The man in the lineup in front of me at Shopper\u2019s Drug Mart had a sloppy, walrus moustache, smelled of cigarettes and was buying an entirely mysterious amount of loose cans of Diet Coke as if they, and they alone, were the secret to his time machine.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The girl working the cash was young and seemed excited by her job, exuding a manner that suggested she brought a great rush of enthusiasm and competence to everything she did. Cheery, even encouraging, she practically told me the story of each item I was buying, health and optimism radiating from her like sunlight.<\/p>\n

On Dupont, a lovely, young Indian woman in Lycra yoga gear was doing some modest stretches against the steps near a restaurant. It wasn’t accidentally beautiful, there was some intent to her actions, but it was close. However, every time a man walked down the sidewalk she tensed up and became anxious, just waiting for something unpleasant to happen, for some guy to say something that was going to ruin her fragile day.<\/p>\n

And as she did some calf stretches, a young woman proudly walked past her. She was swinging her arms and there was a spring in her step. She was feeling good, like a world-beater, and she was wearing a vivid, bright red t-shirt that said, \u201cThis is my Jesus year,\u201d animated by her faith, an unknowable courage seemed to be guiding her through the day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The man in the lineup in front of me at Shopper\u2019s Drug Mart had a sloppy, walrus moustache, smelled of cigarettes and was buying an entirely mysterious amount of loose cans of Diet Coke as if they, and they alone, were the secret to his time machine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[1678,382,794,581,61,2652,2653,55,1808,2657,588,336,2654,2655,105,2656,38,2658,1853,161,2388,1377],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4547"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4547"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4551,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4547\/revisions\/4551"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}