some of this is true

It was around the same time Michael Jackson launched that comback (there were others, and there would be more) that I had my unsuccessful entry into the Chris Akkerman Elementary School lipsyncing competition, the event that capped each year before the summer, where children dressed up in costumes and pretended to be celebrities in ways that weren’t so obviously bizarre to us then that I hope they would be now.

It wasn’t long after that album, the song about black and white and the video where everyone’s faces changed into one another (the easily made jokes about his face notwithstanding), and he appeared on Oprah, the prime-time interview that everyone watched, often for the same reason everyone has seen at least one episode of Maury Povich, the shows about strange deformities or the you-are-not-the-fathers.

This, of course, washed like a wave over the 11- and 12-year-olds who were very shortly graduating to junior high, us in our silk shirts, me who couldn’t moonwalk like Greg and the rest of them, who I hated but still had to admire for the way they could float along the ground like how Michael Jackson showed Oprah.

This was a problem.

There were many things wrong with our lipsync performance, lack of creativity among them, poor showmanship another. We decided, for reasons that still aren’t entirely clear, that our song would be that one about life and highways by that famous Canadian rock and roll musician who never staged his own comeback, who couldn’t have if he wanted to.

We had a couple of guitars cut out of cardboard and I pretended to sing into a microphone and dance the way I thought a rock and roll musician would, even though I’m sure Mr. Cochrane didn’t do much dancing of his own. We didn’t get in, didn’t even make it through auditions, but in the same spirit that passes children who would do better held back a grade they paired us with Emily, who had a dance routine to an older pop song, who Mrs. Edgar thought could use a backup band, but try to make it look like you’re actually playing the guitar, they said, which seemed on the far end of impossible in my uncoordinated pre-pubesence.

And it was this performance that we took to the stage on a hot June afternoon in the school gymnasium, red brick on the outside, the spectators of Grades 1 through 6 sitting on a yellow floor coloured with the boundary lines of hockey and dodgeball, our fake instruments up against our classmates doing the moonwalk, basically defying gravity.

We performed, Emily did the lipsyncing, us our instrumentsyncing. We lost, very nearly at the bottom, if I remember, and I’m not saying Michael Jackson was entirely responsible, but he surely didn’t help, my awkward body in a sweatshirt and jeans swaying on stage, not floating on anything, not channelling visions of any kind of icon whose stardom had the sort of pull that could get MaCaulay Culkin in his latest music video.

The first time I went to the races was in Calgary, five or six years ago, the staff of my summer job decided we’d go down and gamble and watch the horses (problematic, I realize) race around the track as people in the stands sat surprisingly docile in their seats, beer in plastic cups. Some sat inside watching the TV screens. Could you still smoke inside back then? I forget. I’m sure we thought we were being ironic.

We learned the bets. Two bucks to win on number eight. Two dollars to place on four. There’s the trifecta, boxed or straight, and something called the superfecta, and there were others, so-called “exotic bets,” which sound far more, well, exotic than they probably actually are.

I kept my bets small, just a toonie on most races, and I kept them safe. Betting that the favourite will at least place third probably takes the excitement out of things, but at least you get your money back, and you get to cheer as your horse (you take ownership over them, of course, they’re your horse, your jockey, your win) tromps through the dirt and mud and passes across the finish line.

I bet, still managed to lose, and then for no particular reason I stopped on the way home and had the hairdresser shave off all my hair.

We went to the races here in Vancouver on the weekend, and it was much the same. Sunny skies, hot muggy weather, beer in plastic cups and hot dogs. We didn’t know how this whole thing worked (my brain decided it wasn’t a skill worth remembering) so I asked a few regulars, whose confusing explanations contradicted each other, and no one seemed to know how they figure out odds, calculate payouts, that’s for the computers, they supposed, just look over at that screen when it’s over.

An older man said he’d been coming to the races for darn well close to his whole life. Sometimes he bets, but sometimes he just watches, writing down what he would have bet and feeling good when those horses win.

Some people study the stats, he says, check out the horse’s winnings, the jockey’s record, who’s the trainer, where they were bred. Others rely on superstition, like what was the last digit on the odometer when they roll into the Hastings Park lot. He often picks the hoses that the odds-makers say will win, but switches them up from time to time because you never know what will happen.

I mostly picked the names I liked. Nite Time News. Lost. Miss Vimy Ridge. Lost. James the Third. Lost. Surgical Strike. Lost. You get the idea.

And then I put a $6 bet on a mare named Golden Pursuit, rode by one Stephanie Fedora. The bugle call. The announcer says, “Here we go!,” and they’re off. One and a half times around the track, the first time they pass, watching from near the finish line, she’s out ahead. I cheer. They head around back, past the Home Depot advertisements that line the track, and she’s still ahead. She doesn’t fall behind, from what I can tell, not once, and even though it looked like Lord Vic and Meaux Power were closing the gap at the last second, Golden Pursuit came out on top. We came out on top.

And I came out with $21, which, I realize is still less than I lost, but you take small victories drinking beer in the sunshine watching the horses pass by again and again.

More . . .

We went to the races. I won $20. I lost more. I’ll tell you what happened later but here is a picture.