Celebrating the trivial, the unwanted and the obscure

Most of us have our major accomplishments in life celebrated, attaining a high position professionally, being a good parent and spouse, contributing to our community. But what about our more obscure accomplishments?

I am likely one of but a few humans to have visited the town of Pisa, Italy, without setting eyes upon the leaning tower, for example.  I was there with a former girlfriend, Sally Finter, a British woman, and we opted for the more rare experience in Pisa.

We arrived at night and left the train station and asked where the leaning tower might be. A passerby said it was right around the corner.  As we approached the corner I balked, anyone can look upon the tower but it takes a rare bird to decline doing so, said I.

Back into the Pisa train station for a vending machine meal, an evening of talk with fellow travelers and a night’s sleep upon a bench, spending 12 hours there and avoiding seeing the leaning tower.  I’d have surely forgotten it by now anyways.

Janis Treleaven, the amusing and highly-competent office staff/salesperson at the Undercurrent offices, she, too has an obscure, and rare, accomplishment.  She shoved royalty. In London in 1986, two years before I did not look upon the leaning tower, Janis actually shoved Princess Margaret. She did not knock the queen’s sister down, but she did shove her.

“I was on my lunch break,” Janis explains. “There was a crowd in front of a museum and I was trying to make my way through it. This woman was standing right in the middle of the sidewalk and right in my way. It wasn’t a hard shove, but it was a shove.”

Janis was not, to her credit, horrified upon being told by a friend that she had just shoved Princess Margaret, she had, after all, been rather miffed. She did turn and watch the Princess being helped into a motor car though and, as a peace offering, waved at her, smiling wanly.

To her credit, Margaret waved back.

There is a Bowen Islander who had an obscure accomplishment while on the field at Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton during an actual CFL game. That would be Dwayne Derban, who spent two seasons while a young buck as a 220-pound ‘dude with an attitude’ on the B.C. Lions.

His accomplishment is obscure, rare and rather unwanted.

Dwayne, who, along with wife Andrea and kids Coby and Jamie, are long-time islanders, was a specialty team member for the Lions in the late 80’s but, due to injury, got a chance to be a starting defensive tackle in a game to decide first place on November 1, 1987.

Derban promptly went offside in his first two plays as a starter. Teammates were none too impressed and Derban wasn’t sure he’d get a third play. But coach Don Matthews was the forgiving sort. The thing is he went and accomplished a good thing later, blocking a punt and kicking it into the end zone where a teammate fell upon it for the winning touchdown in a 33-32 victory.

So Janis had her accomplishment first, a year later Dwayne and then I didn’t see the leaning tower one year after that.  The final one, my wife Tracey Wait’s obscure accomplishment, was also in the late 80’s.  I’d ask the exact date but she only reluctantly agrees to this sort of thing and I don’t wanna push it.

My wife stood up the creator of The Simpsons TV show, Matt Groening. She met him while he was in Victoria for a function and he gave her his number and suggested she call during her planned visit to L.A. a few weeks later.  Unbeknown to him, she was going down with a boyfriend.

She phoned Groening when in L.A. and they arranged to meet at a nightclub. The boyfriend was unhappy, naturally, and the upshot is she did not keep the appointment.

The following year, out came The Simpsons. So had she kept the rendezvous she may have wound up with the creator of a multi-million dollar earning, culturally iconoclastic animated TV show. Instead she got the creator of these Slow Lane Chronicles.

Obscure indeed.