My Government: On Guard For Me

Hey Ms J. How's it going? Me? I'm alright. Back to work after a few days of play. Work is the same. Boring sometimes. Often frustrating. Usually stressful. Managers. Trains. Ringing the bell and blowing the whistle. You know how it is. Same shit, only a little softer.

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It's a long weekend in Canada. Victoria Day. We're celebrating the birthday of England's Queen Victoria. I'm not sure why, really. It's just always been that way. There's no one alive now who remembers dear Vicky. She died in 1901. When I was a boy, we used to say a poem:

The 24th of May is the Queen's birthday.
If you don't give us a holiday, we'll all run away.

Clever, weren't we?

Victoria Day was fun back then. We could buy fireworks and firecrackers which we used to blow up tulips and small animals - frogs and the like. Boys can be cruel little buggers. Firecrackers were our favourite. We'd light the fuse and place one in a neighbour's milk chute or perhaps toss one toward an unsuspecting pedestrian and then laugh insanely at the astonished reaction. Nobody was ever seriously hurt, Ms J, apart from slightly burned fingers and the occasional temporary tinnitus from a blast too close to the head.

But we're too stupid to be trusted with firecrackers anymore. We're too irresponsible, too careless. So says the government. Firecrackers (the small, fused explosives that go off with a bang) cannot be bought or sold here now. Too dangerous, they say. We're idiots now, you see.

We weren't always, of course. We used to have common sense. Parents taught their children. People respected each other. Kids were still kids, but we played largely without harm or threat of injury.

I don't know what changed, or when. Or how. But evidently, we're a society of morons now, with a propensity for violence, murder and mayhem, and without the slightest regard for the traditional Canadian concepts of peace, order, and good government. Highly dangerous items such as firecrackers and candy cigarettes, if allowed into the hands of today's maladjusted and malevolent public ...

Well, there's no telling what sort of chaos might ensue.

I am grateful to our governments for passing legislation to save us from ourselves.

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