CKNW Editorial
for August 9, 2000

After you reach 40 or so you begin to have that sense of your own mortality that will haunt you for the rest of your days. By the time you reach 50 and beyond, the obituary column becomes daily reading – after all it’s a bit of a bummer when you meet Charlie on the street, inquire after his good wife to be informed that she died 18 months ago with the unasked question, how come you weren’t at the service.

There is a time when your own milestones have both a chilling and exhilarating effect – it bothers you that you’ve used up so much of your allotted time with so much undone but it’s exciting to think that you’ve defied so many opportunities to turn up your toes.

I’ve had my share of milestones and each one has given me its joyous while scary moments but I think the milestones of your kids are harder to handle. I suppose my son turning 40, four years ago now, was the biggest pie in the face event of recent years – yet it was surely surpassed this past July 1 when my oldest grandson turned 20. A son twenty and I could fake the old "I’m only 39" bit … but not with a 20 year old grandson, I’m afraid.

The trouble with aging is that so often the reminders sneak up on you. As we’re clearing our house of 20 years accumulated debris there are lots of bits of nostalgia – old records, some photo albums of voyages past, a special book for a special occasion. But it was my friend and colleague Philip Till who gave me my latest ghastly example of how much time has past so quickly. For, you see, in the collection of junk and near junk I’m disposing of is an IBM Selectrix of approximately 15 years ago. It’s in mint condition and has all the bells and whistles. And I can’t even give it away. Not even to Philip Till who still uses a typewriter, clackety-clacking away like some latter day low bodiced, shapely legged stenographer of long ago. Not that Till looks like such a person – not at all – he just sounds like one. And the sound of the typewriter is now so strange that visitors to the 21^st floor of the TD building cup their hands to their ears and mutter "Hark, what on earth is that strange noise, do you suppose."

Knowing of Philip’s dislike unto denial of the computer, and his love for keyboards that really do hold keys, I offered my selectrix to him – free, gratis of course. Actually I would have delivered the damned thing to him and probably would have thrown in a few bucks besides, but though he politely paused for a moment before declining the offer, decline it he did. He did some calculating and nicely rating the condition of his machine with his expected life span, erring as we all do on the side of longevity, he concluded that his Remington would surely outlast him. Besides, if he took my noble Selectrix he would have to dispose of his machine which is too old to have any spare parts left but not quite old enough to be accepted by a museum.

Is it really that long ago that this purring beast, the apple of the International Business Machine company’s eye, was the king of the communications world?

Can it really be that Philip and I are so far along that the typewriter, that labour saving device that so marked the years of our better days, now not only can’t be replaced or repaired … but you can’t even give the damn things away?

I’m afraid, Philip old boy, that it’s true indeed leaving but one unresolved question – where do you buy your carbon paper, or onion skin as you probably better know it as? Or have you, without any of us knowing about it and giving you due credit, actually discovered the photocopy machine?