Well, here we are – where to begin? How did I end up in front of my computer, trying to write my first humour column for the ever-popular Leaside Life, a respected publication with such a large and loyal following? (Nothing like ramping up the pressure on myself in the first paragraph – rookie mistake!).
While there was no formal interview before taking over from my more famous identical twin (you know, Terry?), I shudder to think how it would have played out. I imagine it going like this. …
LL: Are you a beloved, award-winning author with nine bestselling novels to your credit?
TF: Uhhh…. no, I just look like one.
LL: So, you’re our outgoing columnist’s identical twin brother. The resemblance is uncanny – how do you feel about him?
TF: Well, I’ve always found him to be incredibly good-looking.
LL: After your brother wrote 90+ columns about life in Leaside, with most of his stories involving you, aren’t you a little worried about coming up with new content for your submissions?
TF: Worried? No – I’m terrified!
LL: Great – you’re hired!
Needless to say, I’m honoured and more than a little nervous, and yet, this remarkable community of Leaside is so ingrained in my life, that I just know there are more memories to mine and more stories to share despite all that Terry has churned out over the years. And as the older twin, I like to think I can offer eight more minutes of life experience, wisdom, and maturity than he ever could. (I’ll take any leg up I can get.)
So, how will I approach this? Well, I suppose I could dispute and correct all the family stories of my predecessor, but I’ve only been allotted 600 words. Instead, in my quarterly column, I thought I might focus on Leaside tales you have yet to read. After all, we’re identical twins, not conjoined twins. While we’ve always been very close and did so much together growing up in Leaside, there were moments – hours even – when we did our own things, gained different perspectives, made our own memories and got into our own predicaments.
In fact, I recall one particularly embarrassing moment in 1975. I was on my way to my after-school shift at Vanguard Pharmacy on Eglinton near Bayview. Those were the days of platform shoes, bell bottoms and insecure teenagers like me trying to look cool in them (in my case, an impossible task). On this day, I shoehorned myself into my favourite tie-dyed bell bottoms. Below the knee, it looked like I was wearing a couple of lampshades. But above the knee, they were so tight, you could read the date on the nickel in my back pocket. And that was the problem. You see, back then, you were only cool in your tight tie-dyed pants if you walked confidently with your hands in your front pockets.
So, there I was, the very definition of cool, sauntering up Parkhurst, when, in mid-step, my left foot caught the “bell” of my right pant leg, and I involuntarily pitched forward. I was going down and it wasn’t going to be pretty. You see, my hands were trapped in my front pockets. Yes, my pants were so tight that there was no way I could wrench them free. Luckily, I was able to break my fall, with my face. The considerable height of my platform shoes only added to my free fall hang time – ahhh, life in the ’70s. One chipped tooth and one bloodied lip later, I quickly bounced back to my feet desperately hoping no one had seen my sidewalk spectacle, almost as if to convey “I obviously meant to do that.” The pavement seemed to have survived unscathed.
This episode has been family Leaside lore ever since, and our kids, between guffaws, have spread the word to their generation at every opportunity. Suffice to say, I’ll never live it down. And to coin a phrase pioneered by my esteemed predecessor, it happened in Leaside.
Tim Fallis is a recently retired marketing agency owner and a 60-year Leaside resident.