Events in CN Tower

Based on a true story.

        Now this was not my first time in Canada; I use to come here all the time when I was a kid. My parents loved the duty free shop, they felt like they were “ripping off the man” (I know, but they meant well and I still love them). However this was my first time here on (technically) business. Me and Lee came up here to Toronto for some sort of music fest; it was all very indie so they didn’t want any big businesses, but they did dig little ones like ours. You see, we own a music store down in Buffalo; it’s not real big but we do pretty well for ourselves. Apparently we did well enough that these guys running this thing heard about us and said we could push our junk in one of the booths during the festival and gave us some all access passes for the fest; very cool.

        It’s Thursday, the festival goes through the whole weekend from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon. Lee’s bored and wants to go sightseeing; I give him a dirty look from across our hotel room but he’s persistent. Whatever, I’m a pretty laid back guy, and Lee’s one of those cats who can make fun of anyone; at the very least me and him can make fun of any creeps we see.

       Since we’re leaving, we have to get dressed (this was one of the reasons I didn’t want to go, I’m lazy and my pajamas are comfortable). I get in the bathroom first and shower up. I slap on some ripped jeans and my favorite Misfits shirt; along with some chains around my neck I’m ready to go. Lee’s got his corduroys and a dirty Led-Zeppelin shirt (it’s not really dirty, but he wears it looking dirty so people think he’s cool). I grab my leather jacket and he grabs a suit jacket and we head out.

       The first place Lee wants to see is the CN Tower, which I tell Lee is probably one of the most useless things on earth. It serves no purpose other than to show other countries, “Hey look at us! We’re Canada and we got us a big ol’ building. We’re not America!”, that and to scare the hell out of people who are afraid of heights.

      “Oh you’re just saying that because you’re one of those people. Come on, be a man and get up there!”

      Now, for the record I’m not afraid of heights. I have nothing against heights. It’s the falling from them that gets me a little edgy.

     I tell him I need some coffee before we go up, so we stop at a Starbucks. As much as I don’t like Starbucks I need caffeine. We each get some mocha-fropa-pretentious drink and head over to the Tower.

    The line’s not that long, but it’s still long enough. There’s some security guard before you go up that is convinced that the terrorists are planning some assault on the CN Tower, and he’s the only thing to between the terrorists and Canada’s moral fiber. Really? Because if I’m a terrorist, I’m going to blow up a useless building like the CN Tower? “Oh no, our giant and useless tower! How are people going to know that we’re real men?”

    We get to the top, and I must admit it’s a pretty good view. I look up and I see clouds stretching far and wide, and blue skies seeming to invite me to join them in purity and bliss. Then I look down and I see man and his industrial jungle. The concrete maze is a beautiful and horrifying trap to those of us fearing the 9 to 5. It’s interesting to look down and see all these people hurrying to jobs they hate; or homes they secretly hate with spouses that hate them; or maybe hidden lovers that make them hate themselves. To each their own poison I suppose, it’s not my place to judge.

     I step back from the window and observe my fellow observers. A newlywed couple is enjoying the sights from the Tower and the touches from each other. It’s cute, until I notice that he’s wearing a wedding band and she’s not. Behind me some guy just dropped a hat and starting playing some folk songs on his acoustic guitar; I dig him, but before I could get over there to drop some change he gets hassled down the elevator by some security guards (they’re not as bad as the super-guard from before, but still pretty bad). I start to go back to my spot but some little girl has taken it, she can’t be more than five or six. I can see her face in the reflection from the window; her big and bright eyes are mesmerized by the beauty and vastness of the horizon, the infinity of it all.

     She turns around and smiles at me.

I smile back, and she turns back to the window. When she does this I look around, and look back at her, and frown. This is the world she’s going to grow up in?

      The thought makes me a little sick, so I headed back down. I told Lee I’d wait for him down there.

      “Did you take a look out this thing?”

      “Yeah, it was something else.”

      “Something good I hope?”

      “Yeah man, it blew my mind a bit.”

      “Ha ha, alright man, cool. I’ll catch you down there; we still got places to go.”

       I took the elevator down and got off on the bottom floor (it looked like a good place to get off on). I looked through the merchandise they’re trying to pawn off on us, (foam fingers, lighters, what have you) and remembered I had a 10-year-old sister back home, and figured she’d probably want something. She has a thing for postcards, so I let myself get conned into buying a pack of them for her.

      As I get in line to buy them I notice the girl working the counter, and I think I fell in love a little. She had dark skin, and deep, blue, penetrating eyes. She had her dark hair, a little shorter it seemed, tied in a side ponytail because apparently she’s too much of a rebel to tie it behind her. Her features were soft, yet those eyes felt sharp as they stabbed themselves into my soul. Okay so I’m being a little dramatic, but you have to believe me when I said that this girl was something else.

     I think of those blue skies again, and the openness the natural world could grant I guy like me and a girl like her. I see those same skies over the Spanish country side with green rolling hills as far as the eye can see and a little river just big enough to swim in and float a raft down. I see me and her floating down that river on that raft, looking up and enjoying the fact that there’s no creeps or machines for miles around. That little girl upstairs swims next to us, eyes just as bright as we all enjoy the closest thing we can get to infinity.

    I snap out of my wishful-reality to realize I’m next in line. I consider asking my sales counter vixen if she’d like to join me and my little friend upstairs on a relaxing ride down a river, but decided against it; I figured I might be moving a little fast.

    “Are these postcards all?”

    (How do you feel about rafts?)

    “Yeah that’s all.”

    “That’ll be $1.99”

    She snaps the five out of my hand like an alligator protecting her young; it’s here I begin to doubt that this woman is the woman I fell in love with in my head.

    Before she started to give me my change she stared at the five a little harder, then a lot harder. Then she stared back at me like I just handed her a bomb. It looks like she’s a little more like the self-righteous security guards polluting this tower than the little girl that seems to actually understand life. She takes out another five and it looks like she’s comparing the two bills. Then, awkwardly over the speaker, she calls out “Code 17”. This won’t end well.

    A bulking behemoth of a security guard comes over, well over 6’5’’ and at least 300 pounds. He’s very dark, somewhere between Wesley Snipes and the night itself, and is sporting an old, seventy’s, bushy moustache with a lovely pair of reflective aviator sunglasses. I don’t have the heart to tell him he’s not on CHiPs.

    He looks at my sales counter vixen and she points to me (Ha! See if I take you to Spain now). He asks for the five in question, and as he examines it I go through my mind on where the hell I could possibly get a counterfeit five. Then I look at the five, and I realize that it’s some of the change I got from the Starbucks me and Lee went to. Starbucks gave me counterfeit Canadian money. Oh, I wasn’t a big fan of the place before; now I loathe this business and all associated with it.

    After he finished confirming what my sales counter sellout has already told him he grabs me by the collar of my jacket and growls in my face “What kind of punk do you think you are?! Counterfeiting money?!” If anyone in the CN Tower wasn’t watching us before I think we got their attention now.

    I try to explain to him what happened with the crime lords at Starbucks, but he wasn’t having it. This was probably the most exciting thing to ever happen to him and he wasn’t going to let this one slip away just because of some silly logic.

    Eventually he put me down and started listening to what I had to say. I don’t know if he believed me or not, but I don’t think he knew what to do next, so he just threw me out (yes, he literally picked me up, carried me out, and tossed me on the ground).

    I called Lee and told him what just happened.

   “You were counterfeiting money?!”

   “Of course not, I’ll explain when you come back to the hotel.”

   “Dude, wait, I’ll come down now. You sure you don’t want to keep sightseeing?”

   “Yeah, I think I’m good.”

    I went back to the hotel we were staying at and ordered some room service. I was lucky; a Law and Order: Criminal Intent marathon was on, so I watched that for most of the day. I still can’t believe I was “caught” with Canadian counterfeit money at the CN Tower in Toronto. Spain’s looking better and better

Reviews

[Dee Okolotowicz]

This was sort of funny! I mean, it could of ended worse!
I don't think I'd be visiting Starbucks any time soon either! ;)