You may know of the Calgary Stampede. If you don’t, here’s the Cole’s Notes version:
Hundreds of thousands of people flock to the city over ten days for a parade and to attend the carnival midway and rodeo. Some animals die, and some cowboys get the shit kicked out of them. People – mostly the locals – dress in “western duds” and descend into a drunken stupor for the duration; very little real work gets done and STD rates spike. When the price of oil is high (as it hasn’t been for some years), oil companies are flush and hire decades-past-their-commercial-prime former top-40 rock bands to play their parties. When the price of oil is low they do what they do the rest of the year, which is complain about what a raw deal Alberta and their business are getting from the rest of the country. Alberta is Canada’s designated Whiny Little Bitch.
Another feature, though, is the Stampede breakfast. There are hundreds of free pancake breakfasts held in the city and surrounding region by various groups, companies, and organizations for various reasons. Most are pretty lame – a couple of pancakes with the requisite fake maple syrup and a couple of nasty little breakfast sausages, plus coffee, juice, etc. At the bigger events, you can line up for this for hours. I’ve lived here for a long time, so I can’t stand that stuff – my annual limit for those two particular items is generally two of each, and that’s only if I bring along my own fruit syrup. Freebies normally exert gravitational pull on me, but this is a notable exception.
There are some breakfasts that diverge from that norm, though; the one we’ve been going to is held at a little rural church near where we live. A couple years ago they really outdid themselves with additions like hams (on the bone!), bacon, eggs, homemade hash browns, and buckets of fresh fruit salad – just great. That was a peak that they haven’t reproduced since, but their breakfast is still pretty good.
That’s a long setup for a short story, but it’s worth it. A thing happened there last year that you’d file under “You Can’t Write This Stuff”. My wife (Susan) and I queued up, got our grub, and headed for a table. Sat down, started eating, and (inevitably) another two or three women joined us at the table, which required (so I’m told) an exchange of pleasantries. One of the newcomers – English, as I recall – introduced herself as (another) Susan, which sent my mind spinning briefly into the there-must-be-a-joke-here department. I speculated for a moment on what might be the collective noun for a group of Susans (and yes, I know of and have listened to Band of Susans. Used to be on a music mailing list with the guy in the band not named Susan.), first considering “a scourge”, but then settling on “a blight”. So I asked whether we actually had a Blight of Susans at the table.
The new Susan paused for a beat, then said “You know, that was my maiden name. And I can’t begin to tell you how much of a relief it was to change it when I got married.”
Nitpicking Bastard 