i might not be big but i'm small

One of my favourite Canadian authors is a radio personality called Stuart McLean. He has a show on CBC Radio One, Sundays at noon, called The Vinyl Cafe, where he reads stories about the characters he writes about - Dave (owner of the Vinyl Cafe record shop) and his wife, Morley, their two kids, and friends and neighbours. It's not high literature, but he has a gi-normous following in this country because of his signature style, and the way he weaves his stories together using large doses of hilarity and sentimentality.

His show also includes live music by Canadian musicians, observations from the towns and cities he travels to on his tours, and a Story Exchange. The latter is a submission he reads from one of his listeners. As he says each week in the lead-up to the reading, "They have to be true stories and they have to be short… after that it’s up to you."

Well, after Stuart's last appearance in Kelowna, last fall, I decided to submit a story to the story exchange. Just today I heard back from his producer, saying they love it and want to read it at a recorded concert May 1.

Now, it's not like I've won the jack prize or anything (they will send me his latest book, which I already have, as thanks), but I am quite elated. You see, Stuart has a very stylized way of reading and, once you have heard him you can never not read one of his stories without hearing his voice. And I can hardly wait to hear him read my words. Just a small coup, I know, but it made my cloudy day.

Anyway, I do go on. Here is the story he will read May 1 (don't yet know the air date):

The afternoon of August 1, 1993, couldn’t have been a better day for a Beach Boys concert. The temperature was hovering around 40 C and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. My sister, Kelly, and I jumped into her little white MGB, top down, of course, and drove across Kelowna to an area now known as The Bluff - a large clearing on Kelowna’s Westside.

It was an important summer, and not just because of the concert. It was the summer that the two of us really became sisters, friends even, rather than one another’s nemesis. I was 22, home for the summer from college, and she was almost 20, finished high school and about to be married.

Neither of us were very big Beach Boys fans, though we knew most of their music from TV commercials and movie soundtracks. Of course that didn’t matter as much as the fact that a big name band was finally coming to Kelowna and we had scored the tickets off the radio. Adventure beckoned and we were eager to follow.

We got there early and staked out a prime piece of property near the front of the stage. With no shade falling our way, we soon grew uncomfortably hot. My alabaster skin soon took on a pinkish hue. My sister, who burns much less easily, kept spritzing herself with a spray bottle of water she brought, to keep herself cool and work on her tan while we waited for the show to begin.

With about 15 minutes to go before the opening act would take the stage, I heard a tantalizing sound. It was the sound of little bells ringing on the front of a Dickie-Dee bicycle.

I headed over and ordered a giant, colourful Spacesicle. I waited until I got back to our blanket before tearing off the thin, protective wrapping. Fresh from the freezer, blue, red and white.

My mouth wrapped eagerly around it. But instead of gliding smoothly, as it should, between my lips and over my tongue, it stuck fast, sealing the circumference of my mouth.

My first reaction was horror, which soon gave way to a twinge of panic. I had heard about kids who lick metal pipes in the dead of winter and rip off half their tongue, but this was different. It wasn’t winter, and the instrument of my torture was a supposedly innocuous Popsicle.

As frightened as I was, I was even more embarrassed. The seal was tight, all the way around, and the Spacesicle was not small, which made things a tad uncomfortable. Knowing it would have to eventually melt, I tried to remain inconspicuous and concentrate on salivating to melt the dry ice. When that didn’t work, I grabbed Kelly’s spritzer and began spraying around and round my mouth. When Kelly noticed, her eyes grew wide and, instead of doing something useful like blocking the view from the people all around, she started to laugh. Hard. That got the attention of our neighbours, a group of older ladies given to hysteria, who began to panic and shriek at Kelly that she needed to rush me to the First-Aid Station. I wanted to disappear.

We got up and walked away, her laughing and me salivating and spritzing like a mad thing. Eventually, my top lip came free, enabling me to finally breath through my mouth, to further encourage defrosting. It finally came free just in time for the music to start.

It was a good concert, aside from the freezer burn and chapped, peeling lips. But I can never hear the Beach Boys, even today, without remembering the day I froze my lips to a giant Spacesicle.