Pour Me A Story, Vol. 17
feat. Tej Sahota, apocalypse fiction and more
greetings friends, and thanks for joining me for another edition of Pour Me A Story, which somehow got pretty long this week. I hope you’re sitting down comfortably, but if you’re standing on one foot or laying on a bed of nails I really can’t stop you.
this week feels like it flew by; I looked up at the clock this afternoon to find it was not only 4:30pm, but also it was Thursday, and I do not have a frame of reference for how that happened.
the Steve Miller Band really had the right idea when they sang that time keeps on slipping into the future. seemingly every day now, the baby does something that makes Alex and I stare at each other and say “how the hell does she know how to do that?” all week she (the baby, not Alex) has been mumbling “dada” and “bubba” to herself, and tonight she appeared to have discovered her own bellybutton in the bathtub for the first time, which provided several minutes of entertainment.
and then, the pièce de résistance: we think the little lady finally has a tooth on the way. by the time this hits your inbox, we’ll know for sure. I know you’re all on the edge of your seats and beds of nails, so I’ll keep you posted on that one.
Anyway, We Have Company
this week’s guest comes live and direct from the Great Snowy North, or as everybody prefers to call it, Canada. Tej Sahota is a Twitter pal and bonafide doctor who once wrote me a character reference (totally unsolicited but entirely appreciated!) in an effort to get the Bird App to release my former account. the least I could do in return was enable his burgeoning sneaker habit and have him on the newsletter.
AC: Tej! my man. how's things with you this fine Wednesday?
TS: Adrian what it do! Things are good man, trying really hard not to quote Future here, but "shit! life is good...nawimean!?". The wife is working from home, the son is trying to do work and sneak in Fortnite matches while I'm not looking and my rings are already closed for the day. It's all good over here man!
AC: oh man I think the mention of having your rings already closed is targeted harassment, mine are wide open today still. that sounds like a picture of domestic bliss, 2021 edition though! we're racing up on a year of the new world already, how do things look in Canada?
TS: I know sometimes, it’s very easy for all of us, me the worst, to be Big Mad Online™️, but generally things are good over here. The plan may not always be working, and there are definitely things that could have been handled better, but you never get the feeling that the people in charge here don't give AF. At the very least you can see that they reek of effort. More and more we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, as opposed to the thicket of darkness that we emerged from, and man that is a good feeling.
AC: and you're gonna look good doing it, knowing some of the additions that have been made to your sneaker collection over the past few months (which I take no responsibility for.) has sneaker collecting been a lifelong pursuit or is it something that's just recently captured your imagination (and wallet)?
TS: Oh man, how much immunity do I have here? Because we're going getting some dangerous territory here (Hi Ruby!) I have never been a shoes person at all. Like I mean it was one dress pair, one set of Nikes for work, one for working out, and then a couple of odd pairs strictly for function, not fashion.
The collection started around April of last year, as I was watching the MJ documentary on Netflix, and the same time an article on The Ringer popped up about the history of the AJ1. Honestly, it was at a time we were closed from work here, and it was just a spontaneous retail therapy purchase, something exciting to grab and change the monotony of each passing day. I remembered that you were big into shoes, and so I ran an order past you and you were like those look so awesome go for it!, and next thing you know I had the graffitis in hand! I remember a friend of mine, Sanjay, here who's a collector himself, telling me "you know you will never stop at one right?" and I was sure I would, that it was just a one time splurge.
Yeah right!!! 😂😂
AC: hahaha. If I had a dollar for every time I've "retired" and subsequently "come out of retirement" since we found out the baby was coming along, I could probably actually retire on it. there's ALWAYS "one more pair." anyway I maintain my innocence here but I will apologize to your wife for creating a monster and probably taking away closet space. what's your favorite pick-up so far?
TS: This may be the longest I've ever debated something trivial other than 'what's your favourite Beatles song?' but you know better than anyone that sometimes it's the process and the journey, not just the catch! For that reason, I have to go with the low bred's.
I was in love with them for a month before they went on sale, and unfortunately we don't always get the clearest release dates in Canada, so it was a lot of blog reading and bothering people like you to find out when they would drop. Then all of a sudden, the aforementioned Sanjay had a link at Nike who could put the order in for me and see if it worked a day before they actually went on sale! It was a nervous 4-5 days to see if the order would get rejected or whether it would go through, and when the shipment email dropped, I was ecstatic!
Another reason I am partial to those is they came right when our summer lockdown was lifted. We had places to go for the first time in a while, so they didn't just sit there unused for months, there was an immediate joy attached to them. But if any of the other shoes ask; "I love them all equally!"
AC: that's the kicker, no pun intended: I haven't exactly been restrained over the past year, but there have definitely been pairs where I've gone "you know what, I don't have anywhere to wear these, I can't pull the trigger." is this...growth? on a slightly related note: what has parenting been like for you guys during all this? and if you have any tips, I'll surely take them.
TS: "Parenting" has been our saving grace throughout this whole pandemic, for me (and I think I can speak for Ruby on this as well), it’s kind of served as our guiding compass, our guiding light. There were early days where it was just scary, you didn't know if your business would survive, what the world was going to look like in a week, and what needed to be done. So much of my self-identity is wrapped up in helping people, it’s why you suffer the pain of medical school, and so to lose that ability to help was a big mental challenge.
Being home, we had to start doing home schooling, and that really gave me a chance to learn more about my son. I never knew him as a student, and man it was so awesome. Kids are just so resilient man, didn't matter what would happen, what rules changed, how school was administered (online or in person), they just...adapt. So this last year as a parent was a lot of Ruby and I learning about our son, and in turn getting a chance to become even better parents.
Making sure we were positive people, making sure that we took care of ourselves, making sure that there was just positive energy around him and each other. The challenges of parenting in this period were difficult in that there was no road map. Every other thing, you can always contact friends or family with older kids, and be like "so what did you do here?" But every single person was going through it together, so you just had to take some leaps of faith along the way, that what you were doing, would be in the best interest of your child.
I think if I was giving anyone parenting advice, it would be "as long as you do the right thing, which may not be the easy thing...you'll be alright, and so will they."
AC: that's a pretty terrific outlook and positivity is something that I can definitely stand to remind myself of from time to time. since you've got a couple more years' experience at this than I do, what's your favorite thing about being a dad?
TS: This answer is going to be far more concrete than the previous one, and not nearly as philosophical..but just having someone to kick it with after a long work day, or especially at the end of the work week!
My son is 8 now, but I’ve been taking him to basketball and soccer games since he was 2, and we've been playing video games together since he was 4. Those are some of my favourite memories together, watching LeBron win his 4th ring, and my son having tears in his eyes as LeBron talked about what that meant to him. Or us playing co-play games on the couch for hours and hours, and just giggling as we're trying to beat Bowser for the umpteenth time, and me struggling to keep up with him. Lately, we've been shooting hoops on the driveway together, and he's conversing with me about sports like a pal.
I guess that's my favourite part of being a parent, the days you're not having to be a teacher, a disciplinarian, an authority figure..but just a pal. And if you do the other stuff well, you'll notice you get to spend more and more time being their pal.
AC: that's incredible, and I feel like it's something that the folks who say "I don't want kids" possibly overlook or don't consider. without wishing away any of her growing-up time, I'm looking forward to those "hanging out" moments with baby girl. on a totally different note -- how did your LeBron fandom come about? am I right in assuming that you're (like me) a LeBron guy with a soft spot for the Cavs rather than a "fan of the team he's playing for" guy?
TS: Yup. A LeBron guy through and through, and then a soft spot for the Cavs. So, I moved to Cleveland in 2004, one year after LeBron was drafted, and at the time the team I grew up cheering for (the Toronto Raptors) were fairly lousy, so it was pretty easy to root for someone new and exciting.
Being in Cleveland around that time, you better become a sports fan because there wasn't much else going on around that time. Being a huge basketball fan anyways, the Tribe and the Browns weren't logical choices, so the Cavs became it.
I think the first time around, I was a LeBron fan and a Cavs fan, but it was during his time in Miami and the second return to Cleveland that really put him over the edge for me as my favourite athlete of all time. After medical school was over, I took a residency position in a hospital in Akron, (the same one where his son was born coincidentally), and I really got to see the impact of LeBron James from a grassroots perspective. The charity work, the funding, the little things that he did that no one outside of Akron even talked about. To me that really, really hit home.
By the time he returned back in 2014, I had just moved back to Toronto, and hadn't let go of my Cavs fandom yet, so it was very easy just to pick right up where we left off from. Our house to Cleveland is a nice, easy 4 1/2 hour car trip, so every year we went down to visit friends and catch at least one Finals game. That really helped keep the fandom burning!
AC: man that's a WAY better origin story than mine ("this guy is my age? and he's this good? well he HAS to be my favorite player now!") although I have the Foreigner Leeway of being allowed to pick whichever team I want to root for, given I didn't have any real ties to the US. having said that, I still hope to visit Cleveland one day, even though Bron is long gone. alright last one and I'll let you go back to your evening: this is where you get to plug something important to you. sky's the limit!
TS: So continuing right off the LeBron theme, I was always moved by something LeBron had said about wanting to leave a lasting legacy in Akron. That by empowering communities through education, you can change the life of one child, who could then change the life of their siblings and their family, and repeat this enough times, you can lift entire communities out of poverty.
So kinda stealing a page from LeBron and his building of a school in Akron, myself and two friend of mine; Tristan Blake and Calvin Onilla, started a project to building schools in India, Jamaica and the Philippines.
The plan is to donate enough money every three years to build a new school, and we're hoping that over the course of the the three years, and fund-raising we get, would help expedite the timeline, so we can reach our targets earlier and start the clock on the next school quicker and quicker. Covid has hampered our project a lot right now, as there is no appetite to send in foreign construction workers into these small, isolated communities, but we hope to get back on track here before the end of this year.
if anyone is interested in learning more they can check it out here.
AC: I absolutely love this, what a terrific initiative. I’m sure it’ll be back on course again before we know it. thanks so much for sharing some of your time with me today brother, it’s always a pleasure! reward yourself with a new pair of shoes.
TS: From your lips to God's ears! Thank you for the enabling!!!!
It’s The End Of The World As We Know It
on Tuesday night, Alex and I finally, mercifully, got to the end of the HBO documentary The Vow, about the NXIVM cult that was busted up a couple years ago. it was equal parts frustrating, fascinating and angering viewing (is this a recommendation? I can’t tell!) and I for one was glad to be through with it.
searching for something new to watch in the hour and a half between baby bedtime and parent bedtime, I remembered that CBS’s streaming platform has a limited series based on the Stephen King novel The Stand, and so we decided to try our luck with that.
that book carries a lot of nostalgia for me. I read it for the first time back in 1999, a good 21 years after it was published, and clocking in at more than 900 pages it was the longest book I’d ever read by a long shot. if you aren’t familiar, it’s a classic good-versus-evil tale (with a lot of religious allegory) set in an America being ravaged by a highly contagious, 99 percent-fatal, genetically engineered virus. the story follows the spread of the virus, and then the survivors, as they band together in two factions.
now, unless you’ve been living under a rock, or in a coma like this kid who literally missed the last 10 months of pandemic, you’ll be aware that, well, we’ve been in the midst of a global pandemic for just about a year now. so if you’re wondering why the hell anyone would choose to use their very limited recreation time to watch a miniseries about [checks notes] a virus that brings a country to its knees and divides the population when they could just turn on the news, your guess is as good as mine.
it’s not just the TV show, either. I picked the book up a couple months ago and have been chipping away slowly at it. prior to that, I’d been putting a few hours a week into a video game called The Last Of Us which, you guessed it, is about survivors of a virus that brought the United States as we know it crashing down. hell, even during my four weeks of paternity leave last May, I spent restless hours watching episode after episode of The Walking Dead, that classic show about survivors rebuilding society after it was ravaged by, yep that’s right, a virus.
it’s not clear what my goddamn deal is with all of this pandemic-based consumption, but this piece from Vice (clearly I’m not the only one wondering) makes the interesting point that if we suppress or keep fear out of sight, it allows the things we’re afraid of to take on an outsized intensity.
Worthy Consumables
so, uh, funny thing. I was going to mention The Stand as my Worthy Consumable of the Week, but then that section got WAY out of control. anyway if you’re a hardcore fan of the source material, you’ll probably sit there and pick it apart and it won’t compare to the early-90s miniseries that you probably have seen and loved. for the casual viewer though, it’s pretty good. as long as you’re okay with pandemic-related pandemic watching.
Parting Note
I was driving to pick up dinner a few nights ago and took a quick right turn just as the light was turning red. my dumb brain, as it does every time in this situation, said to itself “we’re just dippin’!” in an extremely Snoop Dogg voice. I can’t explain why I associate that particular line with a fairly innocuous and common driving manoeuvre, but it happens every time. anyway then I had to play the song in question three times on my drive home.
thanks as always for hanging, and sharing some of your screen time with me again this week. come back next Friday and we’ll do it all over again
— adrian ✌🏻