Sadly, this state of affairs continued after she happened upon a garage sale ( http://michaelmurray.ca/garage-sale ) Rachelle and I were having, and then kind of exploded the other night on Twitter when I got involved in a debate about condos she was having with another Toronto writer. I interceded in the middle of the debate, and these are the tweets that passed between Atwood and I on that night:

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@margaretatwood: The un-rich have owned their houses for decades. Why should a development go right up to their lot lines and kill their beloved trees?

@michaelmurrayca: Have you seen an un-rich!?!? I hear they have teeth where ears should be and can only be killed by Dragonglass or gentrification!

@margaretatwood: Oh. It’s you.

@michaelmurrayca: I am an un-rich, you know.

@margaretatwood: Yes, I was able to deduce that from that little garage sale you had.

@michaelmurrayca: Made almost $80 at that sale.

@margaretatwood: Why, that must be more than you made on your book!

@michaelmurrayca: Unlike some authors who quickly sell-out to tv, I have some integrity. It’s not all about the money, Margaret, some of us are artists.

@margaretatwood: There is no hyphen in sellout.

@michaelmurrayca: I hear that they’re making The Handmaid’s Tale into a reality tv show.

Kind of like The Bachelor. You must be very proud.

@margaretatwood: Yes, as proud as your wife and son must be of you and your ability to provide for them through your “art.”

@michaelmurrayca: You remind me of Cersei Lannister.

@margaretatwood: You hate powerful women, do you?

@michaelmurray: Yes, very, very much.

@margaretatwood: Do you also disapprove of civic mindedness?

@michaelmurrayca: I am for whatever position you are against.

@margaretatwood: So you are in favour of killing trees, then?

@michaelmurrayca: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

@margaretatwood: So the fact that you’re totally uninformed about this condo development and the devastation it will bring to the local environment, that doesn’t prevent you from jumping in with an “opinion?”

@michaelmurrayca: I’d say it’s more commentary than opinion.

@margaretatwood: Tu tetras, homo parum de moron.

@michaelmurrayca: Oh, la-di-da! The grand dame speaks French!

@margaretatwood: Yes, I do, but the Tweet you are referring to happened to be latin. Like they speak in Mexico.

@michaelmurrayca: Were you called Margaret Fatwood in high school?

@margaretatwood: Oh my, I had forgotten about your biting wit.

@michaelmurrayca: In high school I was called The Enforcer.

@margaretatwood: It was ironic, I take it?

@michaelmurrayca: I was practically a god in high school, you have no idea!!

@margaretatwood: You miss those days, don’t you?

@margaretatwood: In spite of all the sport’s teams you never made, the low C’s you struggled to achieve and all the pretty girls who wouldn’t even glance at you, those were still the best years of your life, weren’t they?

@margareatatwood: Yes, I thought so.

This is a very small sample of some of the written complaints the principal has received from concerned parents:

“ When we picked Williamsburg up after school today he told us that he saw that dairy was available in the cafeteria. Is this true? Dairy? In 2013??”

“Our son Balzac was told he was “missing out” and that it was his “loss” by another classmate when he told her that he was on a gluten-free diet and couldn’t have any of the Oreo cookies she offered him. This sort of verbal abuse is unacceptable and it’s our hope that you severely discipline this girl so that this doesn’t become an ongoing problem. Additionally, another pupil scrawled “ballsack” on his binder. Balzac is a very sensitive, artistic and gifted boy, and to have uncertainty, even insecurity creep into his spirit would be nothing short of criminal. ”

“Sand was thrown at Plath during lunch hour, some of which got in her hair. To say the least, it was a VERY bad way to start the school year. We will be home schooling Plath until this matter is resolved and we are assured that nothing of this nature will ever happen again.”

“While performing a puppet show about Medecins Sans Frontieres for his grade three class, Luther was heckled by one student who was unable to follow the simple narrative of his “piece de theatre.” (Surely most children know of this NGO and have some French, no??? Is our education system that bad?!)This disruptive student (behavioural problems caused by poor diet?)kept yelling out, “Medecins Sans Fartieres,” and all the other children laughed, which caused Luther severe trauma. I had to give him half an Ativan when he got home. It is an atrocity when a child is not allowed to flourish and is bullied into subordination. Please consider advancing Luther to grade four, five or six so that he is able to interact with students who might share a similar artistic and intellectual capacity.”

“ While playing dodge ball at recess, our boy Colbert was hit twice, once in the head. Clearly, he was targeted. This is unacceptable. We ask that you look into this immediately and discipline the children involved. They are Droogs.”

Back in the early 90’s, while both of us were very stoned at a frat party in Montreal, we played a game of ping-pong. Let me tell you, playing ping-pong while high is just about the funniest thing you can do in the entire universe. I don’t care what dimension you’re talking about. It is a blast. This is the conversation I had with the young man who would later become the Liberal leader of Canada:

Me: Does your father sleep with a lot of models?

Justin: He dated Christy Turlington for a couple of months.

Me: She’s in that George Michael video Freedom! Sexiest video ever!! Did you ever see her changing or anything?

Justin: No.

Me: Rip-off. Sometimes you just gotta ask yourself what the point is of having a dad who’s the Prime Minister.

Justin: He’s not the Prime Minister! It’s been like a century since he was in office!

Me: I think he is.

Justin: No way!!!

Me: You’re not very informed, you’re very weak on policy.

Justin: Are you high? I am really high.

Me: Totally, and I can’t believe Claudia Schiffer is engaged to David Copperfield. He’s creepy. It’s like his eyes never move.

Justin: Do you remember how to serve in this game?

Me: I don’t think you do serve.

Justin: What do you do then?

Me: I need to think for a second.

Justin: Oh, I know, you just bounce it over the net! (throws ball into net)

Me: You have to do it again.

Justin: No!! It’s your serve now!

Me: Swerve? What does that mean?

Justin: Serve!!!

Me: Stop switching between French and English, you’re fucking me up!!

Justin: Just throw the ball!

Me: (throws the ball)

Justin: (swats at ball, like a cat, with his open palm)

Me: You’re supposed to use the paddle!

Justin: Are you sure? That doesn’t feel right.

Me: This is the longest ping-pong game in the history of ping-pong.

Justin: I know, it’s like we’ve been playing for days.

Me: It’s an endurance sport. Who invented it, was it the Egyptians?

Justin: I think they made the balls out of scarab shells and papyrus paper.

Me: The Egyptians were so fucking cool.

Justin: What’s the score.

Me: It’s 9 to 3 for me.

Justin: Right.

Cuba, I guess, was a bitter pill. Our frail efforts at visiting the “Real Cuba” as opposed to the “Tourist Cuba” only served to prove that we don’t like the real Cuba, and neither, of course, do most Cubans. We stayed in three different cities, two of which (Havana and Varaderos) are tourist centres, so the crippled, interior poverty of the country was  absent from our experience but only hinted at as we took a cab from city to city, passing by thatched roof homes with working donkeys living on the front porch. Our time there was one guided by hustlers, zombies and dead-eyed bureaucrats. Of course they would hate us, seeing in us only a mythic, superhuman capacity– one that was randomly dealt– to change their circumstances without damaging our own in the least. There’s an obscenity to wanting to have a fine lobster dinner in such a context, a very obvious one, and that tension was everywhere, invisible yet humming. We were billboards from the west– white, covered in corporate logos and sufficiently arrogant as to not know a word of Spanish. You know, I wanted to feel some sense of gratitude for my “charity” but what I felt was resentment and entitlement, which is probably the way that it should be. But in each small moment when we encountered what we hoped was the milk of human kindness or just a native curiosity about another human, it quickly revealed itself to be a prosaic, economic transaction.

The world is unfair in many, many ways.

A handsome and confident young man, a few years older, approaches them. He’s wearing an expensive leather jacket that looks at home on him, almost accidental. He flips easily between French and English, bums a smoke from the girl and proceeds with an irresistible seduction. It’s a cruel display of power. The North African no longer shimmers or flashes his brilliant smile. His posture collapses and all vitality is drained from his face as the girl, now laughing and alert in a different way, lights her cigarette off of the newly dispensed one held so perfectly in the stranger’s hand.