I loved how neighbours would dash from their bungalows as the delicate licks of flame danced with the wind across the tips of sun-browned April field weed. One little spark could become a rapidly advancing line of fire a few hundred feet wide in a matter of seconds. Nothing brought the community out faster than a grass fire. Everyone suddenly had a flat spade beating the flames back from BBQ tanks and cedar decks. Up until that point in my life, I had felt no greater power.

There's great submission in lying down. We accept things are the way they are because of the construction that provides the input. You and I may not be able to agree on how to define the colour "blue" but I can tell how disciplined you are with your kids by checking out the underside of your kitchen table.

As she was packing up, Leslie volunteered that she thought red wine was probably my biggest current oral foe (something I'm painfully aware of lately). Maybe this is TMI, but I chew nuts on the left side to avoid discomfort.

Don’t you just wonder: If you have a “toothbrush jar,” what does it indicate about your other choices and preferences? Do people who share a toothbrush also do joint chequing? Is the inverse true? What else do they share?

Alison looked nervous, but there was little I could do about it. She had picked the swarthy French guy as her buddy, so fixing up her hoses wasn’t my responsibility. By that point we were at the water’s edge. Still, I just couldn’t resist clipping her secondary air supply properly, so I just reached over and did it. She turned and looked at me, then swung around to the French guy and said, “Uh, ‘scuse me, I’m switching buddies.”