Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Stories Ahead of Their Time - Toilet Training the Cat & Dave Versus the Flu

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

"Galway began flushing the toilet again in the autumn…"This week, two Dave and Morley stories that, in hindsight, seem strangely prescient. In the first, a fan favourite, Dave decides to teach Galway the cat a new skill. The second is a story that we haven’t felt comfortable playing in a long time. Jess explains why.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton and this is Backstage at the Final Cafe. Welcome. We have two stories for you today on the pod. Two stories that were ahead of their time in two totally different ways. You'll see what I mean. The first story is this one. It's a barn burner of a story from way back. It's a story we call Toilet Training the Cat. As you're about to hear, this is a totally over-the-top, unbelievable, slapstick, ridiculous story. Vintage Stuart MacLean. back from the early days of the show when we weren't at all worried about plausibility or impossibility or physics. I mean, we weren't really ever worried about any of those things, clearly. But this is from when we were even less worried about those things. Stuart wrote this story and it seemed almost too much.

He wondered, is it too far-fetched? But it was funny. Funny enough that he wasn't that worried. And good thing he wasn't, because it quickly became a fan favorite. Lots of you have told us it's your favorite Vinyl Cafe story. And the craziest thing happened. A few years after this story aired, Stuart started getting letters in the mail, clippings from magazines, advertisements for books about how to, I kid you not, how to toilet train your cat, And news articles too. It turns out this was a thing. Or had become a thing. But I wonder, what came first? Had people always been toilet training their

cats and we just didn't know it? Surely to God they hadn't been inspired by Stuart's story. Had they? Then another few years passed, and people started sending us letters saying they'd tried it themselves, and it worked. Go figure. Anyway, here it is. You can hear it for yourself, and you decide. Is it a slapstick story or a DIY audiobook? This is Stuart McLean with Toilet Training the Cat. Galway the cat arrived in Dave and Morley's life,

as you might remember, courtesy of Dave's sister Annie. Annie left Galway with Dave when she returned to Nova Scotia after she had lived in and around Boston for almost a decade. The cat, lean and beige, arrived with an ominous warning. I don't like to say this out loud, Warren Annie, but whenever the cat's around, things seem to go wrong. Annie had named the cat Galway after the American poet Galway Connell, a gesture of affection for the poet's work. It didn't take long, however, for Dave to recognize that the cat, whether by coincidence or some quirk of destiny, had a poet's sensibility.

Being shy to the point of mutinous and failing in any real sense to make connections in her new family, she terrorized Arthur the dog, picked on Dave, and largely ignored Morley and Stephanie. Only Sam, then nine, now ten years old, seemed able to meet Galway on equal ground. Galway had been living with Dave and Morley for maybe two years before she began to over-groom. Dave isn't sure when it began. It was two years ago in the middle of the winter when he first noticed she had licked the hair off both of her front paws it was not long after when he noticed there were also bald spots on her hind legs the vet suggested the sleepers those little one-piece

pajamas he said the ones you put babies in with the snaps. You cut out the legs and a bit at the back, you know. So Dave said, you're kidding. The vet said it'll stop her licking. Sam thought Galway looked cute in the pajamas. She looks like a monkey, he said. I've always wanted a monkey. Galway thought otherwise and disappeared.

She was somewhere in the house. She emptied her food dish during the night, and you could sense her shadowy presence, but no one saw her. It makes you wonder, said Dave, if there are other animals moving around the house, you never say. Galway reappeared abruptly after a week. One evening, while Dave was watching television, he had the uneasy sense that someone was watching him.

And when he looked up, there was Galway in her jammies, sitting on top of the bookshelves, staring at him with disdain. She was still around the next morning, but she didn't acknowledge anyone. And she started grooming again. She started with the little balls on Stephanie's bedspread. In two days, Galway licked Stephanie's bedspread flat. Then Morley got up in the middle of the night and went to the bathroom and caught Galway grooming her toothbrush. She didn't do that again. Instead, she moved on to Arthur, the dog. One afternoon, Dave came home and found Arthur splayed out on the floor with Galway perched on his back, grooming his ear.

Arthur usually bounds to the front door whenever anyone comes up the walk this time he Arthur looked up at Dave self-consciously but instead of getting up to greet him he sighed contentedly and dropped his head back to the floor I don't think she's necessarily crazy said Dave maybe not even neurotic I think she's bored I think she needs a challenge. And that's when Dave decided to toilet train the cat. If I'm going to take the time to teach her things, they might as well be useful things, he said. And anyways, it's a skill that seems to dovetail with her interests. Dave had seen something on television about a cat who could use a toilet. Actually, what he had seen on television was a promo for an item about a

toilet train cat. He hadn't seen the item itself, but he saw the cat sitting on the toilet, and he thought it couldn't be too hard to figure out how to do it. Like teaching any animal a new trick, the most important part would be to move slowly. The most important part would be patience. Dave decided he'd begin by moving Galway's litter box out of the kitchen and into the bathroom. He decided he'd do it in stages so he wouldn't upset her. He started by moving the box from the corner of the kitchen out into the hall. He set it at the bottom of the hall stairs. At dinnertime, Galway wandered through the hall, stopped abruptly and stared at the litter box for a full minute,

and then slowly and deliberately walked into the kitchen and dumped on the floor where her box belonged, staring deliberately at Dave while she did it. I was moving too fast, said Dave. I tried to take her too far, too fast. He brought the litter box back into the kitchen and placed it a couple of feet away from its original position in the corner. It took him two months to coax the box and Galway out of the kitchen, through the hall, up the stairs, and into the upstairs bathroom. By April, Galway was doing her business in the cardboard litter box in the bathroom right outside Dave and Morley's bedroom. The next step was lifting the

box from the floor to the top of the toilet. If he could get Galway to use the box while it was perched on the toilet, Dave figured it would Galway to use the box while it was perched on the toilet, Dave figured it would be nothing to cut a hole in the bottom and eventually get rid of it altogether. No more kitty litter, said Dave. This is actually going to work. He believed that. Not wanting to repeat his early mistake, Dave decided he'd move the box up to the level of the toilet seat by imperceptible degrees. Once he got it to the right level, he could slide it over and onto the toilet. He chose May the 1st for the beginning of the ascent. On May the 1st, he balanced the litter box on a couple of books and waited to see what would happen.

What happened was Galway looked at her litter box and then dumped in the bathtub. You have to expect setbacks, said Dave, the optimist. Not in my bathtub, I don't, said Marley. But Dave kept at it. By mid-June, Galway had stopped grooming. By the end of the month, most of her hair had grown back. And to everyone's surprise, she was jumping, albeit resentfully, into her litter box,

which by then Dave had perched on a stack of books beside the toilet at seat height. We're almost there, he said one night. First of June, I'm going to tie the box onto the seat. I didn't really believe we'd get this far. He sounded like a figure skating coach. I'm going to tie the box onto the seat. I didn't really believe we'd get this far. He sounded like a figure skating coach. When July began, Dave had the box resting on the toilet seat with a hole cut in the middle, and to everyone's amazement, who would have believed it? Galway was actually climbing into the box and doing her business through the hole. As much as possible, Dave would try to be there

to flush as soon as she was done. A cat has an instinctive need to cover up her business. It seemed to be the least that he could do. He tried to impress this on everyone else, to be there to flush when he couldn't. And then one evening, they were downstairs having supper, and the upstairs toilet suddenly flushed, and everyone stopped eating, and they looked at each other and morally said, Who was that? And Dave said, Sweet Jesus. and he dropped his cutlery and he lurched upstairs and there was Galway standing in her litter box with her head at the hole watching the water swirling around and around in the toilet below her. Who would have believed it? Dave was ecstatic. He was

home free. He'd keep enlarging the hole and trimming the sides of the box until all that was left was a cardboard toilet seat cover. Eventually he could do away with that and then maybe he'd write a book. Get rich. And then out of the blue, disaster struck. It struck at 10 one night while Dave was watching the news on television. The toilet flushed and Dave looked around. Morley was beside him.

Sam was in his room. Stephanie was out. The small smile that was tugging at the corner of Dave's mouth widened. Pride before the fall. mouth widened, pride before the fall. As Dave sat in front of the television feeling prideful, a hideous shriek filled the house. A piercing shriek of desperation unlike anything Dave had heard in his life. A howling, yowling, wailing wall of terror. Morley reached over and gripped Dave's arm. The shriek was so horrifyingly loud that it lifted the hair off both of their necks. Dave thought there's a maniac loose upstairs,

hacking Sam apart with an axe. Except it sounded worse, worse than that, worse than murder. So desperately worse that it was no longer the sound of murder, it was murder itself. Come to life on his second floor. Murder was in his house and it sounded just like someone trying to flush a cat down the toilet. Dave said, oh my God. He pried Morley's hand free and he flew up the stairs.

Sam, who was already up the stairs, was on his way down, his eyes as wide as saucers. There's a huge sewer rat climbing out of the toilet, he said. And he pushed past his father and went right out the front door. Dave threw himself into the bathroom. He had to look twice to be sure it was Galway. The bottom of the cardboard litter box had given way just as the toilet had flushed. Galway had fallen into the toilet at its fullest. She had plugged the hole so the water in the bowl couldn't escape.

She was drenched, her wet matted hair pressed to her rat-thin body, the toilet slurping and sloshing and overflowing, Galway yowling and clinging to the rim of the bowl as the centrifugal force of the water slowly dragged her around. Dave watched her make one complete rotation. And then, without thinking, Dave reached out to pull her to safety. He had heard all the warnings about going near drowning people. He had missed the ones about drowning cats. When he reached out with his arms, Galway sunk her claws deeply into his wrists. And Dave screamed. And he flung the cat over his head.

And the whiplash effect launched her the length of the hall. She landed in a soggy and pathetic pile of wet fur in front of Sam's bedroom door. Then she hit the ground running and they didn't see her for another week. Now this, as I said, all happened last summer, the summer before the one we've just come through. Dave put her litter box back in the kitchen, and you would have thought she would have never ventured back into the bathroom again. Strangely, she did. She began flushing the toilet again in the autumn. She didn't use it, mind you.

Wouldn't even get on the seat. She didn't use it, mind you. Wouldn't even get on the seat. She'd get onto the bathtub and then jump onto the sink, and from there she could reach over and with her front paw, push the lever on the toilet tank, and stare at the water as it went around and around. She always liked that part, said Dave. Now this seemed harmless enough until Arthur started to get

into the act. Arthur and the cat would get in the bathroom together, Galway would flush, and then Arthur would bark his approval. And then Galway started knocking things into the toilet before she flushed it. Bobby pins, toothpaste, bottles of nail polish, hairbrushes. They had the plumber in three times before they figured this out. Once they did, they cleared the top of the tank, and then Arthur began bringing her things. Dave caught Arthur mooching towards the bathroom with one of Sam's Warhammer figures concealed in his jowls. towards the bathroom with one of Sam's Warhammer figures concealed in his jowls. They began closing the bathroom door. For a few weeks, Galway sat and stared at the closed door in indignation. Sometimes in the middle of the night, she would sit there and yowl, but they didn't give in. And eventually she forgot about it, and so did everyone else.

Which is why no one thought to tell Dave's cousin Brenda she should keep the upstairs bathroom door shut the one night she slept in the house alone this summer. She came to Toronto for the first time ever this summer against her will. She wouldn't have come to Toronto on her own accord. Brenda gets nervous whenever she has to go to Halifax. But she won a return ticket in the Elks meat raffle. Third prize. Whenever Brenda thought about going to Toronto, she started to sweat.

All the traffic and people pushing around you, you could get swallowed up in a city like that and never be heard of again. Brenda imagined there were people from Cape Breton who had gone to Toronto, walking around aimlessly, looking for a way home. Too shy to ask directions. home, too shy to ask directions. One night she was lying in bed worrying, tossing and turning and thinking of all the things that could go wrong when the worst of all possible thoughts occurred to her. She phoned her mother in a panic. What if I like it? She wouldn't have gone if she could have got out of it, but everyone knew she had won the ticket. She arrived at the end of July at nine in the morning, exhausted from the effort it took to get the plane off the ground. Had no idea flying was so tiring. She arrived so exhausted that the next morning, a Saturday,

when Dave and Morley said they had to deliver Sam to camp, Brenda said she'd stay at home alone. She wasn't crazy about the idea of being alone at night, but she wasn't crazy about getting back into a car either. The drive from the airport had been fearsome, cars and trucks hurtling at them from every direction. There were 18 lanes of traffic. She listened politely when Dave gave her directions to a neighborhood cafe. Yeah, sure, like she was going to go out at night. As soon as everyone left, which was 2 in the afternoon, Brenda locked the doors, checked the windows, closed the curtains,

and then she got out the little neighborhood map Dave had sketched for her and she ripped it into pieces and flushed it down the toilet in case she lost her mind and was tempted to use it. She made her own supper, Kraft dinner, and she went to bed at nine o'clock, which was really ten o'clock her time, and she got up once to make sure the stove was off and again to check the back door, and then she lay in the back bedroom with her eyes screwed shut and her fists clenched, following each police siren to see if it was heading her way, monitoring the strange noises of the

strange house. She fell into a restless half-sleep shortly after 11, and then she woke up with a start, her heart pounding just after midnight when the toilet flushed. Brenda had read how some burglars leave unspeakable things behind them when they leave the scenes of their crime. She had never read about burglars who used the toilet before they began. Just her luck to get a weird one. She lay in bed, motionless, everything clamped tight. Maybe he'd go away. Maybe he didn't know she was there.

If he came into her room, she'd try and scare him away by snoring. The toilet flushed again. And suddenly she understood what was going on of course he knew she was there this wasn't a burglar in the bathroom it was a killer he wasn't going to the toilet he was sending her a message he was going to kill and dismember her and then he was going to flush her down the toilet Brenda did the only sensible thing she could think of doing under the circumstances. She jumped out of bed, screwed her eyes shut, and leapt out the bedroom window. Dave's neighbor, Jim Schofield, who happened to be sitting in his backyard and saw

it happen, said it was the most remarkable thing he ever saw in his life. I thought it was Morley, he said. I'm sitting there and there's nothing, no noise or bang or anything, not a thing. And then all of a sudden, out she flew. Brenda landed on the roof of the gardening shed in Dave's backyard. She landed on her feet, like a cat. And she stood there in her nightie looking around, a few cuts on her arms, a big bruise on her shin,

a sprained ankle, but nothing serious. Jim looked at her across the fence. They made eye contact. And then they both looked up at the same time at the broken window that she had sailed through. Galway standing there on the window ledge, flicking her tail at the moon. They looked back at each other again. Still, they haven't said a word here. And then Jim, who comes from the Annapolis Valley, said, nice night. Dave tells me he's talking about visiting Brenda in Cape Breton.

And there's even talk of Brenda coming back at Christmas. Brenda's told everyone that Toronto wasn't so bad, that it's easy enough to meet people. As long as you go out at night. Thank you. That was Toilet Training the Cat. We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with another story. So stick around. Welcome back. Time for our next story.

It has a fun backstory, but before we get to the backstory, we need to get to the story. And before we get to the story, we need to get to the story. And before we get to the story, we need to get to something else. I need to warn you about something before you listen to this. This story was written back in 2013. But there's a good chance you've never heard it before. You've probably never heard it because for the past four years, I have refused to play it. Not on this podcast, not on CBC Radio when we've had the chance to air Vinyl Cafe stories on CBC Radio, and not as part of our annual advent calendar on social media. It's a funny story, or it was funny back when it was written, back in 2013. But it doesn't feel funny now.

It feels strangely prescient, and as a result, totally weird. It's a story that could only ever have been written by a total hypochondriac. Now, we've talked before about this on the podcast, about Stuart's hypochondria. And if he were here, he would be quick to jump in and say, I am not a total hypochondriac. And he would be right. He wasn't. He was not a total hypochondriac, but he did have hypochondriacal tendencies. Many of them. Like so many of them. So many of them that if he were here and if I called him a total hypochondriac and if he jumped in to refute it, as he always did, I would simply turn to him

and off the top of my head, recall any number of examples to prove my point. Like the time he accidentally sprayed mouthwash in his eye and he wanted to cancel the show that night. Yeah, that happened. And if you want to hear more, you can hear Stuart and I together recount the entire story on the episode of this podcast called I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. That was way back, way back in our first season, back in May 2023. And there was a time he ate a can of expired something. I don't remember what it was. Was it chickpeas? And he realized it later and called me to say he wanted me to go with him to a walk-in clinic in the middle of the night. Or the tour where he used hand sanitizer after every single hand that he shook to avoid Norwalk

virus. Every. Single. Hand. We're talking bottles and bottles of hand sanitizer over the course of the two-week tour. Or the event that inspired this story, the one you're about to hear. Only someone who worries about those sorts of things could write this kind of story. Someone who, okay, I admit it, was not a total hypochondriac, but did have a touch of it. Someone who thought about those things more than the rest of us.

And back in 2013, it was hilarious. Hilarious served with a side of just a smidgen of hysteria. But then 2020 happened, and the tone of this story shifted. It didn't feel funny anymore. It didn't feel hysterical, and it certainly didn't feel hypochondriacal. It felt prescient. It's almost like Stuart had a crystal ball and had imagined the whole thing. It's like he imagined the entire world that you and I would live in seven years before it happened to the rest of us. seven years before it happened to the rest of us.

There wasn't a single day during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic where I didn't think of Stuart. Yes, Stuart, you were right. Everything you did, the buckets of hand sanitizer, the obsessive hand washing, the social distancing, you were not overreacting. You were just ahead of me. You were right. You told me so.

And today, I fully admit that. And I'm finally feeling ready to share this story. I'm finally feeling ready to listen to it myself. But not all of you may feel the same way. You might not all feel ready. I'm finally feeling ready to listen to it myself. But not all of you may feel the same way. You might not all feel ready. This is a funny story, or it feels funny to me, but maybe your experience with COVID-19 was different than mine.

If you, like me, were lucky to have had a relatively easy time during COVID, then I think you'll enjoy listening to this story. I think you'll laugh and think, how did he write that before COVID? That's crazy. But if you or someone you know really struggled, then you might want to skip ahead about 20, 25 minutes. Skip to the end of the show and listen to the clip from next week. Next week's episode will be fun and light and will not come with a trigger warning like this one attached to it. You can hear a sneak peek at the end of this week's episode, so skip ahead about 25 minutes. Okay, anyone still with me? You still there? If you are, it's story time. From back in 2013, a whopping seven years before the rest of us started thinking like this, before the rest of us started thinking about what to do to avoid getting sick.

This is Stuart McLean with Dave vs. the Flu. Dave, standing in front of his house. He's holding two canvas bags. His shoulders are drooping. The bags are kind of hanging by his knees. He could be on a stage. He could be playing Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman. Those are groceries in the bags.

And Dave is standing there on the sidewalk on this chilly winter afternoon, just home from work in the grocery store, looking as defeated as Willie Loman. And this is what he's thinking. He's thinking about something he read about or heard about, or maybe he saw it on TV, can't remember. But the gist of it is that there were some pre-industrialized people who were clearly wiser in the ways of the world than we are today. Or the ways of illness, anyhow. He can't remember when or where these people lived. Maybe it was medieval Europe. Maybe it was sub

Saharan Africa. Perhaps pre-contact America. Quite frankly, it doesn't matter. The point is, these people who may or may not have lived in a medieval hamlet or a tropical jungle did this thing when someone got sick. I mean, really sick. We're not talking about the common cold here. We're not talking about trivial things like rhino viruses. They've had no idea what they did if someone got a rhino virus. People he was thinking of were not doing battle with the common cold. They were tackling one of those terrifying, contagious illnesses, like the plague or tuberculosis or hemorrhagic fever. One of those diseases where it all goes fine at first.

Well, not fine. You feel a bit achy. And then a general malaise settles on you, and when you check, you find you're running a fever. Like everyone in Dave's house, for instance. a fever, like everyone in Dave's house, for instance. And then right out of the blue, you start to fall apart for no apparent reason. You're covered in boils or you start sprouting bruises and before you know it, you're on death's door. And the initial symptoms are exactly the same as the flu. If you have one, for all you

know, you could be one cough away from developing the other. Now, probably, more than likely, okay, almost certainly, almost certainly no one inside Dave's house, the house he's standing in front of looking like Willie Loman, looking like Willie Loman. Probably, almost certainly, no one in that house has the black plague or consumption, and no one was going to cough themselves into the grave or bleed out or expire in any way, but we're getting to the nub of the matter now. If they did have one of those things, and any cautious person had to acknowledge that there was at least a possibility of that. And if they did, it was possible that they could give him what they had. Probably not. But scientifically speaking, taking emotion out of it, you couldn't say that for sure,

could you? For example, fruit bats are the most likely reservoir for fever. You can read about that on the net. Dave did. So let's start with this indisputable fact. There was plenty of fruit in the house. For that matter, there was plenty of fruit in the bags by his feet. With a thought of that, Dave looked around furtively, just checking. Didn't believe he was going to be attacked by a fruit bat in the middle of the winter in the middle of his neighborhood. I mean, it was unlikely.

But you didn't have to be, what were Morley's exact words? What did she say? A hysterical lunatic. You didn't have to be a hysterical lunatic to imagine a scenario where bat-induced fever was, if not probable, at least possible. Imagine this. Imagine a bin of bananas sitting on some tropical dock somewhere at the edge of some swampy bat-ridden banana plantation. And imagine one of those disease-ridden gigantic fruit bats, some cloaked winged thing the size of a dog. And it just landed on the bananas, smacking its greedy vampire lips. And some of that bat saliva just dropped onto the banana peel.

Like the very bananas that were ripening in the blue bowl on his kitchen cabinet. It was possible. Couldn't deny that. And if someone, say, his son, picked up that banana and then didn't wash his hands properly after he peeled it, say, say he peeled it and then he touched his face without washing, which wasn't so unlikely. It's not at all impossible. In fact, that part was probable. Okay, he shouldn't have wondered about that out loud. Or he should have dropped it. But he felt it was important so they would be more careful about

washing their hands. That was all, as he kept trying to explain. And let's not forget, Sam was the first to get sick. Anyway, back to those pre-industrial people and that pre-modern medical time. If someone from that community got sick, like Sam and Morley had, for instance, not with a cold, but lying in bed the way they were, listless and feverish and cranky, if that happened, what the townsfolk did was bring food to the sick person's hut or cottage or shelter, whatever it was they lived in, and left the food outside the door. Like room service. That's how Dave put it. It was just like room service. And then the villagers

watched the basket of food to see if it disappeared from the doorway, but from a distance. They watched from a distance. The point was no one went in the sick hut. No one served the food. And if the food wasn't touched, if the sick person didn't come out of the hut and get the food themselves, then after a set period of time, Dave couldn't remember the exact number of days, but after the certain number of days or weeks, if no one retrieved the food, the villagers burned the hut. Assuming that the person inside was lost. You had to admit there was wisdom in that. Morley didn't see it that way. Morley didn't see it that way though maybe if Dave hadn't been wearing a scarf around his face and rubber gloves when he explained

it maybe she wouldn't have been so upset come to think of it she seemed to be as upset about the scarf and the gloves as anything anyway as he tried explain, if you burn the hut and the people who are in it, who would clearly be dead anyway, you stop the plague or whatever it is in its tracks and no one else dies, you save everyone else in the house. I mean the village, he said. Through the scarf from the hallway. Maybe if he had brought the supper tray into the room instead of setting it down in the hall and standing there by the doorway in his scarf and gloves, she wouldn't have been so emotional. Anyway, it was just, the point is that everybody was sick in Dave's house. In fact, everyone he knew seemed to be sick

and the whole city seemed to be sick and he was the outlier. He was the one person standing between the flu and its near perfect record of infection. And for over a week, Dave had been waging a constant war to keep it that way. And he was getting neither sympathy nor understanding from his sick wife.

Which wasn't making his battle any easier. Just a moment ago, walking up the street, that lady with the little dog walking towards him, she had been no more than what, 10 feet away when she sneezed? 10 feet. Barely enough time for Dave to change his breathing pattern with a quick inhalation so he was on the exhale as he walked by her. Couldn't let your guard down for a moment. Not for a moment. It was exhausting. And in the middle of it all, he had to open his store every day. And of course, you inevitably mess up, not necessarily touching people, but you touch their things. And he tried to wash his hands whenever it happened, but you

slip up. Like the other afternoon, Terrence, the mailman, he needed Dave to sign for, I forget what it was, a registered letter or something, and then the phone rang right after Dave signed for the letter. But before he had a chance to rinse his hands, it was the phone that distracted him. And it was Morley. And it was while he was talking to her that Terrence left, and before Dave knew it, he was holding the phone with one hand, and he was trying to dig something out of his eye with the other, which was the same hand he had used to hold Terrence's pan.

He decided the best thing to do would be to flush his eyes. Unfortunately, the only antiseptic he could find was a bottle of mouthwash. If you hadn't phoned, he said to Morley from the emergency department, where he was having his eyes irrigated, this wouldn't have happened. You phoned at exactly the wrong moment. And on he soldiered for an entire week, cooking and cleaning, worrying and wondering. A little collection of remedies under the counter at work, a bottle of zinc, some vitamin C, echinacea and elderberry extract. He knew most of them had been shown to be of marginal, if no, benefit.

But you could never be sure. He dosed himself according to the instructions on the bottles. Well, okay, slightly more than the instructions. At least he was doing something. It snowed on the Friday. Not the storm of the century, but hard enough to get the weather channel's attention. Enough snow that there weren't a lot of people out and about. And by the end of the day, enough snow had fallen that rush hour was a mess.

Dave closed his record store early, stopped at the grocery store on the way home. And then when he got home, he stood in front of his house, the grocery bags hanging by his knees, looking as morose as Willie Loman. After he stood there for a moment, he carried the bags onto the porch and set them down by the door and he shoveled the walk. He was about to go in and fix supper when he saw an upstairs light snap off at the Turlington's both Mary and Bert were as sick as Morley maybe worse and so he sighed and he took a shovel and he shoveled the Turlington's walk too and their drive and when he had finished that, he did Jim Schofield's.

Jim has a corner house. So it was like doing two houses. Actually, more like doing four. The walk, the driveway, and the sidewalk all around. So Dave was cold and wet and exhausted when he finally went inside. Sam was on the couch in his pajamas watching Brady Bunch reruns. It's the Tattletail episode, said Sam. Season 2, episode 10, said Dave,

that little rat Cindy. Morley was still upstairs, still in bed. Dave made soup for Morley was still upstairs, still in bed. Dave made soup for Morley. Sam, who seemed to be rallying, asked for spaghetti. Phone rang. It was Jim. Thanks for doing the walk, said Jim. And then he said, do you mind? There's one more thing. And so Dave put his coat back on

and he trudged out. Jim needed something from the drugstore. I'm having a James Bond festival, said Jim, when Dave delivered his meds. I'm on number seven. Diamonds are forever. 1971, said Dave. Connery's last. Second to last, said Jim. Dave threw Jim the little bag of medicine. Didn't want to get too close. Was trying to keep his breathing shallow. He was being careful.

He was also exhausted, starving. When he got home, he finished the rest of Sam's spaghetti right out of the pot. Then he went upstairs to see if Morley needed anything. She was lying on her bed, surrounded by magazines, real simple, the walrus, a pile of New Yorkers. And that moment, right then, staring at his wife surrounded by magazines, that moment is when it occurred to Dave that everyone else's life seemed a lot better than his. Everyone with the flu, that is.

Sometimes when you try to walk to the beat of a different drummer, sometimes when you are the only soldier in step, you end up getting stepped on. Sometimes the rhythm of the many is the best rhythm of all, no matter what drum the many are marching to. He had lasted so long. He had fought so valiantly. He'd been so careful it was hard to believe he succumbed so fast. But he did. Came over him on Monday morning.

Suddenly and seemingly out of the blue. A terrible case of the flu. Absolutely miserable. Luckily, without terrible case of the flu, absolutely miserable. Luckily, without the aches or fever, or sniffles, or anything really that was plaguing everyone else, though he shared many of their other symptoms. For instance, he found himself unable to get out of bed or cook or take out the garbage. And the thought of shoveling snow made him feel positively ill, as did the idea of unloading the dishwasher. Luckily, the day before he was so surprisingly laid low, he stocked up on bagels and chips and a stack of movies he'd be meaning to watch. Exactly two days worth.

And coincidentally, two days was precisely the number of days it took for the flu to move through him. When he did emerge, he did look surprisingly rested and rosy. he did look surprisingly rested and rosy. No doubt a result of his carefully cared for and highly tuned immune system. And the two days in bed. And the bagels, of course. Someone should do a study on Montreal bagels. I'm not saying that's what saved him.

I'm just saying he seemed to bounce back a lot faster than anyone else. So, am I right? Isn't that freaky? I hope that was okay for you to listen to. I found it so difficult to listen to that during the height of COVID. And I've only recently been able to return to it and enjoy the humor in it. I hope you did too. Let me tell you the backstory. Do you remember the scene in there where Dave has to sign for a package? That actually happened. Except it wasn't Dave on the phone with Morley. It was Stuart on the phone with me. If you're a regular listener to the podcast, then you'll know that Stuart loved talking on the phone. Yacking. I was just yacking about that myself last week on this podcast.

Stuart and I used to talk several times a day. But the time I want to tell you about, he wasn't enjoying our conversation. He did not want to be on the phone with me because I was on him about a story. It was January 2013, and we were heading to Halifax in a few weeks to record a live concert. We needed a new David Morley story, and Stuart had not started writing it. He never wanted to write in January, and I gotta say, I don't blame him. We were really tired after our Christmas tour, and I'd always give us a week or two off over the holidays to recoup. But that holiday time had passed, and now it was time for Stuart to start writing. Scratch that. The time to start writing had come and gone. We were well past that point. We were firmly in the land of procrastination. And that's why he didn't want to be on the phone with me, because I was putting pressure on him. I was reminding him of the deadline. I was reviewing the work back schedule. We were on the phone and he did not want to be on the phone with me. He was irritated with me, and I don't blame him. I was nagging him, which in my defense was pretty much my entire job description back then.

Stuart was doing his best to ignore me. He was doing a million other things like he always was doing when he was on the phone with me. He was looking for his glasses. He was washing the dishes. Oh, there's someone at the door, and now he's opening the door. Hang on a minute. He put the phone in the crook of his neck and he unlocked the door. It was the guy from FedEx. I don't remember his name now, but Stuart knew his name. He always made a point of asking people their names. And this is the impressive part of then using their names, of calling people by name. I loved that about him. He was talking to the guy whose name I don't remember. Let's call him Jason because that's my FedEx guy's name.

Stuart signed for the package. Jason gave him the package, and that was that. Stuart and I went back to our conversation. I was back on him about the story and the deadline. Eventually, he agreed to get to it, probably just to get me off the phone, and we hung up. About five minutes later, he called me back, frantic and furious. He was like, oh my god, oh my god, we were on the phone and you were on me about the story. Catch the blame there. You were on me about the story and remember I had to sign for that package?

Catch the blame there. You were on me about the story, and remember I had to sign for that package? I said, yes. He continued, well, because we were on the phone, I forgot to wash my hands after using Jason's pen. And I was like, all right, all right, wash your hands now. It's too late, Jess. It's too late. And then a dramatic pause, like he was on stage, waiting for the audience, me, to catch up with him before he delivered his punchline.

I waited patiently, knowing my role. And then he said, I already touched my eye. Stuart, I said, I touch my eye like 10 times a day. You're going to be okay. Sure, he said. But do you touch your eye after touching Jason's pen? That pen has touched dozens of other fingers today. And now those fingers are in my eye. Dozens of fingers in my eye. He explained, and not in a calm demeanor, that he was not going to be able to write the story in time. Because he was definitely going to get sick. Because he had touched a pen that had touched other people. And then he had touched his eye.

And that's the point where I jumped in and called him, quote, a hysterical lunatic, end quote. And I guess my plan worked because he got the story done. That moment, that phone conversation, or let's be honest here, that irritated exchange, inspired the story that you just heard. The story where Dave touches the pen and puts his finger in his eye, and he blames the entire thing on Marley, and she calls him a hysterical lunatic. So, yeah. I mean, the role of a producer is to make things happen, and you gotta do whatever it takes, you know? The process may have been painful, but Stuart got it done. And you know what else? He never got sick from touching that pen. All right, that's it for today,

but we'll be back here next week with some more Stuart stories. Nice, cheerful ones, I promise, including this one. You set yourself loose in the sort of places that Dave frequents and see if you don't come home with the odd lava lamp, abused pair of cowboy boots,

or as Dave did on a snowy Monday last November, a sensory deprivation tank. A few days after it arrived, he was over at Kenny Wong's cafe sitting on his regular stool at the end of the counter, poking at a bowl of Kenny's rice pudding. He hadn't told anyone about the tank yet, but he's about to tell Kenny because he needs Kenny's help. He finishes his dessert and he looks over at Kenny and says, where do you get your salt anyway? And Kenny waves at the cupboard behind the counter and Dave says, no, no, no. I mean, where do you buy your salt? Who supplies you? Kenny says, you looking for a deal? How much salt do you want? Kenny thought they were kidding around. Dave says, oh, about 800 pounds. Okay, now, if you are feeling unsure about something, something that you have done, as Dave was, if you were feeling shy or uncertain about how others might accept it.

Chances are, when you share your secret, your story is going to drift from the realm of information exchange into the world of hyperbole and justification and rationalization. Kenny said, you need 800 pounds of salt? Dave said, it's for my float tank. Kenny said, you're kidding, right? And Dave took flight. Floating, he said. Well, floating is like a return to the womb. You get into a float tank and close the soundproof lid, you're going to float away on water denser than the Dead Sea. He leaned forward and he looked at Kenny dramatically. For the first time in your life, your brain will be free of stimulation and stress.

Kenny didn't say anything. Dave said, one hour in a tank is as good as four hours of sleep. He's just making things up now. That's next week on the podcast. I hope you'll join us. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Our recording engineer is a hysterical lunatic named Greg DeCloot. Theme music is by Danny Michelle. The show is produced by Louise Curtis, Greg DeCloot, and me, Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week.

Until then, so long for now.