D6

Brent Mazerolle

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I've decided today will be the happiest day of my life.

Not that there's anything happening today that's a whole lot better than anything that happened yesterday and not that I don't dearly hope for days that are better than this one.

But nevertheless, I've decided to make today a particularly happy one by turning it into an impromptu day of thanksgiving.

It's an odd position to take today, perhaps, as I have a cold, the flu, pink eye and quite possibly strep throat.

It's perhaps even odder to be Mr. Sunshine and Light when the economy is on shaky ground, our taxes are going up and our federal government is in chaos in ways only the oldest among us has ever seen before.

It's downright tough to think happy thoughts when each day this week I read about children being the victims of violence in places like Oshawa and Medicine Hat and Edson, so I'll admit I skipped past a few of those stories in the T&T the past few days. When you've only got one good eye like I have this week, it's easy to justify limiting the reading, but those of you with both eyes working might still want to skip some of the stuff in the paper this week too.

I'd also suggest you maybe stop reading about the violence in Mumbai, except that it's because of reading about Mumbai that I'm in such fine spirits this week.

As has been so famously noted in the past, there are on average only six degrees of separation between most people in North America, and often far less. Just ask anyone who's on Facebook.

Though I have never met Jonathon Ehrlich, it turns out we have mutual friends. Last Friday night, my neighbour stopped by to share an e-mail Jonathon had sent to his family as he fled Mumbai and headed for the safety of Canada. One of his siblings is a friend of my neighbour's but I'm unclear as to how that came to be. I was going to go next door and get that part cleared up, but something about having a cold, flu, pink eye and possibly strep throat made me think this week was not a good time to share my sunshine and light with my lovely neighbours.

Anyway, I won't recount Jonathon's tale in detail, because after he sent the e-mail and landed safely in Vancouver, he did talk to several media outlets, including CNN, so I suspect most everyone has heard his story. He's the guy who was jet-lagged and asleep when the terrorists knocked on his hotel room door and he didn't bother to answer, the mundane decision that saved his life.

He's repeated much of what he said in his e-mail to various media outlets, minus the occasionally colourful language he used in the e-mail, written in the immediate frazzled aftermath of his escape. (If I'd been through what he went through, I'd have used all those words twice and then invented some more).

What really stands out though in Jonathon's e-mail is not the horror of what he witnessed and barely escaped, it's the gratitude he has to the people of Mumbai, and his fervent hope that tourists won't turn their back on India. A cook at the hotel grabbed him and pushed his white Western behind into a cab. The cab driver then kept him calm and got him to the safety of the airport. I'd like to think if terrorists in Canada ever started rounding up Indian tourists, there would be white cooks and cab drivers who would take risks to help the tourists make their escape. I hope.

Whether or not that's the case, I'm thankful first of all for living in Canada, where such life and death dramas are replaced by passionate constitutional bickering which I can practically guarantee will not end in gunfire.

Here's a few other thanks, in no particular order.

Like Jonathon Ehrlich, I'm especially grateful for my family and glad he pointed out in his e-mail that if your kids are safe and healthy everything else is just a trifle. I'm glad I can appreciate that fully without having to flee Mumbai in the night.

I'm grateful that for most of us, whatever economic bump in the road we're about to face likely means downsizing, keeping the car an extra year, or postponing that trip to the Dominican, instead of eating mud, as people are doing in Haiti at this very moment.

I'm grateful I'm not Elisha Cuthbert's father, so I don't have to go to jail for wringing Sean Avery's neck. I'm doubly grateful I'm not Sean Avery's father, so I don't have to go to jail for wringing Sean Avery's neck.

I am happy I'm not Michaelle Jean, who is no doubt just a bit wistful for the calm of her Haitian homeland right about now.

And most of all, I'm glad Jonathon Ehrlich, a man I've never met, took the time to tell the world his story.

* Brent Mazerolle is the Times & Transcript City Hall Reporter and a native of Moncton and keeps his eye on the world, whether it is pink or not. His column appears every Friday.