Page 73 - Sharp Summer 2021

Having not been there (I was still several years from actual existence at that point), I can’t accurately describe what my mom’s reaction must have been when she got the call from her mother telling her that my brothers had fallen from the balcony. But I imagine it must have been something along the lines of “AAAAAAAAAHHH- HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH- HHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
In the end, John had several broken ribs and Larry a broken arm. My mom’s broken heart quickly turned to anger at her own mother for not paying closer attention to the boys.
Which brings me to a couple of important lessons in parenting:
1. Grandparents are fantastic, but they
generally don’t move very fast, and their houses are generally not kid-proofed, since their kids are generally adults. So if you’re dropping your kids off at their grandparents’ place, it’s up to YOU, as the parent, to spot potential dangers (like clotheslines on third-floor balconies) and take necessary precautions (this could include telling your kids not to go on the balcony, locking the balcony door, and if necessary, forming a barricade to prevent access to said balcony).
2. Accidents WILL happen. With all kids. Especially rambunctious ones. You are never going to stop all mishaps, so the best you can do is try to prevent the worst ones from taking place. This is still impossible, because kids don’t tell you when they’re about to do something stupid — they just do it.
Now, by the time it got to me, son number five, my parents had pretty much seen all there was to see of their kids doing stupid things, so they weren’t going to even try to stop me from doing them. I would learn by experience, just as my brothers had.
Like the time I tried to ski jump off our roof.
I was eight years old (prime Patterson stupidity years) and had just watched an episode of ABC’s Wide World of Sports, which featured not only a ski-jumping competition but also the show’s opening sequence where a ski jumper loses his balance while speed- ing down a ramp, then falls out of control at a speed no human should be going and crashes through a building. The accompa- nying voice-over talked about “the agony of defeat.” Indeed.
Most rational people would see that footage and think, “Oh, my God! I am NEVER going to try ski jumping.” But eight-year-old me saw it and thought, “Cool! I could do that!”
Immediately after watching the show, I rooted around our basement, found a pair of skis (cross-country, of course — down- hill skis were “too goddamn expensive”), and headed outside to try this new sport. Never mind that I had never skied before, or that we didn’t live near a hill of any sort. I would find a way.
I surveyed the area around our house and the surrounding yard, which was snow-covered (very important), and de- termined that the most ramp-like thing was...our house. It was the quintessential
“I DO KNOW THAT THE BEST A DAD CAN DO IS PROTECT HIS CHILDREN WHEN HE’S WITH THEM AND TEACH THEM THINGS THAT SHOULD BE COMMON SENSE (LIKE DON’T WALK ACROSS CLOTHESLINES). IT’S A TOUGH GIG, BECAUSE KIDS’ ACCIDENTS HAPPEN IN THE MICROSECONDS BETWEEN NON- ACCIDENTS.”
shape that all children think of when they draw a house: square on the bottom, tri- angle on top.
So with skis in hand, I began climbing the television antenna tower that was ten- uously attached to our house to prepare for ski-jump glory. I have no idea where my parents and my brothers were at the time. One nice thing about having much older siblings and parents who are “going through some things” is that you can, for the most part, spend your childhood unsupervised.
It wasn’t easy climbing that antenna tower while holding skis. After all, it was certainly not designed to be used that way. But also, skis are long and eight-year-olds are not. So it took a while, using one hand
to steady myself and the other to hold on to the skis.
Eventually, I made it to the roof.
What people don’t tell you about roofs (unless, I imagine, you’re a roofing profes- sional or perhaps a squirrel) is that they’re not the easiest surface to walk on even if you aren’t carrying anything. But they are particularly precarious to small boys carrying cross-country skis.
I don’t know if I took two steps or three, but I’m certain that I didn’t make it to the fourth step before gravity firmly set in and I fell, backwards, off our roof.
Two things saved me that day: the fact that our house was a bungalow (so the roof wasn’t very high) and the fact that the ground was covered in a generous layer of snow (something John and Larry would have benefited from under Nana’s balcony 20 years earlier).
I can’t remember if it hurt. I can’t remem- ber if I scratched my face on the shingles on the way down. All I remember is rolling down the roof and falling into a pile of snow, then letting out a cry, which brought Dad running and shaking his head.
“Jesus Christ, Stephen! What the hell are you doing?”
“I wanted to practise ski jumping off the roof.”
“Oh...well, you shouldn’t do that. Are you okay?”
“I think so.”
“Okay. Well, lunch is ready.”
Back to the present day and I can’t tell
yet if the Patterson foolhardiness has been passed down to my girls. But I do know that the best a dad can do is protect his children when he’s with them and teach them things that should be common sense (like don’t walk across clotheslines). It’s a tough gig, because kids’ accidents happen in the microseconds between non-accidents. If they were music, those mishaps would happen on the offbeat. So does that make all jazz music an accident? You tell me.
STEVE PATTERSON is a veteran stand- up comedian best known as the long- time host of the popular national CBC radio show The Debaters. He has toured internationally with his own solo shows and plays to sold-out audiences in the- atres across Canada as the host of The Debaters Live. Other projects have included Short Film Faceoff, The Smartass-ociates, and I Wrecked My House. His previous book is The Book of Letters I Didn’t Know Where To Send. He lives in Toronto.
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