Category: Autobiography

Mary and I were eating some tater tots recently, and they reminded both of us of growing up and eating them at our school cafeteria. I would wager that upwards of 90% of my lifetime intake of tater tots happened at lunch during elementary school. Since we grew up in different parts of the country, we compared the sorts of food that we used to eat at the cafeteria and we realized for the first time that school lunches might not actually have been that healthy. When I think of school lunch growing up, I think of tater tots, syrupy canned pears or peaches, chocolate milk, corn dogs, Rib-B-Q (whatever THAT was), and square (or sometimes, hexagonal) pizza. I once got a barbecue pork sandwich that contained a little slice of pigskin. But that wasn’t the worst part: there were some little stubbly hairs in it! I learned many things that day: first, that pork came from pigs. Second, that pigs are apparently mammals. And third, barbecue pork sandwiches are disgusting (I later qualified this to: “poor quality barbecue pork sandwiches are disgusting”).

I remember that there was a salad bar in my school cafetorium (it was called a cafetorium because while it was a cafeteria during the day, it transformed into an auditorium for school plays and PTA meetings), but I also remember that almost no one ever visited it. I might have once or twice. But the main memory that I have of the salad bar is crouching near it and covering my head for several minutes during a tornado warning. It’s a good thing that a tornado actually didn’t come close to the school; I would have ended up unconscious with cottage cheese all over me.

Is it just that I remember those things that were really bad for me, or was it all like that? I may never know. The only person I still keep in contact with from elementary school days is my brother. Maybe he can shed light on this subject. . .

We’ve had mice in our apartment for the past couple of weeks. It’s a rather cruel situation for the mice, since our apartment is so small that they don’t have many places to hide. But mice are pretty unobtrusive, I find. The last time I lived in a house with a rodent infestation was in 2005, when I lived over at the Vancouver School of Theology in a three-storey house. There, we had rats, which are much more aggressive. My roommate Kendal saw one on the roof once, threw something at it, and it hissed at her. They mostly stayed in the basement, and we had to ask their permission to go down there and do our laundry. Anyway, our landlord found out about the mice, and gave us mousetraps to set around. Our landlord is a gentle soul, and instead of giving us traps that would execute mice swiftly, he gave us glue traps that would catch our guests until we could take them out to a field somewhere and release them to be fruitful and multiply.

We caught a mouse last Friday. When we were deciding what to do with it, we realized just how ridiculous the live traps were for our situation. The instructions for the traps talk about taking them at least a mile away for release, so the mice will not re-enter. The problem is, a mile away from our apartment in any direction is still metro Vancouver. The second problem is, only one of us has a car, and so if most of us were to dispose of the mouse, we would have to take it on the bus. We were tempted to do this because of the high probability of comedy ensuing, but decided not to. And taking the mouse on the bus wouldn’t solve the problem of not being able to get outside the city. It would be a kind of NIMBY-ism to release a mouse anywhere near where we live, because there are houses everywhere. Even if it doesn’t get back into OUR house, it’ll get into SOMEBODY’S house, which is no good.

So what did we do? We disposed of it the best way we knew how: by taking it outside and stomping on it. Requiescat in pace, mouse. And I really do mean that.

In the summer of 2002, I started a blog. I had just spent a year out of college, hanging around Richmond, VA and getting depressed about not knowing what I wanted to do, working at a job I didn’t like, and living with two friends who were in the exact same situation. But I got out of that situation by signing up with Educational Services International to go overseas and teach English. Just before I left, I decided that I would start a blog in order to keep my friends updated on what was going on as I went to Pasadena (for training) and Prague (for teaching). In the midst of a fierce bidding war, I even managed to secure the rights to elliotritzema.com.

I maintained that blog for a year, adding news and pictures and everything else I could think of that would be interesting. My friend John even designed it for me, and made it look good (you can still view it here). I kept that up for a year, and then decided to move to Budapest to teach. John designed another spankin’ new Web site for that year, too.

Then, after a year of teaching English as a second language and English literature, I went to Vancouver, BC and enrolled in the Master’s in Divinity program at Regent College. I kept up the blogging (on yet another new site), but eventually the flow of words slowed down to a trickle. Unlike the time spent in Europe, I just wasn’t getting out and doing a whole lot. I mostly read and wrote papers. I did get out of town for the next few summers and go to Skagway, AK to drive a tour bus. . . but I didn’t blog much there, either, because the Internet access was pretty dodgy.

Over time, I stopped blogging partially because I felt that not much was going on to write about, and partially because I had to send all updates to John to put on the site. Why would I want to make him go out of his way to post something that I didn’t think was all that important?

Now, however, the blog begins anew. And on my own site, so I don’t have to put someone else out by asking them to post things. The blogging philosophy is changing, as well: rather than dealing exclusively with events in my life (though there will be some of that), I plan on putting into words my thoughts about things that I read – both for school and for fun. Sometimes I find myself unable to articulate my thoughts in a coherent manner that communicates well to another person, and I feel that a blog will help me toward the goal of being able to communicate better.

Also, writing has long been one of my passions, dating back a very long time (I’m not sure how long, but it came somewhere after speaking and reading). I have been told by those who have more experience than I do that writing a little bit every day helps to hone the skill of putting words together. For too long, I have taken the gift and predilection for writing for granted. It is time I began to use it in a more disciplined (and hopefully, productive) manner.

So, here goes.

The title has nothing to do with what I am going to write about, but it is the title of an article on competitive eating in the May issue of Atlantic Monthly. I will not go into detail about the article, but I like it. So read it. Cherish it. And be glad you’re an Amurrican. If you are one. No, what this blog is about, truly about, is what has gone on over the past few days. And there has been a lot. So beginning with:

A number 1: Went to see Eisley (with Brighten, Simon Dawes and Fair) on Thursday at the Croatian Cultural Center with some Regent friends. There weren’t any Croatians there that I could see; in fact, there were very few people there that I could see. Only about 100. Which I’m sure was a bit disappointing for the band, since here they’ve been on tour with Coldplay and their shows are selling out left and right in the States, and here in the ‘Couv only 100 people bother to come out and see them. The only good reason that I can think of is that this show was an all ages (read: mostly < 19 years old) show right in the middle of the exam period of just about every school in Vancouver. Everyone most likely had to study. Even I had just written a Hebrew exam earlier that day. But the bands were good, especially Eisley, and they didn’t seem too put out that there was a small crowd. I hope that they come back and more people decide to see them.

B number 2: went down to Bellingham on Friday with Alex to get behind the wheel of a bus for the first time since last summer (and first time behind the wheel of anything since Christmas break). We both did all right. No major damage. I did hit a curb, but no biggie. We intended to train Friday and Saturday, but Jake told us after driving for three hours that we were doing fine and we didn’t need to make another trip down. So we went back up just in time for Tora’s birthday beach barbecue, featuring gobs of grilled meats and a cast of thousands. Well, hundreds. Well, a lot for a barbecue. We watched the sunset, we played frisbee, we munched and munched. Ahh, if only the weather were this nice all year round. . . then we wouldn’t get any studying done.

C number 3: Dance party Saturday night at our place, the last such party before the wrecking ball descends in June, and wicked condos replace it. We wanted it to be low-key, and so although we had let people know by word-of-mouth, we didn’t send out an official invitation until, oh, Saturday morning. Quite a few people showed up, we had plenty of beer, we had large speakers, we had a bonfire. Even Hans Boersma, our systematic theology professor, showed up with his wife and youngest daughter, and even danced briefly. I was shocked at first, but very happy. I hope he didn’t mind the loud music.

D number 4: Today is a beautiful, beautiful day. I spent much of the afternoon hanging out in a yard with my former community group and three children 4 and under. What could be better?

Regent’s second annual “Bowling Ball” was last night. What a relief it is to dress up like a fool and go hang out with your friends who are also dressed like fools. My own outfit was somewhat toned down, compared to what I’ve worn in the past to such functions. Is it because I’m getting older and more mature? Perhaps, although the reality is that I just didn’t bring much of my goofiest clothing when I moved out to Vancouver, for practical reasons. Plaid polyester suits, United Airlines coveralls with “Ramp Service” emblazoned on the breast, and bright orange hunting vests take up lots of room in the suitcase — and it’s not as if you can wear them to church every Sunday. The festivities ended at 10 p.m. because there was another group that had rented the bowling alley after us. Many of us moved the party to a local pub. When we first walked in, some of us were feeling a bit self-conscious because we were dressed so oddly, but it turned out there was nothing to worry about. Not only did no one comment on our clothing, but there was another group in the back who were dressed up just as strangely as we were. While our outfits were generally random, though, they were dressed up as things that began with the letter “F.” I never did catch why.
But it just goes to show: there’s no need to be self-conscious, because you never know when you might run into somebody at the pub dressed like a fortune teller.