a Canadian sacrifice

My friend Mike Holmes drove out to Kingston on Sunday to pick me up. I had left myself without resources, and he had to bail me out. Mike lives with his family in Ottawa and works for the Ministry of Natural Disasters (which makes him perfectly qualified to be my friend). Mike and I go back to the age of nine, but the real friendship developed in High School. We were both hockey fanatics, and we even teamed up with some other friends in grade ten to set the world record for road hockey at 22 hours and ten minutes. Some say the score was close till the end, and as the goaltender, I turned away some 450 shots. That record held until just last year, when a group here in Ottawa eclipsed it. Anyway, Mike and I graduated from Camrose Composite High School in 1978, and went off to the University of Alberta. He studied Political Science, me - Drama and English. He met Carol there, and they have three boys now and a great house with a pool. This is where I'm staying now. As I sit by the pool, having enjoyed three very restful days, with three squares a day (Carol's a great cook, and as you can guess, a good-natured and TOLERANT person), hockey with the boys, swimming with kids, and watching Simpsons from a lazy boy, I wondered about my choices. I have an ex-wife and a daughter, one car(which I share with Barry Greenfeld)and a great partner, all three thousand kilometers from here. Father's Day approaches, followed the next day by my partner and my mother's birthdays. And I will not be with them. I will be on a bus to Toronto, to crash at brett's or matt's. I don't have money to send gifts to them, or even buy something cool for Mike's boys, and Carol. And Mike: besides the actual cash he's fronted me, how can I pay him back for getting me to his home, and letting me recharge here. He knows the gauntlet I just ran is in preparation for the real work ahead. New York City...

The only way, now, that I can repay Mike, reward my daughter, and show I love my girlfriend and my mother, is by killing. Funny beats everything. Funny beats Rock Paper and Scissors. This sacrifice is a long one, and hard. And this doubt is daily. But I love my Job, and I love my country, and just hope that someday my country might love me back.