Suzanne Belcourt's Marshmallow Girl
March 30th, 2006

Somewhere Else

I recently flew to Vancouver to see my dad accept an award. It brought back fond memories of the time I used to live in Vancouver during the 1986 Expo: I was a teenager living with my Grandmother and I worked in a McDonald’s “restaurant”.

Whenever the employees had a lunch break we were able to eat free McDonald’s food. I used to love the Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese and Bacon. Ate it every time. Needless to say, I gained about an extra quarter in pounds.

Every workday I had the afternoon shift where kids my age would come in from after school and have the 25-cent ice cream cone. It was on special. So every day, tons of kids would come in all at once and come to my cash register. Why? Because word got around that I liked the ice cream maker and how high I could put the stuff on top of the cones. After about two days my boss had to take me to one side and show me how an ice cream cone from McDonald’s should look. I was tempted to defy him and just go ahead and continue to make the cones as big as I could, but getting fired from a place that also sponsors the Olympics might look bad on a resume.

So I lived in Vancouver for approximately six months, then moved back East. (The fond memories should be more about my Grandmother than about McDonald’s really, but what schizophrenia does is, it wipes out the great memories and makes you remember the more embarrassing moments—this is my opinion, of course, not a scientific conclusion.)

I wasn’t going to go to Vancouver again because I must admit I’m afraid to fly. (And leaving my three cats in an apartment building where the tenant below me smokes and perhaps could fall asleep at the same time scared me even more). Think of this: I could fly for seven hours to Paris, twice, but taking a plane for four hours across Canada just scared the heck out of me. Maybe it was the fear of jetlag that scared me the most.

The movies playing on the plane going there and coming back were “Just Like Heaven” and “Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride” which freaked me out more than the turbulence. At one point the turbulence was so bad coming back home that one of the flight attendants lost her balance and nearly fell on the floor. Because I’m a firm believer in fate and signs, these movies seemed like a sign that I would no longer be able to continue to believe in fate on this earth again.

Seeing my dad accept the Aboriginal Achievement Award for Public Service was really great. Except of course for the three ladies who were sitting behind me. They were so loud and obnoxious that I am sure that the news crew who were filming the award ceremony zoomed in from the stage to these three women just to show the future TV audience (who would be seeing the show the next day) where all the noise was coming from. And we were sitting in the balcony.

The trip to Vancouver was definitely worth reliving the memory of working in McDonald’s, leaving my cats with a smoker in the same building, and the fear of dying. And seeing an old picture of my dad when he was a kid smiling on this huge screen on a stage made me grin from ear to ear. But perhaps by the time a year has passed, I’ll probably only remember that my dad and I share the same crowded teeth—this is my opinion of course, not a scientific conclusion.

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