transplanting prairie lillies

The first six months I lived in Ottawa, I was introduced to the same Saskatchewan ex-pat at four different parties. "Where are you from again? Oh! Saskatchewan. I should introduce you to one of my friends who's from there too!" And so I would be led into the living room, away from the fridge full of beer, and invariably meet Matt D. yet again, so that we could do the ritualistic exchange of pleasantries and make some idle chit chat until the awkward pause when I excused myself to get another drink. And then I would park myself back in the kitchen where all the good action is, because the kitchen is never far away from the gin. My kind of parties pulse in the kitchen; I've met all my best friends there.

Aside from Matt D., the other institution for newly transplanted Westerners in Ottawa is Friday morning French at work. The best and worst classmate is always the fifty-four year old pre-retiree who's counting down the days until his pension kicks in and who cannot for the life of him understand: a) why he's being forced to take the class in the first place, and b) why the partitive article has three forms. Aging Bureaucrat X, as belligerent as is possible at 9:30 am while sipping bad coffee from a Styrofoam cup in a workplace boardroom, thinks he is obliged to take the poor instructor to task, a cute little woman from France who's just trying to make a go of it in this True North of ours, Strong and Free. "Why is it this? and Why is it that? and Why do they do THAT WAY?" he grills, sneering as if the language police will suddenly burst into the room at the genius of his observation, declaring that, Guess What? We Anglophones? We were right all along! English really IS the best language going! Enough of all this verb conjugation and other Franco-silliness! GO BACK TO YOUR DESK RIGHT NOW BECAUSE FRENCH CLASS IS CANCELLED...FOREVER!

I love Aging Bureaucrat X, because I can empathize. He means no harm; he's just frustrated. Also, I look good compared to him - not because I necessarily know more of what supposedly should be my second language given that I was born in, you know, SASKATOON, but because I don't question it. I know enough about my own first language to know there are some things about language you can't know. Like this, taken from a recent Maclean's:

The median age [in] Gaza is 15.8. How do you persuade a pseudo-nation of unemployed, poorly educated boys raised in a death cult to see sense?

Obviously, the big question here is not, How do we massage the peace process into something less knotty and prone to spasms? or, What kind of rag has Maclean's turned into since Anthony Wilson-Smith resigned? but, How does ANYONE see sense? What, exactly, does sense look like? What colour is it? Is it 3-D? Does it stand in the contrapposto pose? What? If you know, PLEASE, tell me, because I would really like to take a picture of sense and have it framed it for my wall. I would hang it in my front landing so Adoring and Wonderful Husband could be reminded of sense everytime he left for work, or to go out for BEERS with some jackass. Like I said though, I don't usually ask about these kinds of things, because I just take language for what it's worth. Questions like mine and Aging Bureaucrat X's always seem to have the same answer anyway: go vote, dummy. Because if you don't like it, you shouldn't have let Trudeau get elected in the first place.