http://danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?keywords=memory Daniel Bigham's Blog en-us This week our family had to put our golden retriever Ben down. He lived just over 14 and a half years and was a loved part of our family. And so as we say good-bye, I'd like to sit down and remember. Eww Who can forget the day we can home to little Ben in his crate, and he had ejected about every possible bodily fluid into the bottom of his crate. He was cowered in the corner trying to escape the flood, poor guy. What a sight and smell that was! A strong attachment I remember when I was about 15, a year or two after we got Ben, laying on the floor of my parent's bedroom after watching a movie, snuggled up with Ben. It was one of those times when I realized how heart broken I would be if he were ever killed in an accident such as being hit by a car. I think I was near tears as I lay there with my arms around him and my face buried in his scruff. 5.5, 7.5, and 9.5 When I would take Ben for a walk, there were different possible lengths: The short walk was going North from the corner of Oxford and Hunter and completing a one-block square. But because the walk from our house to the corner was about 3/4 of a block, I reasoned the walk was 5.5 blocks. What a mathy! If I walked two blocks North from the corner and then one block East to Delatre, that was a 7.5 block walk, and if I did the same but walked two blocks East to Vansitart, that was a 9.5 block walk. And so Ben's walks with me were pretty much always a 5.5, 7.5 or 9.5. Teaching a dog to bark Ben wasn't much of a barker, which is a great trait to have in a dog. Our parents must have rolled their eyes then when we were trying to teach him to bark on command! The park: A powerful magnet I was always amazed that as soon as we'd get close to the park, even if we were on a street that I thought Ben had never been on, he'd start pulling on his leash in the direction of the park. How did he know if was over there? In the later years, when I'd walk him without a leash, I think there were a few incidents where he'd make a sudden break for it, crossing Vansitart without me. Yikes! Rebekah's first winter away I think it was January 1997, and Rebekah was in Hawaii on her DTS, which was the first time that she was away from home after high school. Woodstock had been dumped on with a massive amount of snow, and after supper Ben and I went out for a walk in it. I dressed as warmly as I could, with many layers, a big coat, hat, mitts. I was an abominable snow man, and off we went to the park. That night we talked to Rebekah on the phone and it was a strange thing to talk to your big sister half a world a way. Ben and I made it to the park, and I was exhausted. I flopped down on my back and just lay there contemplating the world while Ben pranced around and enjoyed the thick white fluff. Losing a tooth If my memory serves me correctly, I'm responsible for chipping off the lower half of one of Ben's canines. I was out in the back yard with a golf club and Ben thought it was fun to treat the club head as a bad guy. One time he got a bit too close and that was all it took... his smile wasn't quite perfect after that. Spiritual analogies I could never understand what Ben saw in garbage, but time and again he would sneak out of the back yard and get into a neighbor's garbage. Many times, he would get sick later that day somewhere in the house. It was stupid behavior, and I would think to myself, why can't he ever learn from the consequences? What was interesting about seeing Ben get into the garbage again and again is that it is analogous to how people sin again and again. We get into the garbage, we feel ill afterwards, and yet it is amazing how people will keep going back for more. Throwing a ball straight up While I was home on my summers off of university, I would go out to the back yard at lunch with his orange ball, and I had fun throwing it straight up with an under arm motion. I could get it around 30 feet high and it was fun to see Ben running around madly trying to figure out where it was going to land. It was quite funny if he got too close, because it came down with quite a thud! 02 Nov 2008 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=665 Sometimes I stop and wonder why it is that some of my fondest memories in life are of bike trips. Maybe that's why I'm so eager to bike across Canada? :) While I was working at Navtech on the tech desk, I took advantage of a weekday that I wasn't working to drive down to Burlington and go on a 1-day bike trip with cousin Andrew to Toronto and back. It was my introduction to the Camelbak, which we filled with Gatorade. (What a wonderful invention) It was a good day of cycling, McDonalds breakfast sandwiches, chatting about girls, and getting wet, but being very happy nonetheless. 30 Mar 2008 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=360 One of my fondest memories while I was living at Conrad Grebel was the many games of floor hockey we played out on the patio. It just so happens that Grebel has a cement-block patio surrounded by a railing that is just the perfect size, and many a winter night was spent from 10:00 PM to 11:00 PM out with the guys. One of the few glorious sports memories I have in life was a little patio hockey tournament we had back in about 2002. We formed about 5 different teams of three. I was paired up with Craig and Doug, and we worked a miracle by playing heroicly and taking the tournament. What a feeling! 30 Mar 2008 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=359 We've all had a good laugh... sometimes, often when you're a little tired, if something hits you just the right way, you can almost keel over. But one winters night back in 2002, the Mac Truck of laughter hit me and knocked me down for the count. I was sitting at the computer and had discovered that you could have a lot of fun by writing a program to read in the dictionary and randomly pair words together. Reading through the random pairs was a hoot, surprisingly funny. Every now and again I'd call out to my room mate, Brent, and say "Hey Brent, what do you think of this one". I seemed to be finding better ones every minute, and then I asked "Hey Brent, do you like a frisky patroness"? I could barely squeel it out, and then I was done for... I fell to the ground and struggled to breath as I laugh, no squeeled, uncontrollably. And just when I thought I couldn't laugh any harder, my diaphragm convulsed even more, and as people walked by they must have thought a poor animal had been sent to the slaughter... it was unbelievable, and it was at least a minute before I got control of my breathing! Who knew you could laugh like that?? 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=308 Having done three long bike rides these past couple of months, I recall back to when Graham and I biked from Woodstock to Turkey Point in 1996. It was after moving a few tonnes of soil the previously couple of days, and we were just bursting with energy. We made it the 72 km in somewhere around 3.5 hours with two 15 minute breaks. What a great feeling! 01 Oct 2007 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=300 - When I was about 10 I slept on a small single bed out in the porch at the cottage. I remember the sheets were purple and the quilts were varied patchworks, but I mostly remember the one that had reds, whites, and yellows. I would often wake up to a fly landing on my toes, which would be sticking out from the end of my blankets. Being out in the porch, the sun came up pretty early! - Last week I suddenly recalled back to before the time when I was comfortable swimming under water. I remember wading out into the lake with my older sister Rebekah and my dad. They were encouraging me to just dive under but I was timid. The second part of my memory is some short time later, maybe even the same day, when I had finally mastered this diving under the water thing, and my grandma would sit on the beach and watch as I'd run into the water and dive. - When I was pretty little I loved to collect things. At home, I would collect the plastic liners from underneath bottle caps. I loved the smell of them, and even now, smelling them brings back good memories. When I was at the cottage, I would roam the beach looking for those little unicorn-like sea shells that are only half a centimeter long. I'd collect them and keep them in a glass jar. 08 Sep 2007 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=283 When I was 13, I was a featherweight of a kid, weighing in at 99 pounds. I had just finished grade eight, and had enjoyed being on the wrestling team. But I was still a bit of a weakling, and I wasn't yet able to do a chinup. The next best thing was hanging from tree branches. We had a catalpa tree in the back yard at the cottage, and there was this one branch that was the perfect height to hang from, 8 feet off the ground. It became a bit of an endurance test between Graham and I and a place to hang out. The next year I was finally strong enough to do a chinup, and soon I was doing 10. Well the tree is gone, but it's fun to remember one of the many ways I enjoyed the catalpa. 14 Jul 2007 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=260 Summer is here. I'm upstairs at our place and it has to be at least 30 degrees... what I wouldn't give for a nice dip in lake Erie right now! Thinking back to all of my summers spent at the lake, I remember making a fascinating discovery: While you're under water, if you take your hands and form a canopy over your eyes like you do when it's really bright outside, then carefully blow air upwards, the air forms a bubble over your eyes, held in place by your hands, that allows you to see under water as if you had goggles on. I'm sure this has been discovered many many times, but I was thoroughly pleased with myself! 17 Jun 2007 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=247 I think it's neat how our brains come to associate one thing with another. Meredith and I were at church camping this weekend, sitting around a campfire. And as I started to eat some pretzels, the thought of a nice cold cola came to mind. I was taken back to the many summer nights at Turkey Point that Graham, Colin and I would haul my PC and subwoofer over to his cottage and hook it up to their TV so that we could watch DVDs, which at that time were new on the market. Graham was a huge pretzel fan, and inveitably the Coke would also come out. There we were: Lounged out on the couches, laughing, feasting on those salty pretzels and slurping back Coke. I can still hear the ring of ice hitting the sides of the glasses. 10 Jun 2007 00:00:00 http://www.danielbigham.ca/cgi-bin/blog.pl?mode=view&id=241