First Appeared in the Barrie Advance
Sunday Aug 27, 2006

You say tomato, I say that object floating in my lake is a raft
(Guest Column by Elaine Murray)

I have a confession to make: I, Elaine Murray, am guilty of road rage. Now before you clip my photo out of this column so you can fax it to the local traffic gendarmes with the warning, “Pull this woman over immediately and disarm her,” please note my wrath is not of the gun-toting kind. It’s more along the lines of, “Why is that woman yelling to herself in her car?”

Embarrassing really.

I try to give it up every year for Lent but once I didn’t even make it out of the church parking lot following the Ash Wednesday mass – which kicks off our 40 days of self-induced abstinence – before exploding into a litany of words not commonly found in the bible. Imagine, the smudge of ashes on my forehead barely an hour old and I’ve already broken Lent, plus added swearing to the list for Easter confession. Well, in my defense – but certainly no excuse for bad behaviour – somebody had blocked in my car. If only there was a 12-step program for people with my affliction; I could have called my sponsor from the parking lot and saved myself an extra long penance.

And if I’m not in enough trouble already, I’ve just recently discovered that I also suffer from dance floor rage. While on vacation at my cottage a few weeks ago, I ventured out to the local watering hole where a smokin’ blues band happened to be playing. It wasn’t long before I was up tripping the light fantastic. And while I love to dance, I also try to respect the personal space of my fellow dancers – well, maybe with the exception of the odd time I’ve enjoyed one too many of Alexander Keith’s finest (hey, those that like it, like it a lot). But on the night in question, I was quite respectful and playing nice with the other dancers. Despite my proper dance floor etiquette, a young canoodling couple kept bumping into me. Each time I would shimmy away from them to no avail; they kept invading my personal acreage of dance floor real estate like those warriors from the Capital One credit card commercials.

“Enough of this,” I thought. If I move any further away, I’ll end up out on the patio. So I squared my shoulders and planted my hips readying myself for the next onslaught, prepared to protect what was rightfully mine. But alas, a firm hip and square shoulder were no match for canoodlers – they danced on oblivious to both my ire and the rest of their surroundings. God bless young love.

Well, to finish my bad temper tryptch, I must also speak about the terrible travesty that occurs at my cottage every summer. I am blessed to own (along with my sister) a special piece of property in the Ottawa Valley, where incidentally, I was conceived, birthed and tossed out into the world to fend for myself. We love to share this personal patch of heaven with our friends, and cottage weekends and holidays are filled with a revolving door of guests. But there are an errant few who insist on calling our raft, a floating dock. I’ve corrected them politely but they just ignore me!

I’m not denying the existence of floating docks – I’ve seen them quite often on the shores of Lake Simcoe and other lakes. But – and this is a big but – they are not floating out in the middle of the lake like a little wooden island, they are quite firmly attached to land, as all “docks” are. Yes, they are bobbing away in the manner of things that float rather than anchored to the ground with a railing system – but I repeat, they are attached to land. Our raft is surrounded by water on all four sides, anchored by a cement block.

I love my friends but they’re frustrating. They’ve argued that it’s a geographical thing – like cottage versus camp or cabin, depending on what part of the province you’re from. But I must disagree and I’ve spoken with people from all over Ontario who concur with my (aka, the right) definition.

I even wrote to Cottage Life magazine for clarification and while they noted that they and the Canadian Coast Guard were in accordance with me, they wimped out, ending their response with the old familiar lyric, “You say tomato . . .”

Well, if it’s floating in my lake, at my cottage, tomato-shmato – it’s my RAFT. And you better call it that – or the next time I see you on the dance floor or Highway 400, not even Lent can save you!

(Elaine Murray is a local writer who has hijacked the column of the vacationing Donna Douglas.)

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