Way Too Similar

It really is scary just how similar my brother and I are. He's the one on the left if you're wondering.

Beyond looking like twins for our entire adolescence and all the shared traits and mannerisms, it turns out we're eerily similar in terms of a number of other things as well.

We've both taken very odd paths to find the careers we want and the work that makes us most happy. Pete was on his way to stardom and success as a horse racing analyst and host before leaving it all behind to get more hands-on with the ponies. Now, he's found a great mix, working as an agent (he buys and sells horses for people) and being back behind the mic at Fort Erie and Tioga Downs.

If you've been here more than a minute, you know my story, so no need to say more than after years of trying to figure out what I wanted to do, I stumbled upon writing, fell in love with it and now you're reading the 509th post in iBlog history.

The most interesting - and also frustrating - similarity between mon frere et moi has to do with marriage and children.

I had everything planned out to propose to Sarah. We were having a weekend getaway at a beautiful hotel and I was going to do the "propose over dinner" like so many men before me. About three weeks before we went on our little trip, Pete popped the question. Not wanting to step on his toes, I pushed things back a month.

Then, whilst in the middle of getting everything coordinated and finalized for our beautiful destination wedding (and while in the process of moving here to Kimberley), an impromptu wedding announcement hit my Inbox. Pete and Brooke were making it official in Vegas at the start of November.

Now, Faye (our mom) calls me this morning to catch up. In the course of the discussion, she tells me that Pete and Brooke have selected a name for their daughter who will be entering the world some time in late September.

They're going to name her Charlie Olivia. Immediately, I started swearing.

Take a guess at what Sarah and I have always discussed and planned on naming our daughter, should we have one?

Yep... Charlie.

Technically, we were going to name her Charlotte and call her Charlie, but it's the same damn thing and now the version of me that is two years older and still not shaving on a regular basis has gone and Bogart'ed our name. Grrrrrr!

What's next?

Is he going to shave a mohawk into his head and start writing about MMA?

Maybe develop a fondness for tattoos and get some ink?

How's about moving to British Columbia?

Seriously, it's incredible how much alike the two of us are. Maybe that's why we fight like cats and dogs just about every time we see each other.

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Dear God, Please Don't Let Me Have Daughters

Moving to a small town only reaffirmed for me that in no way will I be capable of dealing with a teenage daughter in the future.

I mean, sure, she could turn out perfect and I would do everything in my powers to teach her positive values and how to appreciate herself, but I'm pretty sure the parents of the skanky little 17-year-old Puck Bunnies I work with would tell you they've tried their best too.

For those who have never lived in a town centered around hockey, a Puck Bunny is a girl who lives to be with a hockey player, even if they are merely a 16-year-old kid playing Junior B. hockey in a ghost town like Kimberley.

To put this in perspective, I spent some of my formative years in Chatham, Ontario, a smallish city where hockey is everything. The Micmacs - now back to being the Maroons - were gods amongst mortals. D'you know how many of them amounted to much of anything on the ice? About three over the five years I lived in Chatham.

That's the same level of hockey the Kimberley Dynamiters play here in town and these little tramps I work with are all over them like they're the next Sidney Crosby.

While I've been forced to come to grips with the whole "16-year-olds showing up to work with their tits hanging out for all to see in stretchy pants" thing, hearing about the previous night's exploits makes me want to puke.

All I can think about is that one day, this could be my kid and I would go ballistic if she was out doing half the things these girls are doing on a weekend by weekend basis. I'm not saying you have to be a Puritan or anything like that, but have some self-respect.

It wasn't like this in my time.

When I was their age - you know, when they were 3 or 4 - there was one slut to every eight or ten regular girls and everyone wanted the regular girls.

Now, that ratio is flipped and the number of wannabe sluts vastly outnumbers the regular girls. What makes it worse is that it seems like with each passing year, the age for skankdom kicking in keeps getting lower and lower and lower and lower.

And do you know what the worst part of all of this is? The dirty old bastards that I work with who stand around soaking it all in, feeding into the systems, re-enforcing that dressing like sluts, going out and getting bombed every weekend and working your way through the third line of the local Junior B team is perfectly acceptable behaviour for a bunch of 17-year-old girls.

So I've taken to ridiculing the fuck out of the Puck Bunnies and throwing out High Fives to the normal ones...

It's okay to not be a skank!

This has been a public service announcement from ESKimo Enterprises.

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