Beach(es) Beat

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We have become a nation of guzzlers only we don't drink them, we drive them. I have long pondered over the wisdom of using a two-ton vehicle to drive a 55-pound child six blocks to school but perhaps a combination of TTC turmoil and soaring gasoline prices will compel the public to realize that walking is really the better way.

If the notion of actually using your feet to get you from here to there takes hold I see the chance for me to start a new career. I believe many citizens, none of whom live in the Beach by the way, have spent so many years behind a steering wheel that they will have to be taught how to walk and I am just the guy to show how it is done. With the help of my pal Bob Murdoch, I will get an empty room at Community Centre 55 and establish an Academy of Walking.

The basics of walking are really quite simple, you just put one foot in front of the other until your destination is reached, but the variations can be tricky for the untutored. Left turn and right turn signals will have to be learned and so will evasive actions such as what to do when you are striding along the sidewalk on Queen Street and you suddenly see a bicyclist bearing down on you. I am prepared to pursue this initiative further but this will depend in part on how the public reacts to my proposal.

This could be a sign of a return to the era when everything old is new again because I note that clotheslines are being allowed in backyards now but I want to express a word of caution here.

Clotheslines will be great for the environment but they pose a hazard if, to give a purely hypothetical example, it is nightfall and you are racing through a neighbour's backyard with a sack of apples from another neighbour's tree that has somehow come into your possession.

At this point you encounter a clothesline which catches you at the neck and sends you into a truly spectacular somersault. At the end of the flight you land on your stomach five metres from the collision scene and the impact leaves you with a gooey mass of contraband fruit. In the final scene you arrive home only to be closely interrogated by your mother in a withering barrage of questions interrupted only by the occasional cry of 'just you wait until your father gets home.' Well okay, the unhappy little rascal was me but I've been straight ever since.