The Icelandic Canadian - 01.09.2004, Qupperneq 35

Vol. 59 #1
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
33
way on the icy road. I found nothing par-
ticularly interesting, and my attention wan-
dered until I was looking up at the sky. The
familiar constellations of the North began
to appear in the wide Prairie sky, and I
found myself thinking of the last time I had
seen a shooting star.
Unfortunately, since I was not paying
attention to my immediate surroundings, I
did not see the patch of black ice that my
unsuspecting foot was about to step on.
Within seconds, my feet were no longer
directly beneath me and I was discovering
the hard way that gravity is in fact opera-
tional twenty-four hours a day. The paper
I had been reading went flying and its pages
scattered. I hit the ground and rolled into
the snow-filled ditch along the side of the
road. After a moment I poked my head up
from where I lay, resembling, I am sure, a
nine-year-old yeti, and saw that the rest of
my newspapers were still intact and safely
in my bag. The one I had been reading,
however, would require some careful
reassembling before I could conscientious-
ly deliver it to the Robertsons, who were
next on my route.
As I collected the pages and began to
put them back in order, I noticed a piece of
paper that had fallen amongst them. I
picked it up and stared at it. It was a typed,
mimeographed sheet, which personally
insulted everyone who lived on my route.
Some of the remarks were funny, but as my
eyes scanned down the page, I saw that
they became increasingly personal and
deliberately cruel. They were things I
already knew, or had heard about—I knew
Rev Stefanjonassoia,
ARBORG UNITARIAN CHURCH
GIMLI UNITARIAN CHURCH
9 Rowand Avenue
Winnipeg, Manitoba R3J 2N4
Telephone: (204) 889-4746
E-mail: sjonasson§ uua.org
everybody on my route reasonably well—
but I would never have said any of the
things which I saw on the sheet before me.
This made it all the more horrifying when I
saw my own name at the bottom of the
page-
I stared in disbelief at the page in my
hands. Then, without bothering to re-fold
the Robertsons' paper, I checked some of
the others in my bag. They all contained
the same note. Right then and there, I
decided that the war in my family had gone
far enough, and that I was going to go
home and bring the matter before my par-
ents. Then I realized that I had already
delivered five papers.
There is not much to be said about
what happened next, except that I ran faster
than seventy-three percent of bats out of
you-know-where to reclaim all the papers I
had so far distributed. I took back the first
four without incident, but as I came to the
last house left to be saved from the slander-
ous insert, I saw our next door neighbour
quickly shuffling down the driveway in her
housecoat, parka, and untied boots to get
the paper. I knew I had to reach that mail-
box before she did, so I forced myself to
think of Mr. Larson's dog; let me tell you,
it did the trick. I snatched the neatly folded
paper from its place just as she came to the
mailbox, and as she stood there, puffing
clouds of vapour and staring at me as if I
had suddenly started doing my job in
reverse, I could hardly let her long trek to
the mailbox be in vain, so with a quick,
"Here you go," I handed her the mostly-
reassembled newspaper in which I had dis-
covered the first note in.
Once home, I took the matter straight
to my father, who, like everybody else on
my route, was waiting to read the paper.
Upon seeing the note, he agreed that things
had indeed gone too far and that it was time
to clear the air, as it were. After supper, he
brought the matter to everyone's attention,
citing the newspaper incident as the final
straw. What followed was a long, heated
debate in which accusations, denials, and
rebuttals flew back and forth until every-
one was exhausted. My parents said that if
no-one was prepared to admit to what they
had done, the only thing left to do was to