The Oppenheimer Report 6/23/14

Shauna and I with Lake Louise in the background

I came across a picture the other day that made me laugh out loud. As some of my twelve loyal readers know, my wife Shauna and I used to travel out to Banff, Alberta at the end of May. We spent part of our honeymoon there, and we liked the town and its residents. As well, Banff is a great home base for hundreds of spectacular day hikes in the Canadian Rockies. After a few years we began to be treated like locals, and we made some good friends with whom we still keep in touch. The trip was therapeutic on many levels; certainly it was good for our souls, but as well, for Shauna it was also a partial respite from her chronic pain. There is something about living at a higher altitude that took away some of her myofascial pain, and every year, with every hundred feet we would climb, heading west out of Calgary into the mountains, there would be an audible sigh of relief from my long-suffering passenger. We never really figured out why this happened, but Shauna became markedly more energetic in the high altitudes, and within a week or so after our arrival, we were able to hike and exercise much more than we could back east. Because we stayed for a while, and because we never travel light, we drove out every season, and that drive was sublime for me. Escaping from the fist-clenching congestion of Toronto, where it took me almost 45 minutes to commute the 12 miles to my workplace, I was like a teapot letting off steam as soon as we got into to open reaches of Northern Ontario. From Kenora to Calgary, we were on the open road, and it was always an adventure. What is it about long road trips?

One day, we were in some restaurant, in Canmore, Alberta I believe, and there next to the main entrance was a large Plexiglas box filled with stuffed animals. The catch was that the animals were in little plastic containers, so you did not know what you were getting until it was too late to change. For a loonie, you took your chances. We got a monkey. There is a Peter Gabriel song I like called Shock the Monkey and Shauna used to joke about how she thought the song was actually called Spank the Monkey. I suppose some of you know what that expression means. Bopping the baloney, shaking hands with the unemployed … you get the picture. Of course, our little furry white mascot became “Spank” the monkey, and hanging from the rear view mirror of our Jeep, Spank accompanied us on our travels across Canada that summer. He was an endless source of amusement. We did horrible things to that monkey. At one point, I had his tail sticking diagonally up between his legs and taped in that position, so he looked as if he had a giant boner. People would walk by the car in a parking lot and do a double take. Rather an interesting departure from the fuzzy dice concept.  

I found a picture of Spank the other night, dangling from the rear view mirror with his enormous erection, and in the background were the Canadian Rockies. It made me chuckle, it reminded me of lofty mountain vistas Shauna and I shared and of the many adventures we experienced in Banff, Yoho, and Kootney parks. Spank the monkey reminded me how important it is to laugh and to explore.

 

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2014 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED