In an effort to combat this, my wife Rachelle has developed a side hustle in which she combs through various stores for used children’s clothing and then sells what she finds online. I have recently become a part of her purchasing team.

What follows are the texts she sent to me while I was on a shopping mission:

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Rachelle: So, did you get those pink Sorel boots at the Value Village that you promised to pick up for me?

Rachelle: Oh.

Rachelle: I’d have thought you’d be there by now.

Rachelle: What problem?

Rachelle: Oh, I didn’t realize that taking the Queen streetcar to a destination on Queen street was “counter-intuitive,” especially considering that we used to live on that street.

Rachelle: Yes, I guess that was a lifetime ago.

Rachelle: We were very different people then, it’s true.

Rachelle: That’s right, there was no Netflix back in those days!

Rachelle: Yes, those were much more innocent times.

Rachelle: Those were the days before you fell down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole!

Rachelle: I’m sorry dear, of course I meant “Got Woke.”

Rachelle: Yes, you really are just as woke as fuck, and you’re right, the Lame-stream media can’t be trusted– it’s just too bad you still have such trouble with ordinary challenges is all.

Rachelle: Oh.

Rachelle: That’s what you want people to think.

Rachelle: I see.

Rachelle: Conceal the truth within a fog of misdirection! Just like a magician!

Rachelle: It’s amazing how successful you’ve been at making everybody believe you’re not very hygienic and unable to hold a job!

Rachelle: Oh, don’t be like that!

Rachelle: You’re still my favourite flavour of ice cream!

Rachelle: What? Something’s happening on the streetcar?

Rachelle: Bullying? Well that is serious!

Rachelle: What’s he saying to you, Pickle?

Rachelle: Well sure, it could be somebody else getting bullied, but I just figured it was part of your plan. You know, to draw fire from the weak to the strong!

Rachelle: I do know you well, Pickle!

Rachelle: So what did the guy say to you?

Rachelle: She called you a “weak-chinned twerp” because you got the last seat?

Rachelle: You’re right, it’s not your fault she’s slow.

Rachelle: You know what I think? I think she underestimated your quickness! Just like you planned!

Rachelle: But still, it’s amazing how bullies know exactly where to attack!

Rachelle: How did she know that you’re so sensitive about your weak chin?

Rachelle: Oh, good one, telling her you just had hernia surgery and needed to sit is sure to shut her up!

Rachelle: Oh, I’m sorry that it didn’t work.

Rachelle: And now she’s making fun of your “Solidarity Pin?”

Rachelle: What is a “Solidarity Pin.”

Rachelle: Oh, it’s a safety pin that signals to others that you’re a safe zone? And any persecuted group or person can take comfort under the umbrella of your entitlement, is that it?

Rachelle: So you’re kind of like an X-Man?

Rachelle: Got it.

Rachelle: Are other people wearing safety pins rushing to your aid?

Rachelle: No?

Rachelle: Well, maybe it’s your responsibility to find them?

Rachelle: Do you have your Ativan with you?

Rachelle: You better take one, honey. Maybe two.

Rachelle: Remember your breathing exercises.

Rachelle: In through the nose and then slowly out the mouth like you’re blowing out a candle.

Rachelle: Oh, Pierre, my power skating coach is trying to get through right now, so I have to go.

Remember to pick up the boots, my brave, little cloud of disinformation, and don’t let that bully scare you off your mission!

After family had left and the remaining adults retreated to their bedrooms, the girls began a dance party in our living room. The bass-heavy music thumped away, with the girls singing along together in a harmony that they might never find again. For that moment, they were a perfectly constituted choir—a constellation of sound, movement, energy and potential.

Studying YouTube, they taught themselves new dance steps.

Gas.

Pedal.

Gas.

Pedal.

And as they gained confidence and expertise, their steps grew louder and more choreographed. They were becoming more like the versions of themselves they wanted to be, and their voices, now high-pitched and excited, rose above the music. Lying back in bed watching TV, Rachelle and I could make out flashes of their tossed hair reflected back from the mirror in the hallway, and it was like catching glimpses of agents of nature, unguarded and fierce in their natural habitat.

As it was getting late, we told them that they’d have to keep it down and mind our neighbours, and so they began to dance softly. Having switched to stealth mode, it was as if they were now in moccasins– their feet falling as soft as whispers. And after 30 minutes they had danced themselves dry and all ran to the kitchen, chugging glass after glass of water from the cutest cups that they could find.

And in 10, 20, 30 years, that song they were listening to will come to them over the radio or in a bar, and it will all return in surprising torrents. The moves, like muscle memory, will return, the pretty, downtown dresses bought on Queen Street, the junk food shared and last names suddenly recalled….Yes, that feeling of the endless summer of youth, of being thirsty and drinking cold, cold water, of a life once so simple, pure and beautiful– everything still imperishable and perfect stretching before them.

A man who looked to be in his late 60’s, but was probably younger, sat with a woman. His face was leathery, dark and worn, but he boasted a full head of hair that had likely not changed since 1958. The woman beside him was wearing a jean jacket and was completely bent over in her seat, her colourless hair spilling down past her knees.  Gently, quietly, this man rubbed her back. I imagined some sort of sickness or grief descending on their lives, and now on a crappy day they had to travel somewhere they did not want to be, a place where lives change forever and then quietly begin to fall apart.

Outside by the line-up for the bus sat a clutch of about a half-dozen teens. Too young to really know what it meant, they were dressed for trouble. Posturing, they were dead-eyed gangsters peeling free of school. Listless and bored, they were looking for something to do, for something to change. A girl, probably about 17, had tattoos directly under her chin that led all the way down her throat. She was pale and coughing, like her three-year old son who careened nearby, and she was excitedly telling her friends about a place she knew in Toronto.

“It’s fucking awesome. On Queen Street. You can get a tattoo on one side of the place and then go get completely wasted on the other side. It’s all over Facebook!”

The crew nodded limply. They were deciding what to do and the only idea that was emerging from their collective cloud of thought was to travel to a nearby field to get high. One boy, who was smarter than he looked, refused, saying it was going to be too cold, that the wind was brutal there. He looked to me for support, and in his face I saw his youth and doomed intelligence, and I thought of the first one killed landing on the beach during some military invasion.

As the bus approached the town of Bradford the man who had earlier been attending the woman in the Newmarket terminal, got up to leave. He wanted off at the Bradford Inn, a narrow strip of possibility in front of which sat a woman smoking on a curb, her winter thighs pale and exposed beneath her skirt. To the side, a blue dumpster overflowed with garbage and a black cat floated along a railing. As the man got off the bus, he shouted back at the woman he was with, “Give me a call when you get there!” The woman he was leaving was utterly hammered. She gurgled to herself, her near-words rising like bubbles around her slack face. She waved a sleepy, drugged hand over herself in response to the man, who by that time had hit the street and was striding toward the other woman, who was now rising and flicking her cigarette butt away.