Protagitron's Gymnopedie

Bagels: Serious Business
I spotted this at the gym. Under 'Hamilton's Shame' it says "Sugar-coated baked item sold in Steeltown as a 'Montreal-style bagel.' Montreal's newspapers are all about the hard-hitting news.

This Monday the McGill Fight Band played the men's hockey game against Concordia. Well, I don't play so much as blow on my clarinet and hope for the best, but it's often fun. Unfortunately, this game coincided with the McGill Management Carnival. If you're not in the know, Carnival is the week-long bacchanal the Management Faculty throws every year, and the entire reason McGill was the only Canadian school on Playboy's list of top North American party schools. Take that, Brock. This meant we were swarmed for the entire game by Management students in all the stages of drunkenness, from sober on down to horizontal. You can spot them because they're all wearing jumpsuits with their team name on them. I assume the team names are chosen after the Carnival, and the boozing, have begun, because they're all thinly veiled sexual innuendos. Particular favourites? The Glad-he-ate-'ers.

After the game, I was walking home with my roommate and our friend and percussionist Abby, lecturing on that very same topic. I had just stated my thesis, something along the lines of "However, shame on the ShamCOCKS. That's not even trying," when a tallish bloke walking by yelled "I'd LOVE to double your entendre." Which prompted a few awkward seconds of mortifying silence before he yelled back "That was... just about what you were saying" and I squeaked out "I gathered" like a chipmunk drunk on helium.

On reflection, I really could have played that one better. I should have flipped my hair, raised one eyebrow all come-hither, and purred: "Why, I would adore to in your endo." We would share a good laugh, or two, and then it would seem as if my friends had suddenly disappeared into the night- there would only be the tallish bloke, me, and our sparkling innuendos perfuming the night air. A cup of coffee that night would turn into a lifetime of love and laughter, our children the ones forever giggling in middle school health class, the gravestones on our joint plots reading something like "Here lies a Master Debater", and "Cunning Linguist, Beloved Mother and Wife".

But some things are not meant to be. So, tallish bloke, I will think of you always, and the wind won't howl, but only whisper "ShamCOCK, ShamCOCK, ShamCOCK..."