Home  >> Stories  >> The Tale Spinner #2016-23

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IN THIS ISSUE

• Mike Yeager writes another story of his visit to Vietnam
• Catherine Nesbitt sends these hints about living in 2016
• Bruce Galway shares a copy of an article about Canadians
• Don Henderson rates the ways of keeping a woman happy
• Betty Audet has learned a number of things now that she is older
• Sites are suggested by Jean Sterling, Tom Telfer, Tom Williamson, Tony Lewis, and Zvonko Springer

Mike Yeager has a horrendous bus trip on their visit to Vietnam:

PTSD EXPRESS

As we sat waiting with other passengers to load onto our bus from Hoi An to Hue, a Vietnamese man stood up and began yelling at us, "Come on, let´s go, get on the bus!" as if we weren´t paying attention or were late to arrive. We didn´t realize our bus was parked over to the side of where we were sitting. There were no signs or directions of any kind. It was one of those sleeper buses that run up and down the few highways of Vietnam.

When you enter these buses, the bus driver hands you a plastic bag for your shoes. You are to place them in the bag and carry them back to your seat. The seats are like recliners, with an enclosed area for your legs. Within the enclosed area is (but not always) a blanket and small leather pillow. Above your midsection is a built-in tray to hold snacks and drinks. There are three rows of seats and two levels, like bunk-beds. Katie and I had ridden this type of bus before, and we chose the lower seats because they are easier to get in and out of, but are still difficult. The distance between the top seat and bottom seat is small, and you have to slide in at an angle, one foot at a time to get your legs into the leg area.

Everything in Vietnam seems to be made for small people. I had to buy an XXL tee shirt, which is the largest size at the souvenir stands, and I´m not a very big guy. One washing and this shirt will fit my twelve year old grandson perfectly.

A very tall young man entered the bus. The quick-tempered purser directed him to a seat in the back. I watched this lanky northern European tourist attempt to maneuver his long legs into the leg compartment. He couldn´t do it. One of the other passengers, who had witnessed his frustrated attempts, directed him to a seat up front where there was no leg compartment. The bus driver and purser had exited the bus and were attempting to cram a motor scooter sideways into the luggage compartment. The relieved young man sank into the open fronted seat with a sigh of relief.

When the cranky purser came back on the bus and saw the man sitting in the front seat, he yelled and frantically gestured, "You go in back."

"I´m too tall," he replied. "I don´t fit."

But the purser kept yelling and gesturing for him to move. This went on for a while, each man repeating the same thing. Finally the tourist said, "You are not listening, I don´t fit."

The purser got off the bus and talked with the bus driver, who immediately came on the bus and began yelling at the man, "You go in back." But the tourist wouldn´t budge, saying, "I´m not going anywhere."

The bus driver was beside himself. He totally lost his temper and began shouting at the guy to move. The tourist just kept saying, "I´m not moving." Some of the other passengers tried to explain the situation, but he didn´t understand or wasn´t listening. The driver grabbed the keys, turned off the bus engine, pushed the purser toward the door, and they both exited the bus. He slammed the door shut, locking us all in. He sat down on a plastic chair just outside the bus, in defiance.

It was a standoff between the Scandinavian tourist and the bus driver, and the rest of us were unwitting victims of the situation. It was a hot, humid day. The inside of the bus was heating up and it was becoming stuffy. After a few minutes, a passenger needing to use the bathroom began pounding on the bus door, but the driver and purser paid no attention. I was feeling panicky, a familiar feeling that had visited me from time to time since last being in Vietnam. My heart was racing and I felt claustrophobic. How are we going to get out of here? I imagined myself kicking out a window. I knew the bus driver could not kill all his passengers, that wouldn´t be good for business. But I wasn´t thinking rationally, so I focused on my breath, deep breath in, deep breath out, to help me calm down. The other passengers were now beginning to talk to each other about the situation.

In January 1968, I was awakened in the middle of the night by one of my hooch-mates. "Yeager, get up! We´re being attacked." The five of us in the hooch all scrambled to pull on our pants and boots. We were used to the sound of explosions in the night, but these were getting closer and there was a strange new noise. It sounded like the whistling bottle rockets we set off on the 4th of July, only bigger and more ominous. I grabbed my rifle and steel pot. The other guys were huddled at the screen door, looking across the dirt road to the bunker on the other side. Tracer bullets filled the space in between. We didn´t know who was shooting at whom, but the explosions were getting louder and we needed to get our butts over to the bunker, post haste.

One of the guys said, "We´re gonna have to run for it," and he took off across the road for the bunker. Another guy went, and another, until it was my turn. I waited for a break in the tracer bullet action and took off. At the entrance to the bunker someone grabbed me and pulled me in. We all made it and spent the rest of the night hunkered down in the bunker, listening to the explosions and hoping we were not being overrun by the enemy. I kept thinking about how easy it would be for someone to lob a grenade or satchel charge into the bunker and kill us all. We sat huddled in that humid smelly bunker until daylight, not knowing what was going on or what would be the outcome.

This was one of many experiences I had the last time I was in Vietnam and it seemed to be fueling my current anxiety on the bus. I looked out the bus window at the bus driver and he was talking on his cell phone. He hung up, and shortly after that a man showed up on a motorbike, apparently the bus company supervisor. He got the keys from the driver and unlocked the bus door. The passenger who had been beating on the door ran off to the bathroom, and the man climbed on the bus and stood in front of the tall tourist.

"You need to go to a seat in the back." And in broken English he tried to explain why. But the tourist didn´t want to hear his explanations and kept saying, "OK, I´ll go in back, but you just shush."

The man continued to explain and the tourist kept saying, "You shush," but then went to the back and into a seat, with his knees up in his face. The supervisor left on his motorbike and the bus driver and purser came back on the bus. Now the driver was late on his run and his frustration and anger were not abated. He started the bus engine, slammed it in gear and stepped on it. I think he was trying to peel out or pop a wheelie, but the bus just shuddered before starting forward.

It was a wild ride to Hue. The driver tailgated every car and bullied every motor scooter to the side of the road, all the while laying on the horn. When we finally got to Hue we were all relieved. A woman passenger with a Spanish accent told the bus driver off before exiting the bus. She told him he was a menace on the road and one day he was going to kill someone. A few of the other passengers clapped. Katie and I got off the bus and walked around the parking lot a few times just to get our bearings.

ED. NOTE: For Mike´s photos from this blog, click on http://tinyurl.com/hpgut59

Catherine Nesbitt forwards these actions that tell you

HOW YOU KNOW YOU ARE LIVING IN 2016

1. You accidentally enter your PIN on the microwave.

2. You haven´t played solitaire with real cards in years.

3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of three.

4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.

5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don´t have e-mail addresses.

6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.

7. Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen.

8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn´t even have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic, and you turn around to go and get it .

10. You get up in the morning and go online before getting your coffee.

11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. : )

12. You´re reading this and nodding and laughing.

13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.

14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.

15. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn´t a #9 on this list .

16. Now you´re laughing at yourself!

"Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused!"

Bruce Galway forwards this article by Gerry Boley In the Buffalo News:

AMERICANS SHOULDN´T TAKE FOR GRANTED THEIR FRIENDLY NEIGHBOUR TO THE NORTH

Misconceptions in the United States about Canada are quite common. They include: there is always snow in Canada; Canadians are boring, socialists and pacifists; their border is porous and allowed the Sept. 11 terrorists through; or, as the U.S. Ottawa embassy staff suggested to Washington, the country suffers from an inferiority complex. With Canada Day and America´s Independence Day just past, this is a great time to clarify some of these misconceptions and better appreciate a neighbour that the United States at times takes for granted.

With the exception of the occasional glacier, skiing in Canada in the summer just isn´t happening. Frigid northern winters, however, have shaped the tough, fun-loving Canadian character. When it is 30-below, the Canucks get their sticks, shovel off the local pond and have a game of shinny hockey.

The harsh winters have also shaped Canadians´ sense of humour. Canada has some of the world´s greatest comedians, from early Wayne and Shuster, to Rich Little, Jim Carrey, Russel Peters, Seth Rogan, Mike Myers, Leslie Nielsen, John Candy, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, and "Saturday Night Live" creator and movie producer Lorne Michaels.

The suggestion that Canadians are soft on terrorism is a myth. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau backed down the Front de Liberation du Quebec terrorists during the 1970s. And the 9/11 Commission reported that terrorists arrived in the United States from outside North America with documents issued to them by the U.S. government. Likewise, the Canadians in Gander countered despicable terrorist acts with love and caring to their U.S. neighbours when planes were diverted there.

Americans glorify war with movies, but it is the Canadians who are often the real "Rambo." The Canadians are anything but pacifists and their history is certainly not dull. Be it on the ice or battlefield, this warrior nation has never lost a war that it fought in - War of 1812 (versus the United States), World War I, World War II, Korea, and now Afghanistan. During the ´72 Summit Series, Soviet goalie Vladislav Tretiak said, "The Canadians have great skills and fight to the very end."

In hunting the Taliban in Afghanistan, U.S. Commander and Navy SEAL Capt. Robert Harward stated that the Canadian Joint Task Force 2 team was "his first choice for any direct-action mission."

Contrary to Thomas Jefferson´s 1812 comment that, "The acquisition of Canada will be a mere matter of marching," the wily Native American leader Tecumseh and Maj. Gen. Isaac Brock captured Brig. Gen. William Hull´s Fort Detroit without firing a shot. The Americans never took Quebec, and when they burned the Canadian Parliament Buildings at York, the White House was torched in retaliation. Canada consolidated its status as a warrior nation during World War I battles at Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, Somme, and the Second Battle of Ypres, where soldiers were gassed twice by the Germans but refused to break the line. By the end of the war, the Canadians were the Allies´ shock troops.

In the air, four of the top seven World War I aces were Canadians. Crack shots, the names William "Billy" Bishop, Raymond Collishaw, Donald MacLaren, and William Barker, with 72, 60, 54 and 53 victories, respectively, were legendary. These were the original Crazy Canucks, who regularly dropped leaflets over enemy airfields advising German pilots that they were coming over at such and such a time, and to come on up. Bishop and Barker won the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry.

The pilot who is credited with shooting down the Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen, with a little help from the Australian down under, was not Snoopy, but Roy Brown from Carleton Place, Ont.

During World War II, Winnipeg native and air ace Sir William Stephenson, the "Quiet Canadian," ran the undercover British Security Coordination under the code name Intrepid from Rockefeller Center in New York, as a liaison between Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Stephenson invented the machine that transferred photos over the wire for the Daily Mail newspaper in 1922. Americans were not aware that the BSC was there, or that it was stocked with Canadians secretly working to preserve North American freedom from the Nazis.

Also little known is that Intrepid trained Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond series, at Camp X, the secret spy school near Whitby, Ont. Five future directors of the CIA also received special training there. It is suggested that Fleming´s reference to Bond´s 007 license to kill status, his gadgetry, and the "shaken not stirred" martinis, rumored to be the strongest in North America, came from Stephenson.

When Wild Bill Donovan, head of the U.S. OSS, forerunner of the CIA, presented Intrepid with the Presidential Medal of Merit in 1946, he said, "William Stephenson taught us everything we knew about espionage."

American military writer Max Boot wrote recently in Commentary magazine that Canada is a country that most Americans consider a "dull but slavishly friendly neighbour, sort of like a great St. Bernard." Boot needs to come to Canada, have a Molson Canadian, and chat about Canadian history. He owes his freedom to Canucks such as Stephenson and the courageous soldiers and fliers of the world wars who held off the Germans while America struggled with isolationism.

Canadian inventions such as the oxygen mask and anti-gravity suit, the forerunner of the astronaut suit, allowed U.S. and other Allied fighter pilots to fly higher, turn tighter and not black out with the resulting G-force. The 32 Canadians from the Avro Arrow team helped build the American space program and were, according to NASA, brilliant to a man. The most brilliant, Jim Chamberlin, chief designer of the Jetliner and Arrow, was responsible for the design and implementation of the Gemini and Apollo space programs.

Although Canadians have had a free, workable medical system for 50 years, they are not socialists and there are not long lineups, as some politicians opposed to Obama care suggest. This writer has had a ruptured appendix, hip replacement, pinned shoulder, blood clot, twist fracture of the fibula, and broken foot, and in every case, there was zero cost to me. Canadians have and value a medical system for all Canadians that is free with minimal waits. That is not socialism; that is caring about fellow Canadians.

Americans may be surprised by the Canadian content in their life. Superman - "truth, justice and the American way" - was co-created by Canadian Joe Shuster, the Daily Planet is based on a Toronto newspaper, and the 1978 film´s Lois Lane, Margot Kidder, and Superman´s father, Glenn Ford, were both Canadians. The captain of the star-ship Enterprise was Montreal-born William Shatner. Torontonian Raymond Massey played Abraham Lincoln in 1956. And as American as apple pie? Ah, no. The McIntosh apple was developed in Dundela, Ont., in 1811 by John McIntosh.

Many of the sports that Americans excel at are Canadian in origin. James Naismith from Almonte, Ont., invented basketball. The tackling and ball carrying in football were introduced by the Canucks in games between Harvard and McGill in the 1870s. Five-pin bowling is also a Canadian game. Lacrosse is officially Canada´s national sport, and hockey - well, Canadians are hockey. And Jackie Robinson called Montreal "the city that enabled me to go to the major leagues."

To make everyone´s life easier, Canadians invented Pablum, the electric oven, the telephone, Marquis wheat, standard time, the rotary snowplow, the snowmobile, Plexiglas, oven cleaner, the jolly jumper, the pacemaker, the alkaline battery, the caulking gun, the gas mask, the goalie mask, and many more.

Canadian inferiority complex? That is another myth. Never pick a fight with a quiet kid in the schoolyard. Never mistake quiet confidence for weakness. Many a bully has learned that the hard way. Canadians are self-effacing and do not brag. That does not mean we do not know who we are. We are caring but tough, fun-loving but polite and creative, and we share with each other and the world. Our history is exciting but we don´t toot our horn. The world does that for us. This is the third year in a row that Canada has been voted the most respected country in the world by the Reputation Institute global survey.

Perhaps once a year around our collective birthdays, Americans can raise a toast to their friendly, confident neighbour in the Great White North.

- Gerry Boley is a high school teacher, university lecturer, and writer living in St. Catharines, Ontario.

Don Henderson claims that in the world of romance, one single rule applies:

MAKE THE WOMAN HAPPY

Do something she likes, and you get points. Do something she dislikes, and points are subtracted. You don´t get any points for doing something she expects. Sorry, that´s the way the game is played.

Here is a non-exhaustive guide to the point system:

SIMPLE DUTIES
You make the bed. (+1)
You make the bed, but forget the decorative pillows. (-10)
You throw the bedspread over rumpled sheets. (-3)
You go out to buy her what she wants (+5) in the rain (+8)
But return with Beer. (-5)

PROTECTIVE DUTIES
You check out a suspicious noise at night. (+1)
You check out a suspicious noise, and it is nothing. (0)
You check out a suspicious noise, and it is something. (+5)
You pummel it with an iron rod. (+10)It´s her pet Schnauzer. (-30)

SOCIAL ENGAGEMENTS
You stay by her side for the entire party. (+1)
You stay by her side for a while, then leave to chat with an old school friend. (-2)
Named Tina (-10)
Tina is a dancer. (-20)
Tina has breast implants. (-40)

HER BIRTHDAY
You take her out to dinner. (+2)
You take her out to dinner, and it´s not a sports bar. (+3)
Okay, it´s a sports bar. (-2)
And its all-you-can-eat night. (-3)
It´s a sports bar, it´s all-you-can-eat night, and your face is painted the colours of your favourite team. (-10)

A NIGHT OUT
You take her to a movie. (+1)
You take her to a movie she likes. (+5)
You take her to a movie you hate. (+6)
You take her to a movie you like. (-2)
It´s called "Death Cop." (-3)
You lied and said it was a foreign film about orphans. (-15)

YOUR PHYSIQUE
You develop a noticeable potbelly. (-15)
You develop a noticeable potbelly and exercise to get rid of it (+10)
You develop a noticeable potbelly and resort to baggy jeans and baggy Hawaiian shirts. (-30)
You say to her, "It doesn´t matter, you have one too." (-80)

THE BIG QUESTION
She asks, "Do I look fat?" (-5) (Yes, you lose points no matter what)
You hesitate in responding. (-10)
You reply, "Where?" (-35)
You give any other response. (-40)

COMMUNICATION
When she wants to talk about a problem, you listen, displaying a concerned expression. (+2)
You listen for over 30 minutes (+50)
You listen for more than 30 minutes without looking at the TV. (+500)
She realizes this is because you have fallen asleep. (-4000)

Send this on to all the men you know to refresh them on the point system.

ED. NOTE: Congratulations are due to Don and Yvonne on their 60th wedding anniversary. Don must have been very aware of his scoring system to have managed to live happily with one woman for all these years!

Don and Yvonne

Betty Audet writes that now that she is older,

HERE´S WHAT I HAVE DISCOVERED

1. I started out with nothing, and I still have most of it.

2. My wild oats are mostly enjoyed with prunes and all-bran.

3. Funny, I don´t remember being absent-minded.

4. Funny, I don´t remember being absent-minded.

5. If all is not lost, then where the heck is it?

6. It was a whole lot easier to get older than it was to get wiser.

7. Some days you´re the top dog, some days you´re the hydrant.

8. I wish the buck really did stop here; I sure could use a few of them.

9. Kids in the back seat cause accidents.

10. Accidents in the back seat cause kids.

11. It is hard to make a comeback when you haven´t been anywhere.

12. The world only beats a path to your door when you´re in the bathroom.

13. If God wanted me to touch my toes, he´d have put them on my knees.

14. When I´m finally holding all the right cards, everyone wants to play chess.

15. It is not hard to meet expenses ... they´re everywhere.

16. The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth..

17. These days, I spend a lot of time thinking about the hereafter. I go somewhere to get something, and then wonder what I´m "here after."

18. Funny, I don´t remember being absent-minded.

19. It is a lot better to be seen than viewed.

20. Have I sent this message to you before ... or did I get it from you?

SUGGESTED WEBSITES

Jean Sterling sends this link to a video of a polite cat asking for food:

Tom Telfer sends this link to a site that gives you 10 methods for folding your clothes for your next trip:

Tom also sends the URL for a stunning piece of music that takes us through a beautiful life cycle:

Tom Williamson forwards the URL for a tour of the One World Observatory. I was astonished at how close to the water everything is, and how vulnerable New York is to rising waters:

Tony Lewis sends the URL for a very short video of what happens after a woman goes back to work after a long absence:

Zvonko Springer sends this link to a 3D video of a trek up Mt. Everest, where 16 Sherpas lost their lives in 2014:

Elisabeth Rosenthal reports form rural Kenya, where cheap Chinese solar panels are providing small-scale electricity to towns that have little chance of being connected to the grid:

In this TED talk, Harvard-MIT physician, bioengineer and entrepreneur Sangeeta Bhatia shares how she led her multidisciplinary lab to develop an unusual breakthrough in cancer diagnostics:

A "sleepbus" provides homeless Australians and their pets with a safe place to sleep:

A moose in Alaska was intrigued by wind chimes and made some music of his own:

To check out the features of the "freedictionary," which changes daily, go to