4 ~ Wednesday, August 14, 1991

~- North Shore News

Living scared In
a Canadian suburb

MY WIFE and I were relax-
ing in the back yard. Our
seven-year-old, Emily,
wanted to go play with the
little girl next door.

To get there, she has to go out
our front door, walk along a
100-foot curve of sidewalk, and
cross the lawn to the neighbor's
door, where her friend’s mother
or big sister or grandmother is
waiting.

I should add that we are squat
in the middle of absolutely typical
middle-class Canadian suburb.

We arrange this expedition of
Emily’s by phone, usually. We
can’t see the neighbors because of
a bank of bushes. We could yell
back and forth. But everybody
prefers the phone. We're Cana-
dians, eh?

Actually, Emily doesn't walk to
the neighbors.

She hops.

She acts out roles in fantasies,
hardly aware of the world around
her while she’s into it.

She dances. In interesting loops

ob
Hunter

STRICTLY PERSONAL

She changes costumes easily
half a dozen times a day, ransack-
ing her mother's clothes drawers
and closet, putting together com-
binations that leave her mother
shaking her head about Emily's
“eye.”

She does have an excellent eye.

44...for 30 seconds along a
100-foot stretch of suburban
sidewalk, Emily can be
out of our sight. 99

— a mix of gymnastics, ballet and
what she sees on teievision.

She imitates birds and but-
terflies, pretending she's (ying.

Sometimes she'll pause to take a

bow to an imaginary audience,
whether anybody is there or not.

She's a riot to watch, and she
loves being watched. The trouble
is, we have a high wooden fence
running along that stretch of
sidewalk, and some bushes for ex-
tra privacy.

As she skips and prances over
to her friend’s place, Emiiy
therefore can disappear from our
view in the back yard for 30 se-
conds. Left to her own devices,
obviously, it could be a lot longer.

When she’s hopping around,
she’s not always going in the same
direction, you see.

Her family nickname is
‘*Bean,’’ sometimes ‘‘Beaner.”’

She is the most outward-going
kid you could imagine. Totally
gregarious. And self-confident.
She secs everybody on television
doing karate, so she thinks she
can beat up anybody she wants.
“Watch this, Daddy! Hee-yaa!
I'm tough!”

All she wants to be, she insists,
is an actress. Well, an artist too.
And a dancer. ‘I’m very talented,
Dad,"' she tells me. ‘*I am!"’

Wolo

Back ta School Flyer
Appearing August 14, 1991
Re: Shoe Department page:
Reebok brand, Ladies style
“Princess” Reg. price $64.19
(GST incl), new sale price
should now read $48.02 (GST
incl.) The previous price was
listed at $44.88 (GST incl.) This
was a misprint.

Wooilco is sorry for any in-
convenience this may have
cuased its customers.

She could be any kind of designer
she wanted.

When she's not changing out-
fits, dancing or talking to her pets
— two turtles, a hamster, several
jars full of various kinds of in-
sects, three finches and two giant
snails — she is busy drawing,
painting, crayoning or taping
sculptures together out of
whatever she can get her hands
on.

No tape, scissors, pens, felts or
blank paper are safe. She gocs

through pencils like a beaver
through saplings. She does por-
traits, comics, and — proudly —
“‘books of my own, Daddy.’’

Her drawings, the teachers
agree, are advanced for her age.

There is almost invariably a
blonde-haired, blue-eyed gir! in
her pictures, always smiling, with
lipstick (and cleavage yet!), attrac-
ting boys with hearts pouring
from them. Any lucky litde boy
she talks to more than a couple of
times immediately becomes ‘‘my
latest boyfriend."”

She dropped one of them
because his nose was running
when he kissed her. ‘*Yuk!"’

Emily, in case you hadn’t
guessed, is blonde and blue-eyed.

And for 30 seconds along a
100-foot stretch of suburban
sidewalk, Emily can be out of our
sight.

To correct this, one or the other
of us climbs up on the picnic table
and peers over the fence and the
bushes.

For some reason to do with
wanting to complete what I was
saying to my wife, I took a little
longer than usual mounting the
table to keep taps cn our little
wunderkind.

Nobody there. Either she was
dawdling or she had already pass-
ed.

My heart immediately jumped
into my mouth.

“I don't see her,"’ | yelled to
my wife.

Instantly, she was up and runn-
ing through the house and out the
front door. | dived for the phone
to call the neighbors.

Yes, the neighbor said, Emily
had just come in the front door.

How long had we lost sight of
her? A minute at most. And panic
had set in. Just like that.

Maybe we read the papers too
much. Maybe we're just paranoid,
overprotective parents.

Or maybe the fact that we
would get that scared — so quick-

ly — is the saddest commentary of

all about our modern urban socie-

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~HURRYCLIM

3301 W. BROADWAY, VAN.

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