a wonderful man and not a loser in any way)?
This also leads me to the thought that I have never seen my boyfriend drunk. I think this is an important aspect of his personality. A drunk person has all of their foibles and vulnerabilities right out there for all to see. I don’t think that you can measure a man by how he holds his drink, but it certainly provides insight into his character. There are a lot of people who have been very, very drunk in my presence and I still respect them. I wonder if I’ll ever feel that I truly know Sean without this insight. And what does it say about me that I think like that?
I could go on and on and on about this subject, but I won’t. I’ll just end with a little story. It doesn’t really have a point, but it came to my mind.
Buffalo
It was February. In Winnipeg. I was participating in a historical reenactment of the fur trade period with some fellow students. We had set up camp at the Festival du Voyager for five days. There were about 14 of us living in a teepee and a lean-to in -25C weather wearing historic clothing , etc. Hey, seems like fun when you’re 20! Anyways, we had spent the last few days basically living in a zoo. We’d go about our business while people would watch (and learn, of course).
It was the final night. Everyone had packed up and we were spending one last night on site. There had been a huge party for all of the volunteers and most people were quite drunk. I was sober because I had decided not to drink after the first night since it was really not a lot of fun getting out of the lean-to in the middle of the night in freezing temperatures to go pee in the snow. It sucks being a girl sometimes.
The lean-to consisted of a canvas tarp wrapped around a wooden frame. We had straw bales covered with buffalo robes and wool blankets. It was actually the warmest I had ever been while winter camping, although I don’t know how we would have managed to cart all of that stuff around if we had been on the move. There were five of us sleeping in the lean-to. We had kept a fire burning outside of our shelter for the entire time. Starting a fire in the winter without matches isn’t fun at the best of times, so you didn’t want it to go out. We all piled in for one last time and the last thing I remember as I nodded off was a guy named Shawn piling more wood on the fire and deciding to leave the shelter door open to allow the heat to warm us.
A gigantic “Whooooooosh” sound woke me up. I turned my head to the left and saw a wall of flame on the canvas-covered side of the lean-to. No one else stirred. I yelled “get up, get up, get up” and shook the people on either side of me awake (I was in the middle in a line of five people). The guy next to me didn’t appear to realize what was going on, so I grabbed him by the front of his shirt and somehow hurled him out of the tent. By this time, the teepee people had realized what was going on and came charging to the rescue. They got us all out and put out the fire with a fire extinguisher (just because we were reinactors didn’t mean we were completely insane).
When the smoke cleared (literally), we saw that ¾ of the canvas covering the shelter had burned. The fire had moved closer to the shelter over the course of our stay as the snow base had melted. It is unlikely that anyone would have been killed, but we definitely could have suffered severe burns, especially if the lean-to door had been kept closed that night. There is no way that the people in the teepee would have known what was going on without someone raising the alarm.
We all crowded into the teepee and I spent the rest of the night breathing in the smell of burnt wool and fire extinguisher stuff and generally freaking out. Ho-leeee fuuuuuuck.
The teepee and lean-to were located inside an old fort. There were modern bathrooms outside of the fort’s wooden walls, which we used regularly (again, not all reinactors are insane). When we got up in the morning and opened the gate we were greeted by a couple of cop cars and a crowd of people. Since the ruins of our camp were still smoldering, we were a little concerned that we were in big shit.
Or not.
We were greeted by a wild-eyed cop who said, “Where did you guys come from?”
When we told him, he said, “Well, get back in the fort, the buffalo are loose!!”
What the hell?
Two buffalo lived in splendor in a pen next to the fort. It seems that some other drunken revelers (not us, I swear) had set them free to roam in downtown Winnipeg. Mass hysteria seemed to be the most popular response to the situation. We had already done hysteria the night before, so I was all out. I just wanted to see if my boots had survived and get the hell out of there.
The buffalo were recaptured by 10 am that morning and the streets of Winnipeg were safe once more.
Sorry, that story didn’t really have a point either. So sue me.
And fire was apparently a common cause of death for voyageurs who wintered in the northwest.
no subject
Yay! Trishkit not crazy!
I'm glad that you haven't encountered this in your family. My family are all lovely people - I just wish they would shut the hell up on this particular subject.
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From what you've written recently it sounds like your sis is doing pretty well lately...I hope that is indeed the case!
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I think so too. She will probably become a slightly different person than she was, but hopefully she'll be the better for it. My dad has pretty much reverted to being the man he was 15 years ago, but with some improvements!
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