When in unfamiliar territory — a church for example — look for things to do, like questioning the spelling in one of the Psalms — is it “annoint” or “anoint”? By applying the familiar short vowel/double consonant rule, I chose the one with two ‘n’s — and I was wrong. Which is a long way of getting to my point. Familiar territory.
The danger of being in familiar territory at the same time almost seven days a week — my morning coffee haunt — came home the other day when a reader took me to task for an alleged slight in a recent column. I say alleged because, as it turned out, he actually hadn’t read the column, just presumed the context based on someone else’s remarks. Readers who don’t read are a favourite of mine.
In the embarrassing aftermath I was asked where my topics come from. “Life” is the short answer. Real life. For example, I suggested to my wife Mary we were out of green garbage bags, because there were none in the utility room cupboard where we keep them. A few minutes later she emerged from the garage with a new box of green garbage bags and said, “Next time, look in the garage when you can’t find something.” I replied, “How come when I couldn’t find toilet paper, you told me to look behind the chair in the bedroom?”
The swelling is going down, I can almost see.
Nowadays, the newspapers are the most frequent source. Just last week, there was a story about a school district surveying students at alternate schools. Seems a local parent got a bit indignant over the questions that elementary school kids were asked about their nose-picking habits, bowel movements and sexual identity.
I couldn’t possibly make this stuff up.
I was reminded of how much fun real life is at an evening honouring the retirement of friends who owned a supermarket in our local mall. We reminisced over the characters we had seen come and go in the mall over 30 years. Had I been writing a column then, you would have read about the banker who never met a cocktail he didn’t like; the barber who dealt drugs and pimped his wife; the lawyer who took on the government and won, then took on his wife and lost; the millionaire coupon and empty bottle thief; the eccentric former glamour girl who shopped while wearing a fur coat and silk nightie; and the banker who left his wife for another man. But that was then.
In those days, I was a broker with the Realty World franchise under the leadership of Harold Waddell. Are they making giants in real estate anymore? Those men who, through their sheer force of will, comforted by confidence in their skill and leadership, and using their own money, forged local, national and international real estate organizations.
Harold was honored by the Vancouver Real Estate Board but a few of the former Realty World brokers thought a dinner and evening of reminiscing would provide a chance to express our appreciation to Harold, an opportunity we lacked by either our own departure from the system or the rush to slide under the covers of the new bed mate, Royal LePage.
And so we came from all over B.C. to the Best Western Sands on Davie Street, the heart of Vancouver’s West End, the gateway to Stanley Park. To quote Stan King, a man whose business card suggests he excels as a lover and as a blower-up of bridges: “It was like an episode of the Twilight Zone — nothing had changed.” And the best thing was that we knew immediately where the two most important features were — the bar and the washroom.
Lies were told or explained, loyalties and gratitude expressed, insults picked up where they had been left lying in the corner five, 10, or 20 years before. Harold was charming in his thank you and as predictable as ever, speaking not from a script but from his heart. And as anyone who heard Harold speak at Realty World conventions will recall, his heart ignored the fact there was more to say than time to say it.
And because most of us are a bit north of 50, we were pretty much wrapped up by 11 pm. The next morning on the 7:30 floatplane back to the Island, I was thankful the creeping inability to party on has forced me to feel better the morning after a meeting of real estate brokers.
Here’s to Harold Waddell – they don’t make them like that anymore.
Marty Douglas, irregular REM columnist, is a past chair of the Real Estate Council of B.C. He currently sits as a director of the Vancouver Island Real Estate Board, serves as an advisor to the Real Estate Council of B.C. and is on CREA’s Realtor Code Task Force. He is an associate broker with Re/Max Mid-Island Realty on Vancouver Island, B.C.
