The first time I went to Paris, my French was exceptional and it allowed me to enjoy the little things that get missed by so many tourists that trek there every year. Things like newspapers, signs posted in shop windows saying "Use other door", missing pet posters and the occasional flyer that offered 2 for 1 window cleaning. But the one sight I truly loved taking in and relishing above all the other things that Paris had to offer was its graffiti.
My unquenchable thirst for truly innovative, profound, original, thoroughly repulsive, brilliant, clever, insulting and just downright nasty graffiti had developed from when I was a child and read the words "Here I sit, with my fingers in my shit and the rats are playing ping-pong with my balls. If you want to hear me fart, just pull my legs apart and I'll blow you through the knotholes in the walls" on the stall door inside a washroom at a gas station my family had stopped at while vacationing one summer in the Yukon.
I recall looking around the stall for rodents wielding ping-pong paddles or some other type of racquet, after all maybe they only played ping-pong on the weekends but during the week it was squash doubles or racquetball. I also remember thinking that I must change my opinion of the Great White North's inhabitants, for not only were they prospectors panning for gold, they were poets as well. Needless to say, I was impressed by the creative wordplay of the ptarmigan hunter that had once used the very same toilet I was now using. And thus began my love affair with grafitti.
I was strolling down the Champs-Elysses because when you are in Paris, you don't walk, nor meander, nor shuffle, nor boldly stride; you stroll. I had gone to use the public washroom in a mall, and as I went about relinquishing my bladder's cache to a porcelain tomb, my eyes casually began roaming about the wall in front of me. They stopped their jaunt on the words that had been scribbled in blue and red ink. The two blue words, bold, capitalized and scribed in a Helvetica font, offered salvation for the souls of those that had been seeking salvation from their bladders by majestically proclaiming "JESUS ECONOMISE!" (Jesus Saves!).
Upon reading those two words, I was immediately smacked upside the head with the realization that this was no ordinary pee break, this simple act of natural function had been transformed into a life altering moment, an epiphany. I thought it was simply the best pee shiver ever, but no. This was not only me feeling like Heaven, I had downed a few espressos, and a LARGE bottle of San Pellegrino with lunch after all, this was me knowing I was to be on my way there also. Looking back on it now, I am amused with the translation of those two words. Jesus economise now makes me think that the Son of God is a pretty savvy shopper or a rather frugal one. He must have Divine coupons. I'll bet that the Heavenly VISA card offers one hell of an AirMiles program.
Reassured that not only was my bladder safe, my soul was now too, I allowed my eyes to drop down to the words that were smugly and casually scrawled underneath the Holy reminder. At first I thought that I was mistaken or I was putting a familiar word into the translation for easier comprehension but no, I had read it right, "Points de Gretzky sur le rebond!" (Gretzky scores on rebound!)
Jesus Saves! Gretzky scores on rebound!
Well, I couldn't begin to argue with that, now could I? Sure, we're talking about the Son of God, the King of Kings, He Who Was Resurrected, the Big J.C. but come on now! HELLO! We're also talking about the ALL-TIME SCORING LEADER, the Great One, the Divine One on a pair of Bauer Custom Supreme 2000's, mind you, that was in the 80's, so they were probably CCM skates. But to shake my head in disagreement would contradict my belief system, it would have forced me to take what I had witnessed as I was growing up and dismiss it as being false or insubstantial. I was not some blind follower for I had watched the Canada Cup! I had witnessed the Oilers during the playoffs. I had SEEN the Great One hoist the Ark of the Covenant of sports, the Jericho's trumpet of winter athletics, the one true Holy Grail which beer and champagne is drank from and you can have your picture taken with for 10 bucks when it's on tour across the country. I have HELD the Stanley Cup as our Lord of the Ice had done on several occasions before me!
I WOULD be faithful! I WOULD be proud. I WOULD be...
Canadian.
As I walked out of the bathroom, I was laughing hysterically at what I had just read and as I laughed, I was tickled to know that a fellow countryman of mine had put an agnostically patriotic stamp on a nondescript wall in a typical washroom in a foreign county. The bathroom may have been in Paris but that one tile had Canada written all over it.
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